Arman turned fits of anger into art and elevated repetition to a principle: For the French-American object artist and co-founder of New Realism, rubbish meant inspiration, and destruction meant creation. This attitude polarized – and brought international success.
(...) Continue readingArman – Between fine art, judo, Buddhism and esotericism
Arman was born Armand Pierre Fernandez in Nice on 17 November 1928. As the only child of a wealthy Spanish antiques dealer, he had a trouble-free childhood and youth and was able to unfurl his tendency for art. His father taught him oil painting and also the love for music. Thus, immediately after leaving school, he enrolled at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice. Alongside his art studies, he was an enthusiastic member of a judo club where he met Yves Klein in 1947. Both artists shared an interest in the Rosicrucian teachings and Buddhism and read the writings of the Greek-Armanian esoteric Georges I Gurdjieff. Together with Klein and Claude Pascal, Armand travelled in Europe and contemplated the idea of becoming an auctioneer. In 1953 he married the French composer Éliane Radigue and had three children, but the marriage was dissolved in 1971.
First successes and co-founder of Nouveaux Réalisme
Arman completed his military service in 1952 and subsequently concentrated on his artistic career. He absorbed important influences from the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, whose pictures he saw for the first time in the Parisian gallery of the German art collector Heiny Berggruen and which inspired his work series Cachets, the ‘stamp pictures’. When his name was incorrectly written on the invitation cards of his first solo exhibition – the ‘d’ was missing – the artist immediately made a virtue out of necessity and from them on called himself simply and memorably Arman. The breakthrough brought him an exhibition surrounded by scandal, Le Plein, in the Iris Clert gallery: In reference to his artist friend Yves Klein’s exhibition Le Vide, held two years previously, where Klein had simply illuminated a white-painted, completely empty room with blue light, Arman filled his exhibition space with refuse. Even more significant, however, was the event that took place a few days later in Klein’s apartment: there, the artists’ movement Le Nouveaux Réalistes was constituted around its mastermind Pierre Restany.
Towers of violins and tanks
In 1961, Arman attracted attention with his actions known as ‘Colères’ (rages), which centred on the destruction of objects, first by merely smashing them, and later by cutting them up and even using dynamite. In the 1980s, he piled up violins into leaning towers and applied musical notes to his pictures in the form of paint splatters. In 1991, the artist created portraits of famous composers, not painted, of course, but in the form of constructions of musical instruments. Arman’s 1995 Hope for Peace in Beirut took on greater dimensions, being 32 meters high and composed of 83 military vehicles cast in concrete. Arman received prizes and awards for his work, including the Ordre national du Mérite in 1972, the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1984, and was indicted into the French Legion of Honour in 1989 by the then President, François Mitterand.
Arman died in New York on 22 October 2005.
Arman - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
