Arman

ARMAN, Armand Pierre Fernandez (Nice, 1928-New York, 2005).
"Accumulation de véritables trompettes découpées".
Brass.
On a painted wooden base.
Provenance: private collection.
Prototype made by Arman with a view to the edition of the bronze sculpture, 8+4 copies edited by Foundhaus-Sit in 2005 and referenced in the Arman Archives in New York under no. APA#.8001.05.001 and in the Denyse Durand-Ruel Archives under no. 8832.
Measurements: 94.5 cm (sculpture); 118 cm (total height).

Arman was one of the leading artists who championed the New Realism, an avant-garde movement that in the 1960s promulgated a new perceptual approach to the real. His proposals were based on "accumulations", in which he gathered diverse objects, not at random (in the Dadaist sense) but seeking to reflect our consumerist society through the "objet trouvé". Accumulation and cutting were his main processes, which in the sculpture we show, "Accumulation de véritables trompettes découpées", made with the assembly of cut trumpets, reaches a paradigmatic expression.

The use of musical instruments is especially significant in his production. Arman felt a deep affinity with music: he was the son of an instrument collector and he himself studied violin in his youth. This personal background led to a symbolic and emotional relationship with instruments, which he saw not only as musical tools, but also as extensions of the human body and as containers of memory and expression.

Fragmenting instruments in his sculptures was not a destructive but a transformative act: by cutting, accumulating and fixing these objects, Arman stripped them of their functionality to give them new life as sculptural form. In this work, the trumpets cut and arranged in a dense and dynamic accumulation not only refer to the energy of sound, but also underscore the passage of time, obsolescence and the possibility of creating beauty from rupture.

But beyond the specificity of the subject matter (whether they were musical instruments or other recycled objects), the artist denounced the materialistic dimension of our lives by accumulating and destroying objects, but also reminded us that, after our death, they endure. In a way, we could say that Arman was creating contemporary "Vanitas". His unique works thus took on an archaeological dimension and a historical role from the material memory of debris.

Arman's father, Antonio Fernandez, was an antique dealer and amateur painter, as well as a cellist, based in Nice. In 1946 he began his artistic studies at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice. At the same time, he enrolled in judo classes where he met Yves Klein and Claude Pascal. In 1949 he moved to Paris to study Archaeology and Oriental Art at the École du Louvre. He was a member of the New Realism group, among whom were Yves Klein, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé and the critic and philosopher Pierre Restany; and who were later joined by César, Mimmo Rotella and Christo. In 1951 he was a judo instructor in Madrid, at the Bushido Kai gymnasium. Arman's great contribution was the so-called "Accumulations". These works consisted of grouping things of the same type, displaced from their natural place and presented as a whole. He held an exhibition at the Iris Clert Gallery (a gallery created by the new realists in order to exhibit their works without being rejected); Le Plein (The Full, 1960), in which he carried out the inverse process of Yves Klein's exhibition in his Le Vide (The Void, 1958), filling the entire room with objects, to the point that it was impossible to enter it. Other of his works are the "Encapsulations", in which he encloses accumulated objects in containers, always transparent, so that the contents can be seen: Jim Dine's Poubelle (1961). Another type of works are those aimed at the musical field, in which the author collects fragments of instruments and recomposes them into a composition. Chopin's Waterloo (1961), NBC Rage (1961). From 1961, Arman developed his career in New York, where he lived and worked alternating with his life in Nice until 1967, and then until his death in Vence. In New York, during the early years he stayed at the Chelsea Hotel until 1970, then in a loft in SoHo and in 1985 in an apartment building in TriBeCa, a neighborhood in southern Manhattan, where he died in 2005. Although he died in New York, part of his ashes were buried in 2008 in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.