It is no cheap topicality that makes us set down the decisive definition of Gross Arnold’s life’s work when we say: this entire oeuvre is, in truth, one great Christmas tree opus — great in its thousand micro-miniatures. On this Christmas tree there dangle, jingle, and swing snow-covered or ivy-clad houses and cottages, mushrooms, walnuts, cars, bubble-moonlights, dolls, bells, charming or strangely contorted animals: the collection might be called a kind of doll-ballet vitrine of the world. It is a soothing happiness that the elements of the cosmos and the wide world do not rage here in fearsome, tragic chaos, as they do in the products of so many new (?) schools of art. Quite the contrary (this is the Christmas essence, the layman’s Nativity!): they dwell in peaceful, charming, idyllic neighborliness, in a happily conversing coexistence that recalls the chimes of a musical clock. Bosch’s madcap orgies have here become a graceful bazaar of angels; instead of dredged-up horror-dreams, the fairy illusions of sweet reverie glitter; we are far from the self-glorifying frenzy of orthodox Surrealism (from “Dementia Triumphans”) — and farther still from the alarming adventures of abstraction — and this is endlessly refreshing.
In the minute workmanship of the etchings and the Lilliputian town we feel the dear, diligent, playful labor of the human hand — the almost medieval, tranquil patience of lace-makers, jewelers, and goldsmiths, far from a new world run wild, galloping headlong into technological suicide. In place of the giddy, fevered cosmos, a toyshop of nymphets and Queen Mabs — but! but! (to be stressed a thousand times) this is not a turning of one’s back, not a cowardly flight from our stormy century, but rather: the loudest and most timely proclamation of love and peace, a positive religion of the possibility of happiness, where even birds shut in their cages can — yes, they can — burst into cheerful song. The little “filigree-filigree” town is rightly gazed at by children; for in their whole lives there is only one, one, one truly great experience: the inimitable freshness of wonder before the Christmas present. Gross has built up just such material for wonderment, a toy (though let us be careful — it is exceedingly fragile; let us not touch it with too greedy a hand!): that is, he grants us once more the greatest enchantment of our earthly existence. Besides, even the greatest artist is — in soul and heart — an eternal child (Goethe loved to play “unbearably” much). What a joy it would therefore be for children to see Arnold himself at play — collecting a “hundred kinds” of locomotives and setting up a doll museum for himself! And grown-ups know that this “obstinately” meticulous depiction demands the devout hush of Christmas Eve, just as the pianissimo of delicate music does. And in this peace — of the small family and of the family of the world — we gladly peer into the workshop: never has the world of graphic art “slipped over” more naturally into the small sculpture of the little towns, into the droll baby-Babylon. Again: the many little dolls, set as it were in sculptural small type (for children the doll is perhaps the gift of all gifts…), stand far from the fetishes and masks that conjure tragic or horror visions. And playing with puppets is in itself “an actor’s work”; not for nothing are there so many theater images in Gross’s pictures; and the houses — the houses too, with all their windows, are stages. We feel this play-acting happiness to be the opium of sweet Utopia, and yet (as we have hinted) the lesson is unmistakable: if they play their part, the lost Paradise can surely be regained — there will be a good world in Reality as well. Even the coloring streaming down from angelic skies is full of this promise — the sweetly caressing dawn-gold of blessing and grace, its grace-filled Capri blue: the radiance of optimism. And? Not only is the whole oeuvre a Christmas tree — the trees of the etchings are, one by one, Edenic gift-giving trees: their branches are arms reaching out toward us, offering hearts, Suns, flowers, angel-brides — let us quickly gather these happy realities, playing their mischievous tricks like mirages!
Tükör Magazine, 1976.
