Arman - Vicky David Gallery

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effects in a box. On 27 October 1960, at Yves Klein’s home in the Rue de la Campagne Première, Arman
joins with François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely
and Jacques Villeglé in forming the Nouveaux Réalistes or New Realist group, signing the manifesto
drawn up by Pierre Restany. Galerie J opens with the exhibition “À 40° au-dessus de Dada,” bringing
together Arman, César, Dufrêne, Hains, Klein, Rotella, Spoerri, Tinguely and Villeglé (May-June 1961).
In September 1961, for a film shot by NBC television news, Arman creates a Colère with a double bass,
which he entitles NBC Rage. Seeking to escape the inessentiality of the boxes in which he fixed his objects
with wire, he begins to use polyester. Invited by William Seitz, Arman shows for the first time in the United
States, taking part in the exhibition “The Art of Assemblage” at MoMA, New York (October 1961). Arman
begins to cut objects in slices (Coupes), the technique allowing him to deconstruct the object at will while
also establishing links with earlier artistic movements, such as Cubism, Constructivism and Futurism.
In January 1962 Yves Klein makes his relief portrait of Arman, before dying suddenly and unexpectedly
on 6 June that year. Arman moves to Nice, living at 156 Avenue de la Lanterne. In August 1962, he
executes in public a Colère with a piano, at the Galerie Saqqârah, in Gstaad (Switzerland), which he calls
Chopin’s Waterloo. Arman signs up with Sydney Janis, and thus finds himself showing at the United States’
most important gallery.
1963-1966
The mood among the Nouveaux Réalistes is no longer the same: Restany notes that Klein’s death has
been the death-knell of the movement, and Arman decides that he will no longer play a active role in it.
In May 1962, near Essen in Germany, Arman blows up with dynamite an MG sports car belonging to
the German photographer Charles Wilp, who films the operation (The White Orchid). Since 1962, Arman
has begun to make a name for himself, and he now decides to settle in New York. Slicing appears
as a complement to accumulation: in both cases, though in a different way, the identity of the object is
disrupted, being both destroyed and preserved, and time is halted, it power to destroy or to heal suspended.
In New York, Arman discovers Canal Street market, a rich source of “job lots” of diverse objects: the
Accumulations lose something of their identity, transformed into surfaces, treated in all over. Polyester,
which Arman has been using as an adhesive since 1961, takes on a much more central role in his work
with the development of the Inclusions. In 1964, Arman shows for the first time in a museum, with
exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Alain
Jouffroy organises the exhibition “Les Objecteurs de la Vision” (January 1966) which brings together the
investigations of five artists who have carved out a distinctive niche in contemporary art in abandoning
painting for the object, Arman and Spoerri being presented as the pioneers. In 1966, Arman makes his
first Accumulations of paint tubes in polyester, abandoning the glass box in favour of suspension in space,
the tubes and the squeezed paint being embedded in the transparent resin. He also wishes to work
with the emblematic product of industrial mass society, the motor car, and so embarks on a collaboration
with Renault that will last two years and lead to the creation of some hundred works.
1968-1969
Arman asks architect Guy Rottier to build him a partly subterranean house at Vence. His work is included
in the famous exhibition “Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage,” organised by William Rubin at MoMA,
New York (1968). In June the same year, he is selected to represent France at the Venice Biennale,
an event that does not escape the political turbulence associated with May 1968. On 11 March 1969, the
Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam presents thirty-three of the Renault Accumulations (the exhibition then
travelling to Paris, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Finland). Arman creates the Colline des pianos,
an installation of old pianos heaped up in his garden, which he regularly coats with the remains of his pots
of polyester resin. From 1970 onward, he generalizes the process of slicing to which he had subjected
a number of statues (sometimes sliced and reassembled). On 4 June 1970, Arman undertakes a slicing
action at the Reese Palley Gallery in New York: articles brought by visitors are sliced by Arman and sold
to raise money for the defence of the Black Panthers. On 27 November 1970, Guido Le Noci, Paolo Pilliteri
and Pierre Restany organise a major retrospective in Milan to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the
foundation of the New Realists. Arman produces “portraits” of his artist friends through their studio
waste, providing plastic boxes and asking them to fill these with their rubbish (Christo, Roy Lichtenstein,
Sol LeWitt, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol…).