This output comprises a new English-language translation of modernist artist Sophie Tauber-Arp’s essay ‘Remarks on Instruction in Ornamental Design’ (1922), and a series of eight pencil and gouache drawings that Nielsen made by following the design instructions of the essay. The output is underpinned by 82 preliminary drawings (pencil, colour pencil, watercolour and gouache, sizes variable) that formed the main research process. Nielsen commissioned and collaborated with Sarah McGavran - an expert translator of European Modernist texts - to write the new, more nuanced, translation of Tauber-Arp’s essay.
The project’s research questions ask: How might a new English-language translation of Tauber-Arp’s writing on ornament and pattern in design illuminate current art historical understandings of her oeuvre? Can a practice-based research enquiry re-animate historical documents to reveal new knowledge of a modernist artist’s practice?
Methods include: archival research (Stiftung Hans Arp und Sophie Taeuber-Arp e.V); surveys of modernist designs and writings of the early 20th century; and a practice-based process of testing and reinterpreting Tauber-Arp’s instructions through the development of a series of fine art drawings.
The project contributes to the repositioning of Tauber-Arp’s design work - arguing for its reclamation from the margins and its equal significance to the art works in her oeuvre. This output actively demonstrates the unconvincing boundary line between art and design and, further, the unjustifiable relegation of craft to a design activity of a lower order.