December 6, 2021 Issue

Peter Schjeldahl, in his terrific “A Woman’s Work,” in this week’s issue, revisits one of his favourite artworks – Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” (1916). Eight years ago, in a brilliant piece called “Shapes of Things” (The New Yorker, January 7, 2013), he described “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” as follows:

Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the tapestry’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture. 

That’s one of my all-time favourite ekphrases. In “A Woman’s Work,” Schjeldahl adds to his description. He says,

The work’s nubbly, asymmetrically structured bars and swatches in white, black, red, blue, gray, and two browns generate a seemingly effortless majesty. The execution secretes bits of fun that I hadn’t noticed before: a minuscule, eccentric off-colored shape in a brown field; an almost imperceptible checkerboard pattern of alternating horizontal and vertical stitches in a black area (prophetic of the black-on-black paintings of Ad Reinhardt); and a small lump of congested yarn that would seem to be a flaw if it did not so candidly emphasize the work’s tactility. No matter how committed she could be to geometric order, Taeuber-Arp communicated her freedom.

That noticing of the “small lump of congested yarn” is inspired! Schjeldahl’s new piece also dispels a mystery – a mystery to me, at least. When his “Shapes of Things” originally appeared, I devoured it, and immediately searched the Internet for a reproduction of Taeuber-Arp’s  “Vertical-Horizontal Composition.” I couldn’t find it. I found a work by her called “Vertical-Horizontal Composition,” but it didn’t match Schjeldahl’s description. Well, the mystery is now solved. In “A Woman’s Work,” Schjeldahl points out that there is more than one Taeuber-Arp work titled “Vertical-Horizontal Composition.” He says,

Further embroideries and gouaches of hers, also entitled “Vertical-Horizontal Composition,” develop a language of form so fluent that she could seem to have been born to it: intricately balanced, invariably surprising. 

And, to clinch the point, a reproduction of the “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” is included in his piece. Looking at it, I can see the “minuscule, eccentric off-colored shape in a brown field.” But the “almost imperceptible checkerboard pattern of alternating horizontal and vertical stitches in a black area” and the “small lump of congested yarn” elude my eye. So MoMA here I come! I want to see the original. I want to see the stitching. Most of all, I want to see that lump of congested yarn. 

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Vertical-Horizontal Composition (1916)

Interesting Emendations: Peter Schjeldahl's "Shapes of Things"

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Vertical-Horizontal Composition (1916)

Reading Johanna Fateman’s recent “Goings On About Town” note on Sophie Taeuber-Arp, I recalled Peter Schjeldahl’s wonderful “Shapes of Things” (The New Yorker, January 7, 2013), and decided to look it up. Its first paragraph is a beauty:

In “Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art,” a splendid historical survey at the Museum of Modern Art, the most beautiful work, for me, is “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” (1916), a small, framed wool needlepoint tapestry by Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the tapestry’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture. The work bespeaks a subtle eye, a sober mind, and an ardent heart. If you could make something like that, you would drop everything else and do it. You wouldn’t need any great reason. I was mildly shocked by how unshocking Taeuber-Arp’s work is, amid rooms of strenuous sensations from the epoch of abstract art’s big bang. But, in a show that raises the question “Why?” at every turn, I kept coming back to it.

I think that’s one of my favorite art-review beginnings. The instant focus on a particular work – Taeuber-Arp’s “Vertical-Horizontal Composition”; the beautiful description of that work; the equally beautiful appreciation of it (“If you could make something like that, you would drop everything else and do it. You wouldn’t need any great reason”) – all these elements are delightful.

Schjeldahl included “Shapes of Things” in his splendid 2019 collection Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light under the title “Abstraction.” Comparing the book version with the New Yorker version, I notice that the description of Taeuber-Arp’s “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” is slightly different. Here’s the New Yorker version:

Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the tapestry’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture.

And here’s the book version:

An irregular grid of rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the fabric’s’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture.

Notice that “arranged” and “pleasantly” have been dropped, “tapestry” has been changed to “fabric,” and the phrase “an irregular grid” has been moved to the front of the sentence. Both versions are lovely, but I think I prefer the New Yorker version slightly more. Its use of zero article (“Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid …”) enacts the abstraction it describes.

Postscript: I had difficulty finding online the “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” described by Schjeldahl. Taeuber-Arp created at least two in 1916, neither of which appear to fit his description. To illustrate my post, I chose the one that appeared to be the most “matter-of-fact, nubbly.”