Arman

From Nice to the Accumulations

Arman was born Armand Pierre Fernandez in Nice in 1928, the son of an antiques dealer who was also an amateur painter, photographer and cellist. He learned oil painting and photography at home, took a degree in philosophy and mathematics, then studied at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs in Nice and later at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris, where he concentrated on archaeology and Asian art. At a judo school in Nice he met Yves Klein and Claude Pascal, and the three hitchhiked across Europe together. The friendship with Klein lasted the rest of Klein's life and shaped both practices.

The name came from a printer's error. He had been signing with his first name alone, in homage to Van Gogh, and when a catalogue dropped the final letter he kept the shortened form.

Objects as the work itself

His decisive move was to stop using objects for the traces they left and to present them as the work. The Cachets, rubber stamp impressions on paper and fabric, were shown at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris and changed the direction of his career. Then came the two ideas he is best known for: the Accumulations, collections of identical or near identical mass produced objects arranged in polyester castings or Plexiglas cases, and the Poubelles, gatherings of refuse. He filled the Iris Clert Gallery with rubbish under the title Le Plein, a direct answer to the empty room Klein had shown there as Le Vide.

In October of the year the group was founded, Arman signed the declaration of Nouveau Realisme alongside Klein, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villegle and the critic Pierre Restany. They set out to reassess art for a consumer society. Arman also became associated with the German ZERO movement.

Alongside the Accumulations he explored creation through destruction. The Coupes and the Coleres presented sliced, burned or smashed objects mounted on panel, and he chose things with a strong identity: violins, saxophones, bronze figures. Musical instruments, cast in bronze through a foundry in Normandy, became the theme most closely associated with him, and the deconstructed violin encased in resin that Bonhams sold in New York in 2013 is a characteristic example.

Museums, monuments and the market

Museum recognition came early and never let up. Solo exhibitions were held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1964, at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 1967, at the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm in 1970 and at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1975. A touring retrospective opened at the Kunstmuseum in Hanover in 1982, the Brooklyn Museum staged a survey in 1991, the Musee du Jeu de Paume showed him in Paris in 1998, and the Centre Georges Pompidou mounted a full retrospective in 2010, followed by the Museum Tinguely in Basel in 2011.

He took up part time residency in New York from the early sixties, met Marcel Duchamp there, and began making public sculpture on a scale few of his peers attempted. Long Term Parking, finished at the Chateau de Montcel at Jouy en Josas, stacks sixty mostly French cars in concrete to a height of eighteen metres. Hope for Peace, commissioned by the Lebanese government to mark fifty years of its military service and standing in Beirut, embeds eighty three tanks and military vehicles in a monument more than a hundred feet tall.

Arman took American citizenship and died in New York in 2005. His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among many others. A bronze Saxophone appears among the lots catalogued here, which is the sliced instrument theme at its most recognisable.