Arman - Vicky David Gallery

COMMUNICATIONS
DEPARTMENT
PRESS PACK
ARMAN
22 SEPTEMBER 2010-10 JANUARY 2011
ARMAN

Direction de la communication
75191 Paris cedex 04
Director of communications
Françoise Pams
telephone
00 33 1 44 78 12 87
e-mail
françoise.pams@centrepompidou.fr
Press officer
Céline Janvier
telephone
00 33 )1 44 78 49 87
e-mail
celine.janvier@centrepompidou.fr
Direction des éditions
press officer
Evelyne Poret
telephone
00 33 (1 44 78 15 98
e-mail
evelyne.poret@centrepompidou.fr
www.centrepompidou.fr
PRESS PACK
ARMAN
22 SEPTEMBER 2010-10 JANUARY 2011
GALERIE 2, LEVEL 6
CONTENTS
1. PRESS RELEASE PAGE 3
2. PLAN & INTRODUCTION TO THE EXHIBITION PAGE 5
3. BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS PAGE 7
4. PUBLICATIONS & CATALOGUE EXTRACT PAGE 11
5. AROUND THE EXHIBITION PAGE 18
6. WORKS EXHIBITED PAGE 20
7. EXHIBITION PARTNER PAGE 27
8. VISUALS FOR THE PRESS PAGE 28
9. PRACTICALITIES PAGE 31

21 July 2010
Direction de la communication
75191 Paris cedex 04
Director of communications
Françoise Pams
telephone
00 33 1 44 78 12 87
e-mail
françoise.pams@centrepompidou.fr
Press officer
Céline Janvier
telephone
00 33 )1 44 78 49 87
e-mail
celine.janvier@centrepompidou.fr
Direction des éditions
press officer
Evelyne Poret
telephone
00 33 (1 44 78 15 98
e-mail
evelyne.poret@centrepompidou.fr
www.centrepompidou.fr
Arman : « Pompei’s Syndrome », 1984
© Photo : David Reynolds
© Adagp, Paris 2010
PRESS RELEASE
ARMAN
22 SEPTEMBER 2010-10 JANUARY 2011
GALERIE 2, LEVEL 6
The Centre Pompidou is to stage a retrospective devoted to Arman, one of the major
figures of post-War art. The exhibition will bring together almost 120 works from
leading museums and private collections to offer a new and distinctive take on
Arman’s work, from the second half of the 1950s to the last years of the 20 th century.
A founder member of the Nouveaux Réalistes, a group that championed “new perceptual
approaches to the real,” Arman developed a body of work intimately related to its own
age, taking as its artistic material the manufactured products of the consumer society.
In a presentation both lively and educational, the exhibition will highlight the two
fundamental features of Arman’s work: the gesture, inherited from the practice of
the martial arts, (through an exceptional selection of filmed records of the artist’s
actions), and the object as vector of new artistic forms. The presentation is organised
around seven themes that reflect Arman’s major artistic problematics, testifying
to the originality and the evident contemporary relevance of his work.

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“I started as a painter … I had a physical, practical need to physically touch the paint. I found this
system of capturing the paint as it comes from the tube, fixing it in Plexiglas or polyester resin –
it becomes an object. Paint becomes object. I had lots of fun with that. I made monochrome works,
and others very colourful: I remade the painter.”
Arman, “L’archéologie du futur” interview with Daniel Abadie, (Cat. Jeu de Paume, 1998)
The artist was indeed a painter by training, but by 1955 he had abandoned the brush for the
stamp, applying it to the surface of paper or canvas with “automatic” gesture. Influenced by great
figures of the earlier avant-gardes, among them Schwitters, Picasso and Nikolaas Werkman
(a typographer close to De Stijl), Arman would in 1958 also incorporate the large format
and all–over composition of American Abstract Expressionism into his own artistic language.
In 1957, while in close contact with the concrete music milieu, Arman began to use objects covered
in paint that left the trace of their passage across the canvas: these were the Allures d’objets,
the ‘Gait of Objects’ works. In the course of these researches the object gradually began to impose
itself within the pictorial frame, more particularly through the quantitative. From then on, the
artist made the object part of his process of creation, seeing it as a “plastic fact.” The notorious
Poubelles (Trashcans) thus present rubbish as an art material, locating Arman within a decisively
post-modern approach.
To accompany the Arman exhibition, the Centre’s Children’s Gallery will offer an interactive
workshop for children of three years and upwards, organised around aspects of the artist’s work.
Object and gesture will serve as key themes, bringing together Arman’s artistic innovation with
the sensuous experience of the child. Absorbed in this “poetical and contemporary factory”
conceived by artist-designer Adrien Rovero, children will be able to explore together, through
their own senses, the distinctive techniques that Arman uses (the stamp, the transsection of
objects, the photofit), bringing a fresh eye to bear on the world around them.
in partnership with
in media partnership with

�
5
2. PLAN & INTRODUCTION TO THE EXHIBITION
This retrospective of more than 120 works, some of them of monumental scale, has been organized around
seven themes. Arman’s work cannot in fact be understood in terms of successive periods. For he frequently
returned to and revised the “procedures” of earlier times – accumulations, garbage cans, slicings, rages
and combustions – creating a living language that developed with every discovery or invention.
Arman loved objects, of that there can be no doubt. Yet he did not proceed by random or unstructured
accumulation, but marshalled them in the mode of the drawer or pigeonhole, characteristic of the craftsman.
He collected and he classified. Arman was passionate too about chess, and later about the game of
Go. While the first involves the capture or neutralization of the opponent’s most important pieces, Go
�
requires the strategic mastery of a territory defined by a squared grid. This �
observation has led us to think
that the square or box (very evident in the Accumulations of collections for example) may be a key notion
for the understanding of “Armanian territory.”
�
ENTRANCE
� La Victoire de Salemotrice, Accumulation Renault n°101, 1967
ROOM 1: FROM THE INFORMAL TO THE OBJECT
The first Cachets (rubber-stamp works) and Allures d’objet (Gait of the Object works) introduce the principle
of accumulation into Arman’s work, gradually legitimizing the presence of the object in the painted surface.
� Allure d'objets II, 1959
ROOM 2: POUBELLES AND LE PLEIN
The first Poubelles (garbage cans), the Portraits-robots, the exhibition “Le Plein” (1960), the Organic
Garbage Cans, the Grand Plein newyorkais (1972).
ROOM 3: THE CRITICAL MASS OF THE OBJECT
“A thousand droppers are more dropper than a single dropper.” Arman
The object is grasped in its seriality: multiple, identical and always different. Compressed into a given
volume, bereft of any poetic or aesthetic context, the accumulation is conceived as a portion of the real.
� Home sweet home, 1960
ROOM 4: COLÈRES AND COUPES
In 1961, Arman made his first Colères (Rages) physical performances inspired by the spirit of the martial
arts in which the artist transformed a found object or readymade by breaking it apart. The Coupe [Slicing]
is a cooler and more reflective procedure whereby the object itself can be made to undergo anamorphosis.
Included here are Arman’s first “explosion,” Die Wise Orchid (1963) – what remains of an MG sports car
after a spectacular performance at Essen in Germany in 1963, never before shown in Paris; and also
Conscious Vandalism, an environment resulting from a performance at the John Gibson Gallery in New York
in 1975.
�
�

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ROOM 5: ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Not content with the transfiguration of the found object by massing or decomposition, Arman now embeds
it in polyester resin, concrete or paint, suggesting an archaeological find imprisoned in the lava of Pompeii.
This brings out explicitly the meditation on time that is a frequent feature of Arman’s work.
The section closes with The Day After (1985): an exceptional environment of pieces in cast bronze.
� Fauteuil d’Ulysse, 1966
ROOM 6: ARMAN AND RENAULT: ART AND INDUSTRY
Thanks to an understanding with Claude-Louis Renard, from 1967 to 1969, Arman would produce large
accumulations, some of them sculptures, some of them monochromatic panels, with parts directly from
the production line.
ROOM 7: I AM A BORN-AGAIN PAINTER
“I am a born again painter”: this was Arman’s declaration of a recovered or never-abandoned loyalty to
painting, as the painter’s materials –tubes, brushes, paint– became an integral part of the composition.
Paint is an object. This last section thus illustrates the permanent reinvention of painting in Arman’s work.
� La vie dans la ville pour l'œil, 1965

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3. BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS
Armand Pierre Fernandez is born in Nice on 17 November 1928. His father Antonio Francesco Fernandez,
Spanish by origin, is the owner of a furniture shop. The family lives in the Rue Maréchal Joffre in Nice,
and Armand spends his childhood in the composite universe of the second-hand shop, from whence would
come his taste for collecting. His father, an amateur painter, teaches him the techniques of oil painting
and takes him to the universal exhibitions of the day: the young boy is fascinated by the machines cut down
the middle to reveal their inner workings. He quickly reveals himself to be artistically gifted and persuades
his parents to allow him to study at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice. Although a brilliant
student, he leaves the school in 1949, exasperated by its conservatism.
1947-1950
Armand meets Yves Klein and Claude Pascal at the judo school run by the Nice police. Under Klein’s
influence, the three interest themselves in esoteric teachings and find themselves fascinated by the pure
colours and violent technique of Vincent Van Gogh. Out of admiration for the latter, Yves and Armand decide
to use only their first names in signing their work. In 1948, Armand discovers the leading figures in
Dada and Surrealism, who will influence his work as a painter. In 1949, he moves to Paris to enrol at the
École du Louvre. His friendship with Klein and Pascal does not suffer: together they form the Triangle
group.
1951-1959
Armand is given an entrée into Parisian artistic circles by Yves Klein and his mother Marie Raymond, who
introduces him to Anna Staritsky, who points him towards non-figurative painting. He discovers the work
of Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, a Dutch typographer (d. 1945) who had used mechanical repetition in
word-based typographical compositions. In Paris he is impressed by the paintings of Jackson Pollock’s that
he sees at Studio Facchetti, which will influence both the spirit and the composition of his own work.
On 17 February 1953, he marries Éliane Radigue; he works as a salesman in his father’s shop. His painting
becomes abstract, showing the influence of Poliakoff and Nicolas de Staël. In Paris in spring 1954 he
discovers Kurt Schwitters, being strongly influenced by his rubbish and fragments of paper, whose abstract
play of forms and colours breaks with the post-Cubist order. Back in Nice, he takes the rubber stamps
routinely used in his father’s business and uses them in his own work as an artist, more interested in the
formal properties of the stamp than its content. Arman shows his Cachets in Paris in 1956 and the press
speaks of Neo-Dada influence, highlighting their formal character. On the occasion of the artist’s first
one-person show (Galerie La Roue, Paris, June 1957), Pierre Restany, whom Arman is beginning to
associate with on a regular basis, hails the development of this “viscerally painterly” young man. In 1957
a printer’s error sees his name on a poster curtailed to “Arman,” and he decides to exploit this accident and
abandon the final “d” in his forename – and his artistic signature. Yves Klein’s exhibition “Le Vide” opens
at Iris Clert’s on 28 April1958. In May, the same gallery shows recent painting by Arman under the title
“Les Olympiens.” Through his wife, Arman meets those involved in Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM)
run by musician and electrical engineer Pierre Schaeffer, who has just invented ways of slowing down or
stretching out sound, calling the result “Allures d’objets en musique” (the gait of objects in music). Arman
borrows the name from him, and embarks on his Allures d’objets (Gait of Objects works), which will lead
on to the first Colères (Rages) and Accumulations. In 1959, hen makes his first Poubelles (Garbage Cans)
and meets Martial Raysse.
1960-1962
On 16 April 1959, the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan opens an exhibition of work by Yves Klein, Jacques
Villeglé, Jean Tinguely, Raymond Hains and François Dufrêne, together with Allures-Colères by Arman.
In his introduction to the catalogue, Restany makes use of the phrase “New Realists” for the first time.
This essay represents the first manifesto of the future movement, declaring the emergence of a new way
of looking at urban, industrial society, its products and its refuse. In June 1959, Alfred Schmela in
Dusseldorf presents Arman’s “Poubelles et Accumulations” which gains a Europe-wide response. For
the occasion, Arman writes for the Zero group the text “Réalisme des accumulations,” in which he explains
that the object has a value in itself, and that accumulation allows it to be recontextualised with itself. In
October 1960, Iris Clert presents “Le Plein,” or “Full Up,” Arman’s response to Klein’s “Vide.” The invitation
to the opening takes the form of a sardine tin filled with rubbish, containing a short text by Pierre Restany,
who claims that this event brings to New Realism “its properly architectonic dimension.” Arman begins
the series of Portraits-robots with portraits of Yves Klein and Iris Clert, gathering some of their personal

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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…).

9
1971-1978
On 25 January 1971 Arman is divorced from Éliane Radigue, and on 13 July he marries Corice Canton
in Nice. Arman returns to the Poubelles (Garbage Can) series, embedding the trash in a single block
of transparent resin: he makes the series of Organic Garbage Cans, in this way avoiding the sorting that
had been necessary for reasons of conservation. These works testify to the explosive growth and
Americanisation of modern consumption. On 31 January 1972, Arman becomes an American citizen,
taking the name of Armand Pierre Arman. He begins to practice kung-fu with his wife Corice. Impressed
by its power and overconsumption, Arman decides to make a portrait of New York and invites his friend
the director Jean-Pierre Mirouze to come and make a film (Sanitation) on the city and its garbage. In 1974,
Arman works on several monumental schemes of architectural decoration and the Daniel Templon gallery
in Paris shows the Organic Garbage Cans. Lined up and standing on plinths, these exercise a cunningly
calculated attraction-repulsion on the viewer. In September-October 1974, a major touring retrospective
opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla (California) covering all Arman’s activity between
1958 and 1974. In January 1975, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris exhibits Coupes and Colères
embedded in concrete under the title “Objets armés.” The concrete introduces constraints that require
a more carefully considered composition, while the work acquires a monumental, surreal character.
At 7 pm on 5 April 1975 Arman carries out the Conscious Vandalism action at the John Gibson Gallery,
New York, destroying the apartment contents carefully installed there. In 1977, the Centre Pompidou pays
tribute to the École de Nice at its opening and Arman has a crucial place in this exhibition.
1979-1988
Arman produces his first work directly related to architecture, Accumulation fallopienne. He decides
to give up the game of Go despite having attained the rank of 1st dan amateur, as the time and effort
required is too great. For the same reason, he sells his collection of African art, keeping only the more
important pieces. In 1982, Jean Hamon buys the Château du Montcel at Jouy-en-Josas; there Arman
creates Long Term Parking, a large volume of concrete, 2,000 tons in weight and 18 metres in height,
embedded in which are 64 cars. Arman, who has had more than 160 one-person shows across the world
in less than thirty years, sees his first French retrospective open at the Musée Picasso in Antibes in July
1983. The high point of the show is an accumulation of thirty guitars in bronze called À ma jolie,
a reworking of Picasso’s Cubist paintings of 1912. On 14 July 1984, À la République, a monumental piece
more than 3 metres high and 5 tons in weight, representing an accumulation of 200 flags, is inaugurated
in the hall of honour of the Élysée Palace, official residence of the French president. The Marisa del Re
Gallery shows The Day After, a combustion of a whole room of furniture in the Louis XV style, cast in bronze:
by the destruction of these domestic furnishings Arman, always fascinated by catastrophe, alluded to the
possible annihilation of our way of life. In 1985, he embarks on his first series of paint tubes on canvas,
and creates a gigantic accumulation of 2,300 washing-machine drums in his house at Vence. In June 1988,
Arman organises a happening on the stage of the People’s Palace on Tien An Men Square, in Beijing:
the Paris Opera Orchestra plays Beethoven’s String Quartet N° 16 as he smashes up musical instruments
to produce a rage piece, Beijing Quartet #1, the work being performed in tempo and in time. Organised for
the benefit of the “Save the Great Wall of China” campaign, this event was for Arman the most memorable
of his whole career.
1989-1997
In New York in 1989, Arman embarks on the series of Shooting Paintings and Dirty Paintings. The new
techniques respond to a desire to work again with paint, evident as early as 1987 (Brushing Paintings):
“I am a born-again painter,” he says. He works simultaneously on three series the Dirty Paintings, the
Color Scales and Under the Skin: these last are paintings that combine objects (squeezed paint tubes in
monochromatic compositions over other objects) and stratified layers of paint. He also begins the Atlantis
series, casting a variety of objects in bronze and including sand and other substances in the mould to give
the impression of a long immersion under the sea. Introduces the bicycle theme into the Shooting Paintings.
Especially prolific, he returns in New York to the theme of accumulations, developed as accumulations of
collections. Mémoires accumulés, a book of interviews with Arman by Otto Hahn, is published by Éditions
Belfond in October 1992. Alongside his sculptures he makes several variations on Van Gogh’s Starry Night
(1889), shown in 1994. The following year, the Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois gallery shows
a selection of the Renault Accumulations. On 2 August, Hope for Peace, a monumental 32-metre high
accumulation that has 83 tanks embedded in 6,000 tons of concrete, is inaugurated in Beirut. Restany
remarks that the monument could not better express the spirit of this city battered by civil war.

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1998-2005
On 26 January 1998 a major Arman retrospective opens at the Jeu de Paume (travelling afterwards to
Germany, Portugal, Israel, Brazil, Spain and China). Curator Daniel Abadie has selected some hundred
works from 1959 to 1997: Accumulations, Rages, Combustions and Garbage Cans. This is accompanied
by an extensive catalogue than includes an interview with the artist by Daniel Abadie. Arman starts on
new series: Nec Mergitur is a series of objects immersed in an apocalyptic brew of mud and spilt oil.
These sliced objects in suspension achieve the artist’s goal in making the viewer aware of what is beyond
the painting. In 2000, the Fondation Émile-Hugues in Vence stages the retrospective “Arman, la traversée
des objets,” curated by Tita Reut. The artist returns to easel painting with a series of works, the Serious
Paintings, which combine the recomposition of musical instruments with their “staging” in painting.
Suffering from cancer, Arman dies in New York on 22 October 2005.

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4. PUBLICATIONS
EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
published by Éditions du Centre Pompidou
Editor: Jean-Michel Bouhours
Graphic design: Philippe Millot
Format: 22.5 x 34, relié cousu
368 pages, 300 col. ills
Price: ¤44.90
ALBUM
Format 27 x 27
60 pages, 50 col. ills
Price: ¤8.50
All products can be found at the on-line shop: http//boutique.centrepompidou.fr
To accompany the exhibition, Éditions du Centre Pompidou are also bringing out a CD and a DVD.
The CD Arman et la musique, edited by Frank Renevier - Éditions Ensemble, offers a selection of musicians
who were important to Arman. From Bartok to Beethoven, taking in Billie Holiday, Satie and
Brassens on the way, this selection illustrates Arman’s curiosity and eclectic approach.
Price: ¤22
The DVD Portrait d’un sculpteur is a film by Dominik Rimbault together with 20 minutes of additional,
unpublished material. The film looks at Arman’s many-sided and complex personality and his relationships
with his friends Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp and Pierre Restany.
Trilingual DVD.
Price: ¤29
Available exclusively at the Centre Pompidou bookshop.
Arman
L’exposition
The exhibition

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EXTRACT FROM THE CATALOGUE
ARMAN BEFORE THE NEW REALISM
Jean-Michel Bouhours
Having studied at both the École des Arts Décoratifs in Nice and the École du Louvre in Paris, Arman
never tired of praising maieutic - the Socratic elicitation of the truth. In 1947 he met Claude Pascal and
Yves Klein at the judo school in Nice; he was at the time the only one of the three to have in mind a career
as a painter. A few years later came two major discoveries: the work of Jackson Pollock, at the only
exhibition to be held in Paris during Pollock’s lifetime, at Studio Paul Facchetti in 1952; and the rubberstamp
work of Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, a Dutch artist close to the De Stijl group, through an article
by Willem Sandberg published in the journal Art d’aujourd’hui. At the time, doing his military service at
Antibes, Arman had let things slide; he was indeed planning a career as an artist, but his progress was
erratic, if he had made any at all. He had been married for two years to Éliane Radigue, who herself had
vague inclinations towards a career in music, and the couple were having difficulty in making ends meet.
The year 1954 would prove a turning point. While holidaying with friends in Nice after returning from
Japan, Yves Klein talked with Arman about his abstract painting and advised him to look for a more personal
path. Arman grasped straight away the importance of finding an original language. And his visit to the
Kurt Schwitters show at the Berggruen gallery in 1954 freed him from his attachment to oil painting. 1
These key moments, as identified by Arman himself, set him on the road from an abstraction influenced
by Serge Poliakov and Nicolas de Stael and on the way to the New Realism. 2
This essay adopts a heuristic approach that will better enable us to understand how Arman’s most radical
languages – those of the Accumulations and of the Poubelles or Garbage Cans – came to emerge. For this,
we have to return to the period immediately preceding the inaugural declaration of New Realism.
At the La Roue gallery in 1957, Arman showed his early abstracts and a few, small Cachets (rubber-stamp
works). These new pieces marked the personal turn he had been advised to take by Klein, expressed in a
gestural abstraction that took acting rather than making as its principle, privileging the act over the made.
Pierre Restany saw in this a cathartic settling of accounts with the boring work that Arman had had to
do in his father’s shop in Nice in order to survive. For Arman, the artistic gesture, if it were to be cathartic,
had to be vigorous and repetitive; it derived from a repertoire that borrowed its rapidity of execution from
the machine. In this, the artist affirmed the primacy of accident, disorder and subjectivity. The gesture is
of the order of the spontaneous and obsessive action that for Harold Rosenberg defined action painting.
When Arman writes to Eliane that he has a desire to rubber stamp every one of the many freckles she has
on her body, he makes clear the sexual element in the gesture. There can be no doubt that Werkman’s
work gave him ideas for his first Cachets: one again finds the same material, of course, the semantic/
plastic construction, the repetition of an identical motif, the refusal of the decorative.
There is one point, though, that needs to be made. Arman’s very first Cachets, dated in late 1954, which he
showed at the La Roue gallery, were done not on paper like those that followed, but directly onto printed
fabric. These first works, made entirely from waste materials – in terms of support as well as technique –
declare, like Rauschenberg’s Combine Paintings, that all materials are pictorial. One might obviously
argue that in Arman’s case economic necessity was the mother of artistic invention. His approach might
also be seen as answering to the injunctions of Kurt Schwitters’ 1928 manifesto-essay, to make use of
everything to be found in lumber rooms, on rubbish tips; the essay was reprinted in the catalogue of the
exhibition at the Berggruen gallery that Arman had in his possession. 3 The artist brings into a situation
of coexistence and tension two very different visual realities, a decorative floral motif printed by machine
on a perfectly regular grid, very present in the composition in terms of colour and connotation, and the
“overprinting” of a rubber stamp characterised by finesse of line, applied repeatedly, erratically and
irregularly through human gesture. With the Cachets, the artist introduces a semiotic “overprinting” but
also variation in repetition, accident and chance. In his 1948 essay on the new American painting, Clement
Greenberg defined the new pictorial space at issue, highlighting the internal economy of all-over painting
and the absence of variation in the repetition, by comparing Abstract Expressionist painting with wallpaper. 4
It needed the critic Pierre Restany, writing in the journal Cimaise, to tell Arman to abandon the “limited
format of boudoir frescoes” 5 for this “viscerally painterly Niçois” to make his own Cachets in much larger
formats, filling the surface delimited by the frame. His first Cachets were done on samples of what
Greenberg identified as the paradigm of the Abstract Expressionism that was in the process of dethroning
easel painting. Arman in addition introduced a strong element of kitsch, distinguishing himself from
the Modernism of Werkman or Schwitters by his refusal of the aesthetic. Arman repeats an identical
administrative message, devoid of any typographic quality or second-order literary content. An astonishing

13
cocktail of materials and kitsch motifs associated with an intervention intended as non-art, these first
Cachets of 1954 testify to an absolutely fundamental advance, anticipating the debate that some years
later would see Clement Greenberg – with his theory of high culture and low culture, conceiving kitsch
as a degraded form of expression, expelled to the margins of culture – opposed by younger critics such
as Lawrence Alloway or Barbara Rose, who defended the rising generation of Neo-Dada and Pop artists.
For Arman, these first Cachets served as the first foundations of an approach that, in the late 1950s, after
the Gait of Objects phase, would define itself as resolutely postmodern. 6
Between 1955 and 1960, Arman was simultaneously seeking his own personal artistic path and a strategy
that would win him a name and respite from financial difficulties. Should he settle in Nice or in Paris?
Before New York proved to be the answer, which would be the better gallerist: Iris Clert, Jean Fournier,
D’Arquian or Jean Larcade? Before George Marci and Sidney Janis turned up, before Larry Rubin opened
up the American market to Arman, what networks, what schools of thought should he attach himself to?
Art critic Pierre Restany, or Pierre Schaeffer, inventor of concrete music? And if the picture is to be
complete, one shouldn’t leave out Claude Rivière, a journalist with Combat who would support Arman in
his endeavours, or Yves Klein, to whom Arman was so close that their artistic procedures can sometimes
seem to have emerged from the same conceptual mould. For tactical reasons, Pierre Restany would
always tend to analytically disentangle – and so in my opinion over-clarify – these two inextricably entangled
approaches.
Pierre Restany came to art criticism through the “informal” abstraction that emerged in 1947 with Dubuffet
and Fautrier, challenging the geometric abstraction of the post-war period, held to be cold and analytical,
and championing in its stead an art based on pure spontaneity. The almost undisputed intellectual leaders
in the field were Michel Tapié, famous for having introduced the American abstract expressionists to
France, who would end up working with the René Drouin gallery, and Charles Estienne, who would convince
André Breton of the existence of an abstract surrealism, thus prompting the opening of the gallery
À l’Étoile scellée. In the narrow world of the informal, it wasn’t easy for Restany to find a place of his own,
but he quickly developed a powerful, international network of connections, among them Jean-Pierre
Wilhem in Dusseldorf and Guido Le Noci in Milan. In 1956, Restany joined the editorial committee of the
journal Cimaise, alongside Michel Ragon. Restany never sought to deny the fascination that Yves Klein
exerted over him from their very first meeting. From then on, he invested all his energy into promoting
the latter’s work, and through his friendship with Klein, Arman too benefited by association, exhibiting
in most of the galleries that showed his friend. Restany at first classified Hains, Tinguely and even Villeglé
under the label of the Informal, notably on the occasion of the first Paris Biennale in 1959. 7 In his Lyrisme
et abstraction (1958), an argument for what he himself had baptized lyrical abstraction, 8 he evoked
in connection with the pictorial spatiality created by gesture a new and different spatiality generated
by the deployment of new materials by those whom two years later he would marshal under the banner
of the New Realism, one of whom was Arman. Among the reasons for his own shift of interest from the
Informal to the New Realism, Restany would identify his disillusion in the face of lyrical abstraction’s
inadequacy to a new social context, when after the post-War reconstruction French society was hurtling
into the three-decade long industrial expansion that would be known as the Trente glorieuses. Lyrical
abstraction had been an art of escape: the New Realism – the phrase itself a verbal riposte to Socialist
Realism – would metaphorically reflect the power of consumer society. A signatory to the October 1960
manifesto, Arman would take Restany’s side against Yves Klein’s challenge to his authority at the time
of the exhibition “À 40° au-dessus de dada” in 1961. By the autumn of 1963, however, he had passed over
to the critics, seeking “de-restanyfication,” admitting as if to an adultery his invitation to the critic Alain
Jouffroy to write the catalogue essay for his exhibition at the Schwarz gallery. “The experience has been
positive on the whole,” he wrote to Restany, “the New Realism is no longer discussed or disputed, it is and
will continue to be an influence. There’s only one thing I still hanker for: to see what is next and if possible
to play a part in it. In the classification of painterly tribes, I believe I belong more among the nomadic
than the sedentary”. 9 Arman clearly felt that he had his own, personal future before him. New Realism
may indeed have been an integral element of his strategy at the beginning of the decade, but the artist
now settled in the United States had a more expansive vision of territorial conquest under his own steam.
In one of his letters to Eliane, written in 1959, Arman comments as follows on a large Cachet: “it is a bit
less rubber-stamp than the others and a bit more […] concrete pictorial proposition”. 10 Around now,
following from his commitment to the Socratic maieutic, Arman produced very large format compositions
that began to gain a favourable critical reception and also his very first artistic earnings. The terminology
of “concrete pictorial propositions” that Arman employs is directly borrowed from the discussion of
concrete music around Pierre Schaeffer, founder of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM). Arman
and Éliane Radigue had been in contact with Schaeffer since 1957. If Arman was already referring to this

14
precise context in connection with the Cachets, the encounter with this milieu and the exchanges that
followed with reference to the sonorous object would lead to a new type of work and a new practice in the
Allures d’objets of 1958, and a personal advance for Arman into the world of the object. The Allures are
based on the calligraphic trace of the object under the constraint of the artist. The object rolls, skims,
scrapes, rubs, swivels or spins on the surface of the paper or canvas. The Allure d’objet is not an impression
properly speaking, the result of an imprinting, like the Cachets or the Lyrical Surfaces that would be
produced in 1974 through the repeated contact of an object with the paper, but rather the organisation of
the spatio-temporal displacement of the object across a surface – Arman would use the word “catalysis” –
whose graphical trace the artist “captures” on the inscriptible surface. Arman had very great hopes
of these researches, writing to Éliane: “I really have an immense territory here. Christopher Columbus
discovering America is small beer”. 11 In an unpublished text of 1960 he explains his approach in the
Cachets and the Allures, considering it under its anthropological aspect: “Man has carved the spear-thrower
from bone and now at each throw the image of élan will have to rejoin its vital embodiment to provide
nourishment. In the caves, hands are magic stencils. Possession and exorcism are the goals of art whose
weapons and hunting grounds change with the ages; whether it is a ponderous still life or a portrait of
the Infanta the path is the same, and now in Age Zero the scouts, all eyes, flush out the materials on
which we nourish ourselves, the battle is situated in the unconscious, in objects, in inanimate, mechanical,
worlds, and in those that we animate with a precisely calculated and splendid gesture”. 12 This language of
the spear-thrower and the gesture makes reference to Man the hunter, whose contemporary avatars are
found in certain sports whose practice is based on the trajectory; they require disciplines of bodily control
in which every muscle of the body has as its object the achievement of an ideal trajectory by the object
to be despatched through space. “The fate of the object is decided between two series of very conscious
factors, from the moment of selection to the moment of projection”, 13 Restany would write for an exhibition
of Arman’s Allures at the Galerie Saint-Germain in 1960. Discussing the Allures, Sacha Sosnowsky (called
Sosno) and Pierre Restany will repeatedly speak of the “projection” of objects: “Arman, a projection,
because both projected and projected”, 14 writes Sosno, iteratively and even accumulatively, very likely
alluding to the throwing techniques employed in the martial arts, reliant on balance and the deflection
of the opponent’s momentum to one own advantage. The term is characteristic of the age, being used also
of Georges Mathieu’s Tachism, 15 to music – “Every object has a potential consciousness whose intent
is the projection of its image,” Luc Ferrari writes 16 – and also to cinema, obviously. Restany speaks of the
artist’s intention but also of the autonomy of the object in the making of the Allures. 17 Arman takes his
place in the great Duchampian problematic of the deliberate use of chance, but – to paraphrase Pontus
Hulten on Tinguely – it isn’t a matter of chance preserved but of chance in action. 18
The Allures share with Pollock’s drip-painting the nature of “pulses of…disembodied energy”, 19 as Michael
Fried described the American painter’s work. In fact, Arman lets go of the object, granting it its autonomy
at the very start of its trajectory and during the whole period of its contact with paper or canvas.
The artist’s bodily engagement goes no further than the preparation for the Allure. What contribution did
Schaeffer’s researches make to Arman’s slow, indirect advance toward the object? Schaeffer’s theory
argues for the autonomy of the object: “it is the object … that has something to say to us if we know how
to get it to speak”. 20 We have just seen what the principle of autonomy means in terms of the artist’s
involvement in the Allure. Given varying perceptions of its structures over time (Schaeffer and Arman
would speak of anamorphoses), the sonorous object – whose cinematic equivalent would be the principle
of the animated object – could be quickly summarized in terms of its inscape, its intrinsic rhythm, its
“gait.” This consideration of the different states of the object led Schaeffer to the phenomenological
thinking of Husserl, for whom the reality of the object derives not from its being perceived as an immediate
unity but from a series of different approaches: “We tend towards a pole of identity immanent to particular
lived experiences (Husserl). These lived experiences are the multiple visual, auditory and tactile
impressions that succeed each other in an endless flux, through which I tend towards a certain object,
I ‘intend’ it”. 21 This immanent pole of identity defines, in other words, an average value of the object.
If Arman had abandoned the paintbrush since the Cachets – though he would return to it later by using
it as a pictorial material, in accumulations of paintbrushes, embedded paintbrushes etc. – in the Allures
he effects a delegation of gesture to the object that in some ways recalls not only Tinguely’s painting
machines but also Klein’s use of living brushes from 1958 on. We may note that there are here three
modes of delegation that underlie the characteristic procedure of each artist: to the machine, for Tinguely;
to the body of the human model, for Klein; and to the object, for Arman.
Among the friends from Nice – Arman, Éliane Radigue, Yves Klein and Rotraut Uecker – the Allures
represented a common practice; each would make them, and Arman even appropriated some of
his friends’ when he found them to his taste. 22 Arman very soon sought to extrapolate the principle of the

15
Allure, to go beyond the simple arrangement of the ink-coated object rolling or sliding across a sheet
of paper. The Allure was something that could be sampled: at a rubbish tip, on a beach, in a field of corn,
in the air… It became the artistic transcription of fields of force, of currents, of intrinsically ephemeral
phenomena. The procedure opened up perspectives beyond the pictorial domain; the extrapolation of
the modus operandi led Arman to conceive of real and spectacular performances: “I dream now only of
covering a lorry with Indian ink and crashing into a sheet of paper. Salvador Dalí with his snails and
sea-urchins had touched on the truth but his approach is vitiated because he privileged the literary idea
above the concrete pictorial result”. 23 The scale of the action envisaged and the force of the verbal
description indicate the violence that Arman hoped to confer on his gesture, which has to be reconsidered
in relation to the “informal vehemence” of Mathieu, Murakami and Shiraga. 24
Relations between Pierre Restany and Arman were extremely close as the artist’s career began to take
off: it was Restany who wrote the catalogue essay for the show at the Galerie Saint-Germain in 1960, and
then for the show at the Galerie Schmela. He acted as a coach: “He’s got a whole plan for me, and I am
officially on his team, along with Hundertwasser, Bellegarde and two or three others”, wrote Arman. 25
On the other hand, relations between Arman and Schaeffer remained distant and complicated. Arman got
nothing in return for his intellectual commitment to concrete music; although Schaeffer was interested in
cinema and television, he didn’t have much time for painting. Arman never felt as if he had been entirely
accepted by the Schaeffer circle, and felt condescended to by the composer. Given Schaeffer’s refusal
to have Éliane Radigue at the GRM, she chose to go and work with Pierre Henry, also not welcome there.
In October 1959, Arman noted that they could not “travel their roads together” for many complex reasons. 26
Arman was involved with GRM activities in so far as he was making a film with Jacques Brissot, based
on his Allures d’objets, to be filmed and edited by Brissot. Arman and Brissot would have great difficulty
in convincing Schaeffer to allow them to use his composition Étude aux sons animés to accompany their
film, Objets animés. Even though the project was entirely orthodox in concrete music terms, it was treated
as suspect, and it was only through Restany’s intervention that Schaeffer was persuaded to allow his
music to be used. A few months later, the founder of the GRM changed his opinion of the film, boasting
of its success in Les Cahiers du cinéma (see this cat. p. XXX). The film had joined the GRM’s pantheon of
contemporary artistic achievements, yet relations between Schaeffer and Arman had more or less broken
down.
Arman himself offered an explanation for the sudden take-off on his career: “In 1959 everything happened
at the same time. I was like a cannon packed with gunpowder and just waiting to go off. My language
came together, different aspects came together”. 27 He experimented with the Allures by introducing
“accidents” in which objects got broken. He imploded electric bulbs plunged in Indian ink; this produced
a centripetal Allure of a new kind. From now on, Arman would take his distance from the methodology of
the concrete, which privileged structure and with it an object that had no artistic value in itself. Yet in an
Allure-Colère and a fortiori in the later Colères, if the object is now present it is at the conclusion of a
process of disintegration resulting from the deliberate and organised activity of the artist. The Cachets had
marked a first break with abstraction and with painting. The principle of accumulation effects a second
break, with informal painting and with the methodology of concrete music as a way of articulating the
internal language of the object, affirming the object in its integrality but under conditions of multiplication
and of confinement within a given volume. 28 This is the inverse of the principle of the Allure, in which the
object found itself in a situation of spatial expansion, and a return to the all-over composition introduced
with the large Cachets.
When Otto Hahn compared the violence of Gutai to his, Arman responded: “In my case gesture led me to
the object; having broken a saucer on the canvas, I kept the pieces and glued them into the work. I entered
into the logic of the object. I used all kinds, and I had drawers full of cogwheels and radio valves. One day
in 1959, I felt that a drawer full of lamps made a complete work. I fixed a sheet of cellulose acetate on top,
painted the sides black and showed it like that. It was my first Accumulation”. 29
Yet to present the Accumulation and the Poubelle as sudden discoveries is to forget the importance of the
superimposition of different procedures in Arman and the deeper-lying sources that were in fact involved.
The large Cachets were already graphic accumulations. What is more, the artist himself correctly explained
that the world of the Accumulation had been latent in him since childhood, its origin being the principle
of collection, an ancestral family trait, with a grandmother who saved corks and a father who had antique
furniture shops in Nice, where Arman himself worked for eight years of his life. Like some psychic state,
the Accumulation passed from latency to activity in 1959, to become an artistic language.
Indeed, the Accumulation had been patent as early as 1957, in the form of a poetic creation, when Arman
wrote: “Croisons les fers à souder de nos yeux et du chaud métal affectif, coulons l’enclume de nos
passions et de notre rage martelante de ne pas donner plus en notre humain amour” (Let us bring together
the soldering irons of our eyes and of hot metal emotion, let us cast the anvil of our passions, of our

16
hammering rage to give no more in our human love). 30 In fact, as he created the first of his accumulations,
Arman claimed filiation with the monochrome, locating his work in the conceptual overlap between Klein
and himself: “I want to see my propositions captured in the optics of a surface… . In surfaces whose single
element of choice proves to be a proclamation monotypical despite its plurality, and so very close to
the monochromaticism of Yves Klein”. 31 The artist recalled the fact that Iris Clert had rejected his plans
for the “Plein” when he put them to her in the aftermath of Klein’s “Vide,” and that she had come round
to the idea only two years later after the success of his exhibition at Alfred Schmela’s gallery in Germany.
One might well wonder what that exhibition would have been in 1958, when neither the concept of the
Accumulation not that of the Poubelle had yet been formulated. In 1960, Arman would present “Le Plein”
as the acme of his quantitative approach, adopted the previous year: “Iris Clert invites you to come and
contemplate in “Le Plein” the whole force of the real condensed into a critical mass”. 32 This last notion,
borrowed from physics, casts light on the status of the object within the Accumulations: loss of identity
and of its functional and semiological aspects, the reduction of characteristic form to an effect of
granularity, to a reduplicated presence that “sensitizes” the surface as many times as the object is repeated
in it. 33 To legitimate what might be considered a fourth dimension of the object, in which it disappears
as a unit in itself to become no more than the elementary particle of a plural representation, Arman
speaks of the “expression of the collective consciousness of that same object”. 34 While in Schaeffer’s
phenomenological approach the object had been individually perceived in terms of an average of
impressions, the Accumulation shifts from the convergent inner experience of the subject to a collective
tropism on the side of the object. That Arman should have used the notion of critical mass in connection
with the exhibition “Le Plein” is most likely connected to his personal strategy. Conceived in 1958 as the
antithesis of “Le Vide”, “Le Plein” was first imagined in terms of an “architectonic” principle analogous
to that of “Le Vide”, 35 involving the “affective conquest” of a space; such an approach was by nature
conceptual, sur-real, as it proposed to radically transform the viewer’s phenomenological and behavioural
relation to a place by saturating it with material presence, answering to his friend’s immaterial void.
In such a project, the objects are not the constitutive elements of a work of art but only the cause of –
the means by which he will provide – the conditions for an entirely novel experience of space. In this respect,
“Le Plein” may be referred to the famous agreement to divide the world among themselves made by
Klein, Claude Pascal and Arman in 1947, an agreement that Arman would recall a few months before the
exhibition, as a sort of permanent blessing on his enterprise.36
Arman’s retrospective judgment on “Le Plein” indicates the whole scope of his project: “And now, even,
the Poubelles, the Allures, the Colères seem to me a little skimpy. That was a wild animal with an age-old
wisdom and knowledge. I would like to do some more Pleins in the world and in what is for me the supreme
maieusis to bring to birth these gentle, extraordinary animals huddled into a confined space and ready
to devour barley-sugar. Hands stretch out everyone takes away what they like and despite these little
amputations it is always very full and beautiful”. 37 “Le Plein” marks a radical development in the readymade
or the Surrealist paradigm of the found object, on the one hand on account of its architectural scale,
and on the other because it contains within itself, as an intrinsic feature, the entropic principle of its selfdestruction.
38
Leo Steinberg talked about the strangeneness of the objects painted by Jasper Johns, paradoxical objects
without any shadow of human presence. 39 After the letting loose of the object in the Allures, in which the
presence of the artist’s hand is still detectable, Arman advances, in the Accumulations and afterwards,
to a double abandonment. The abandonment of the principle of aesthetic making in favour of appropriation
of the real through an object that will have the function of an icon; and the abandonment that is the condition
of the object, a condition significant for us, and terrifying. A New Realist? Arman has in fact entered into
the contingency of the real, but by way of the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. Arman offers a cold
reading of his age, making metaphors of its industrial modes of production, consumption and waste. In
declaring to Daniel Abadie, “In reality, I am always performing the same act of conservation, showing
catastrophe”, 40 he has only confirmed this.

17
NOTES
1 Arman, Mémoires accumulés. Entretiens avec Otto Hahn, Paris, Belfond, 1992, p. 24.
2 For the retrospective at the Jeu de Paume in 1998, Daniel Abadie deliberately ignored the so-called “informal” period during which
Arman created the Cachets and the Allures, which in fact represents a transition from the sphere of the Informal to contingent reality.
3 Kurt Schwitters, Merz 20, catalogue, Hannover, Sprengel Museum, 1928, reprinted in Kurt Schwitters Collages, catalogue, Paris,
Galerie Berggruen, 1954.
4 Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1988.
5 Pierre Restany, “Armand,” Cimaise n° 6, July-September 1958, p. 43.
6 See the criteria given by Ihab Hassan in The Post-Modern Turn: Essays in Post-Modern Theory and Culture, Columbus,
Ohio State University Press, 1987, p. 90.
7 “La prise en compte réaliste d’une situation nouvelle: un entretien avec Pierre Restany,” interview with Pierre Restany
by Bernadette Contensou and Sylvain Lecombre in 1960: Les Nouveaux Réalistes, 1986, Paris, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris.
8 P. Restany, Lyrisme et abstraction, Milan, Edizioni Apollinaire, 1960.
9 Letter from Arman to Pierre Restany,14 October 1963, Archive de la Critique d’Art, Châteaugiron.
10 Letter from Arman to Eliane Radigue, around June 1959, Fondation A.R.M.A.N.
11 Ibid.
12 Arman, unpublished typescript, January 1960, collection Alain Paviot, see cat. p. XXX.
13 P. Restany, invitation to the Galerie Saint-Germain, Paris, 1960.
14 Arman, unpublished typescript, 1960, collection Alain Paviot.
15 Georges Mathieu, Au-delà du tachisme, Paris, Juilliard, 1963.
16 Arman, text written for the film Objets animés, made in collaboration with Jacques Brissot, typescript, around 1959-1960,
Fondation A.R.M.A.N., see cat. p. XXX.
17 P. Restany, preface to the Galerie Saint-Germain catalogue, March 1960.
18 Jean Tinguely had shown his Metamatic Reliefs: Machine à dessiner 1 et 2 at the exhibition “Le Mouvement”
at the Denise René gallery in 1955.
19 Michael Fried, “Three American Painters”, 1965, cited by Louis Marin in “L’espace Pollock ,” Les Cahiers du Musée national
d’art moderne, n° 10, 1982, p. 322.
20 Pierre Schaeffer, ”Expériences musicales ,” La Revue musicale, n° 244, 1959.
21 Pierre Schaeffer, Traité des objets musicaux, 1966, Paris, Le Seuil, p. 263.
22 Eliane Radigue, in conversation with the author, February 2010.
23 Letter from Arman to Eliane Radigue, n.d., around 1959, Fondation A.R.M.A.N.
24 The term was used for the first time by André Malraux, in connection with the Georges Mathieu exhibition at the René Drouin gallery,
inspiring the title “Véhémences confrontées” for the show at Nina Dausset’s in 1951.
25 Letter from Arman to Eliane Radigue, 1960, Fondation A.R.M.A.N.
26 Letter from Arman to Eliane Radigue, n.d. [2 October 1959], Fondation A.R.M.A.N.
27 Arman, Mémoires accumulés, op. cit., p. 31, note 1.
28 Arman, “Réalisme des accumulations ,” typescript, July 1960, Archives Yves Klein, Paris, see cat. p. XXX.
29 Ibid.
30 Letter from Arman to Eliane Radigue, n.d. [16 October 1957], Fondation A.R.M.A.N.
31 Ibid.
32 Hand-written note accompanying the invitation to the exhibition “Full Up” [Le Plein], Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Kandinsky,
Fonds Iris Clert.
33 Arman, “Réalisme des accumulations ,” op. cit. note 25.
34 Ibid.
35 Pierre Restany, “Un événement capital chez Iris Clert ,” typescript, 1960, Archives Yves Klein, Paris.
36 Arman, “De la spiritualité : la conquête affective des espaces,” typescript, 25 August 1960, Archives Yves Klein, Paris, see cat. p. XXX.
37 Letter from Arman to Eliane Radigue, 1960, Fondation A.R.M.A.N. Arman’s project based on the principle of exchange, developed
at the Allen Stone gallery in 1965 under the title Qui pro quo, had already been conceived by the time “Le Plein” was dismantled.
38 On this see an article by Benjamin Buchloh that identifies as a second major event Jean Tinguely’s “Homage to New York”
at the MoMA: “Plenty of Nothing: From Yves Klein’s Le Vide to Arman’s Le Plein,” in Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays
on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 2000.
39 Leo Steinberg, “Jasper Johns. Les sept premières années de son art,” in Claude Gintz (ed), Regards sur l’art américain
des années 1960, Paris, Éditions Territoires, 1979, p. 22.
40 Interview with Arman by Daniel Abadie, “L’archéologie du futur,” in Arman, catalogue, Paris, Jeu de Paume, 1998, p. 37.

18
5. AROUND THE EXHIBITION
GALERIE DES ENFANTS, LEVEL 1
L’AVENTURE DES OBJETS. UNE EXPOSITION-ATELIER AUTOUR D’ARMAN
22 SEPTEMBER 2010 TO 10 JANUARY 2011
Museum & Exhibitions ticket, free for under-18s
To accompany the “Arman” exhibition, the Centre Pompidou is staging an interactive workshop/exhibition
for children of three and upwards, inspired by his artistic universe.
With object and gesture as the guiding themes, it will bring together the artist’s innovations and the
sensual world of the child. Immersed in a “contemporary and poetical factory” created by artist-designer
Adrien Rovero, children will together explore Arman’s procedures and in doing so learn new ways of
looking at the world around them.
In Zone 1, “le Cycle de l’objet,” children are invited to locate and collect everyday objects, sorting them
by family, to effect a first transformation of the object by the visual faculty. In Zone 2, “l’Objet décrypté,”
they will discover, through hands-on manipulation, the successive states of the object under the artist’s
characteristic procedures: stamping, slicing, and assembling. In Zone 3, “l’Objet réinventé dans l’espace,”
young visitors will use objects in number to create space and construct an architecture in movement.
Space becomes filled as children explore the full and the empty.
This workshop/exhibition developed by the Centre Pompidou will travel in France and abroad from 2011
onward.
PETITE SALLE, LEVEL -1
“UN DIMANCHE, UNE ŒUVRE” TALK SERIES
A TALK ON ARMAN’S LA POUBELLE DES HALLES
BY RENAUD BOUCHET OF THE UNIVERSITÉ DE PROVENCE
SUNDAY 21 NOVEMBER, 11.30pm
¤4.50, concessions ¤3.50, free with annual pass
In late 1959, through his Accumulations and Poubelles Arman began to define his characteristically
“quantitative” language, based on the massing of objects or garbage. Recently acquired by the
Musée National d’Art Moderne, the Poubelle des Halles of 1961 is a key work in what may be called the
artist’s “historic” production, as part of the first series of Poubelles (1959-1966) made during the period
of the artist’s membership of the Nouveau Réalistes (1960-1963).
PETITE SALLE, LEVEL -1
“PAROLE AUX EXPOSITIONS” DISCUSSION SERIES
ARMAN
THURSDAY 2 DECEMBER, 7 PM
Admission free subject to availability
A discussion with Jean-Michel Bouhours, curator of the exhibition, the art historians Renaud Bouchet
and Denys Riout, the artist Bertrand Lavier, and the art critic Barbara Rose. They will look at Arman’s
major artistic moves, the question of the object in relation to the ready-made, the role of Pierre Restany
in the emergence of the first Poubelles, the artistic friendship of Arman and Yves Klein, Arman’s career
in the United States and his public image during his lifetime and today.

19
GALERIE 2, LEVEL 6
GUIDED TOURS
EVERY SATURDAY, 3.30 PM
meet at exhibition entrance
¤4.50, concessions ¤3.50 + Museum & Exhibitions ticket
URBAN WALK
SATURDAY 25 SEPTEMBER, 1 PM – 6 PM
with Régis Labourdette
¤10
GUIDED TOURS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
SATURDAY 16 OCTOBER
“Seeing through touch,” 11 am
Tour with lip-reading, 11 am
Tour with French Sign Language, 2.30 pm
meet at
¤4.50, companion admitted free

20
6. WORKS EXHIBITED, BY SECTION
FROM THE INFORMAL TO THE OBJECT
Untitled, 1952-1953
Oil on canvas
80 x 160 cm
Collection Jacques and Madeleine Matarasso, Nice
Rubber stamp, 1956
Rubber-stamp impressions on wood panel
20.5 x 2.5 cm
Collection Jacques and Madeleine Matarasso, Nice
Minuscules, 1957
Rubber stamp, rubber-stamp impressions
17 x 22 cm
Collection Jacques and Madeleine Matarasso, Nice
Allure d’objets, 1958
Traces of objects on paper mounted on canvas
150 x 294 cm
Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie Beaubourg, Paris
Cachet, Œil de tigre, 1959
Rubber-stamp impressions and paint on paper mounted
on canvas
160 x 255 cm
Collection Stéphanie and Olivier Dacourt, Paris
Courtesy Cudemo, Monaco,
on permanent loan to Mamac, Nice
Rectangle noir, 1958
Rage, impressions of broken glass and ink on paper
134 x 102 cm
Collection Gerbalena, Nice
Allure d’objets II, 1959
Rage, broken glass and paint on paper
mounted on canvas
130 x 100 cm
Private collection, Genève
Allure d’objet, 1960
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
65 x 50 cm
Private collection,
courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois,
Paris
Store poème, 1962
Rubber stamps, traces of objects and writing on fabric
1050 x 76 cm
Private collection, Paris
Investissement émotif, 1963
Slices and impressions of tin statuettes
on wood panel
82.5 x 153 cm
Galerie Reckermann, Cologne
Contre les basses (Black Strings), 1976
Impressions of broken double bass and oil on canvas
236 x 175 cm
Private collection, Paris
POUBELLES AND LE PLEIN
Déchets bourgeois (S’il n’en reste qu’un je serais celui-là),
1959
Household garbage in glass jar
58 x 40 x 8 cm
Courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois,
Paris
La Vie à pleines dents, 1960
Accumulation of false teeth in wooden box
18 x 35 x 6 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
Malheur aux barbus, 1960
Accumulation of electric razors in wooden box
and Plexiglas
101 x 60.5 cm
Private collection, Paris
Hygiène de la vision, 1960
in collaboration with Martial Raysse
Binocular kaleidoscope with 28 painted glass
plates with collaged objects
48 x 26 x 28 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
Poubelle de cendrier de Jacques Matarasso, 1965
Pieces of ashtray and household garbage in plastic box
14 x 10 x 4 cm
Collection Jacques et Madeleine Matarasso, Nice
Portrait-robot d’Iris, 1960
Personal effects in Plexiglas box
47 x 48 x 11 cm
Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris
Premier portrait-robot d’Yves Klein, 1960
Personal effects in Plexiglas box
76 x 50 x 12 cm
Private collection, Paris
Portrait-robot d’Éliane, 1962
Personal effects in Plexiglas box
44 x 44.5 x 11.5 cm
Fondation A.R.M.A.N., Genève
Poubelle des Halles, 1961
Garbage in glass jar
63.5 x 43 x 12.5 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
Poubelle de Jim Dine, 1961
Garbage in Plexiglas box
51 x 30 x 20 cm
Rovereto, MART, Museo d’Arte Moderna e
Contemporeana di Trento e Rovereto
Courtesy of Ileana Sonnabend

21
La Grande Bouffe, 1973
Accumulation of household garbage in resin
and Plexiglas
180 x 120 x 12 cm
Private collection, Paris
Ordures au naturel, 1972
Garbage in Le Parfait preserving jars
18 x 10 cm
Collection Jean Ferrero, Nice
Poubelle organique, 1971
Garbage in Plexiglas box
120 x 90 x 12 cm
Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie Beaubourg, Paris
THE CRITICAL MASS OF THE OBJECT
Untitled (Le Lustre), 1959
Accumulation of electric bulbs
50 cm in diameter
Fondation A.R.M.A.N., Genève
Edison Memorial, 1960
Electric bulbs in a box
35 x 35 x 13 cm
Private collection, Turin
Fiat pas lux II, 1960
Accumulation of used radio valves
in wooden box
40.30 x 63.20 x 8 cm
Collection Gian Enzo Sperone, New York
Untitled, 1959-1960
Print on silver-salt paper of an Accumulation
of cut-up clock faces in paper
16.20 x 23.1 0 cm
Courtesy Galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris
Jéricho, 1960
Accumulation of car horns in wooden box
and Plexiglas
50 x 60 x 20 cm
Galerie Thomas, Munich
Home, Sweet Home, 1960
Accumulation of gas masks in wooden box
and Plexiglas
160 x 140.5 x 20.3 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
Une saison en enfer, 1961
Gas burners in wooden box and Plexiglas
100 x 45 cm
Galerie Reckermann, Cologne
Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens, 1961
Accumulation of insecticide sprayers (Fly Tox)
in wooden box and Plexiglas
80 x 60 x 12 cm
Collection Laurence Dumaine, Paris
Libertés essentielles, 1961
Accumulation of locks under glass dome
24 x 8 x 5 cm
Collection Jacques and Madeleine Matarasso, Nice
Le Massacre des innocents II, 1961
Accumulation of dolls in wooden box and Plexiglas
139 x 28 x 10 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon,
Galerie Beaubourg, Paris
Orbes et désorbes, 1961
Accumulation of springs in wooden box and Plexiglas
144.5 x 66.5 x 11.5 cm
Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris
La Colère monte, 1961
Accumulation of manometers in wooden box
and Plexiglas
100 x 81 x 13 cm
Collection Sylvio Perlstein, Anvers
Madison Avenue, 1962
Accumulation of ladies’ pumps in wooden box
and Plexiglas
60.5 x 100 x 15 cm
Private collection, New York
Infinity of typewriters and infinity of monkeys,
and infinity of time = Hamlet, 1962
Accumulation of typewriters in wooden box
183 x 175 x 30 cm
Rovereto, MART, Museo d’Arte Moderna
e Contemporeana di Trento e Rovereto
Courtesy of Ileana Sonnabend
Sonny Liston, 1963
Accumulation of irons, welded
84 x 40 x 30 cm
Collection Stephen S. Alpert, Boston
Birth Control, 1963
Accumulation of dolls in valise on wood panel
156 x 121 cm
Collection Julien and Benjamin Seroussi, Paris
La Vénus aux blaireaux, 1969
Shaving brushes embedded in a torso of polyester
84 x 29 x 34 cm
Tate, purchase, 1982, London
Homage to Cubism, 1974
Accumulation of cut-up guitars in wooden box
and Plexiglas
182 x 121 x 31 cm
Collection Musée d’art moderne et contemporain
de Strasbourg
Janus, 1981
Accumulation of handsaws, welded
180 x 253 cm
Private collection, Paris

22
Portrait-robot de Mozart, 1985
Accumulation of musical instruments
and diverse objects under Plexiglas
210 x 143 x 54 cm
Collection MAC/VAL, Musée d’art contemporain
du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine
Heroic Times, 1997
Accumulation of typewriters and reams of paper
in Plexiglas box
180 x 180 x 49 cm
Collection Arman Marital Trust
COLÈRES AND COUPES
Colère de Mandoline, 1961
Rage, smashed mandoline on wood panel
76 x 59 x 7 cm
Collection Rira, Cologne
Subida al cielo, 1961
Slice of double bass on wood panel
245 x 122 x 34 cm
Collection Stéphanie and Olivier Dacourt, Paris, Courtesy
Cudemo, Monaco, on permanent loan to Mamac, Nice
Colère suisse, 1961
Rage, smashed cuckoo clock on wood panel
92 x 73 x 13 cm
Collection Sprengel Museum, Hannover
Untitled, 1961
Rage, smashed Louis XIII cabinet on wood panel
150 x 144 x 25 cm
Fonds national d’art contemporain,
Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Paris,
on long-term loan to Mamac, Nice
Butterfly Variations, 1962
Sliced violin on wood panel
93 x 72 x 12 cm
Collection Dacourt, Paris
Courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois,
Paris
OK Dad. Let’s get a TV now, 1962
Smashed radio on wood panel
152 x 111.5 x 40 cm
Private collection, Paris
Tranche de vie de Jeanne d’arc, 1962
Slice of metal statuette
34 x 12 x 7 cm
Fondation Allers Pro Arte
Courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois,
Paris
Guitare relief, 1962
Section of guitar on wood panel
130 x 97 x 12 cm
Collection Rira, Cologne
Chopin’s Waterloo, 1962
Smashed piano on wood panel
186 x 302 x 48 cm
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris
Parade, 1962
Sliced kettles and jugs on shelf
and wood panel
76 x 152.80 x 29 cm
Private collection, Paris
Arrêt de temps, 1963
Alarm-clock on wood panel
46 x 36 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris
La Courtillière, 1962
Sliced violin on wood panel
96.5 x 57.5 x 6 cm
Private collection, Paris
Banjo Solo, 1963
Rage, smashed banjo on wood panel
69 x 40 cm
Private collection, Paris
Die Wise Orchid (White Orchid), 1963
Rage, exploded MG sports-car on wood panel
250 x 510 x 130 cm
MMK, Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt
Splash (Harmoni and Nini), 1963
Smashed cornet and paint on wood panel
108 x 75.5 cm
Private collection, Paris
Le Grand Cello, 1963
Sliced cello on wood panel
200 x 153 x 11.5 cm
Private collection, Paris
Taïaut, Taïaut, 1964
Accumulation of smashed and cut-up brass
instruments on wood panel
122 x 245 x 21 cm
Private collection, Paris
Endless Variation n° 1, 1967-1968
Lacquered wood
61 x 61 x 61 cm
Collection Arman Marital Trust
Conscious Vandalism, 1975
Rage, apartment installed by the artist
at the John Gibson Gallery, New York,
destroyed with an axe on 5 April 1975
70 m 2
Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris
Colère de télévision, 1976
Rage, smashed television in Plexiglas box
62.5 x 80 x 50 cm
Collection Alain Bizos, Paris
Colère de télévision, 1976
Rage, smashed television in Plexiglas box
62.5 x 80 x 50 cm
Collection Alain Bizos, Paris

23
Colère de télévision, 1976
Rage, smashed television in Plexiglas box
62.5 x 80 x 50 cm
Courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois,
Paris
Solex, ici et là, 1989
Sculpture, 5 Solex motor-assisted bicycles,
painted metal base
127 x 214 x 77 cm
Collection Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain,
Paris
Du producteur au consommateur, 1997
Sandwich Combo, sliced refrigerator and caddies
assembled
223.5 x 132 x 104 cm
Collection Arman Marital Trust
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Violon brûlé, 1964
Combustion of violin on panel and polyester resin
76.5 x 54 x 5.5 cm
Fondation A.R.M.A.N., Genève
Black is Black, 1964
Combustion, burnt prie-Dieu and resin
104 x 63 x 63 cm
Private collection, Paris
Untitled, 1964
Combustion of smashed cello on panel and resin
polyester
136 x 97 x 34 cm
Private collection, Monaco
Le Fauteuil d’Ulysse, 1965
Combustion of burnt armchair and resin
80 x 80 x 120 cm
Private collection, Paris
Collection, 1964
Toy cars and boxes in resin
35.5 x 63.5 x 7.3 cm
Private collection, Paris
Colère de double bass, 1966
Combustion of double bass in polyester resin
and Plexiglas
200 x 158 x 20 cm
Collection Jean Ferrero, Nice
Bibliothèque d’Alexandrie, 1968
Combustion, burnt violins in Plexiglas box
200 x 160 x 18 cm
Private collection
Courtesy Alain Bizos, Paris
Untitled, 1971
Inclusion, violin in resin
25 x 25 x 25 cm
Private collection
Constellation, 1970
Inclusion of steel balls in resin and Plexiglas
200 x 150 x 9 cm
Private collection, Paris
Téléphone coupé, 1969
Sliced bakelite telephone in concrete
50 x 25 x 10 cm
Private collection, New York
L’Aigle à deux têtes, 1974
Sliced cello and bow in concrete
140 x 100 x 11.5 cm
Collection Mathieu, courtesy Galerie Georges-Philippe
et Nathalie Vallois, Paris
The Day After – Fried chicken, 1984
Burnt lamp cast in bronze
65 x 95 x 60 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris
The Day After – Nero’s banquet, 1984
Burnt side table cast in bronze
45 x 120 x 60 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris
The Day After – One Day in Amsterdam, 1984
Burnt chair cast in bronze
82 x 56 x 60 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris
The Day After – S.F. chair, 1984
Burnt chair cast in bronze
88 x 54 x 43 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris
The Day After – Open space, 1983-1984
Burnt cupboard in bronze
182 x 90 x 46 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris
The Day After – Pompei’s Syndrome, 1984
Burnt chair cast in bronze
84 x 60 x 60 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris
The Day After – Melted, 1984
Burnt tray and tea set cast in bronze
12 x 56 x 41 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon, Galerie
Beaubourg,
Paris

24
The Day After – Horizontal catastrophe, 1984
Burnt Louis XV cast in bronze, patinated in black
98 x 138 x 65 cm
Private collection
The Day After – Feu Louis XV, 1985
Burnt commode cast in bronze
87.5 x 121 x 60 cm
Private collection, Paris
The Day After, 1986
Burnt frame of black-painted wood
75.5 x 86 cm
Private collection, Paris
Le Piano de Néron, 1999
Emersion, smashed piano and acrylic on panel
200 x 180 x 110 cm
Collection Arman Marital Trust
Courtesy Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York
Vanités (Atlantis), 1991
Bronze
74 x 57 x 35 cm
Collection Arman Marital Trust
Inclination (Atlantis), 1991
Bronze
69 x 53.5 x 32 cm
Collection Arman Marital Trust
ARMAN, RENAULT: ART AND INDUSTRY
Accumulation Renault n° 101 (La Victoire de Salemotrice),
1967
Parts of R4 body assembled and welded
220 x 350 x 300 cm
Private collection, Bullion
Accumulation Renault n° 108 (Auto-allumage), 1967
Accumulation of lamp filaments in a box and Plexiglas
160 x 121 x 20 cm
Private collection, Suisse
Courtesy Artcurial-Briest-Poulain-F.Tajan, Paris
Accumulation Renault n° 152, 1968
Accumulation of Renault 16 bonnets, metal and paint
76 x 133 x 124 cm
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco
Accumulation Renault n° 150, 1968
Slice of motor under Plexiglas
65 x 40 x 35 cm
Private collection, Paris
Renault Wooden Pieces, 1968
Smashed wooden “Dauphine” in Plexiglas
140 x 500 x 160 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon,
Galerie Beaubourg,
Paris and private collection, Paris,
on long term loan to Mamac, Nice
Accumulation Renault n° 180 (Pipes pipées), 1972
Accumulation of exhaust manifolds
on wood panel
200 x 200 x 12 cm
Union Centrale des Arts décoratifs,
Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris
I AM A BORN AGAIN PAINTER
Grande Harpe, 1966
Inclusion, tubes and traces of paint in polyester resin
127 x 33.5 x 50 cm
Fondation A.R.M.A.N., Genève
La Vie dans la ville pour l’œil, 1966
Inclusion, paint tubes and paint in resin
and Plexiglas
123 x 101 x 8 cm
Collection Marianne and Pierre Nahon,
Galerie Beaubourg, Paris
Rich in Color, 1967
Inclusion, paint tubes and traces of paint in resin
45.70 x 30.5 x 5 cm
Private collection, New York
Encroragie, 1968
Enamel paint and paint jars half-embedded in resin
160 x 200 x 5 cm
Collection Rira, Cologne
Sevillanas (White Handles), 1987
Brushes and paint on canvas
127 x 213 x 20.5 cm
Private collection, Paris
Nuit étoilée, 1987
Acrylic paint and paint tubes crushed on canvas
80 x 100 cm
Fondation A.R.M.A.N., Genève
Avant la chance, 1989
Paint tubes and paints projected onto canvas
160 x 260 cm
Private collection, Paris
Hello Jackson, 1990
Paint tubes and acrylic paint on canvas
200 x 150 x 15 cm
Private collection, Nice
Desert Bike, 1991
Smashed bicycle, brushes and acrylic on panel
130 x 195 x 35 cm
Collection Jean Ferrero, Nice
Footing Painting, 2000
Mixed media on canvas
150 x 200 x 7 cm
Collection Jean Ferrero, Nice

25
FILMS PRESENTED WITHIN THE EXHIBITION
by Gilles Bion and Patrick Palaquer
FROM THE INFORMAL TO THE OBJECT
Traces, 1959-2010
Jacques Brissot
6’47’’, 16mm, b. & w. and col., silent
Edited by Jacques Brissot for the present exhibition
© Jacques Brissot
Objets animés, 1959-1960
Jacques Brissot, in collaboration with Arman
4’41’’, 16mm, col., sound.
Music: Studies in animated sound by Pierre Schaeffer
Production: ORTF research department
GRI. Distribution: Ina (RTF)
In partnership with the INA
POUBELLES AND LE PLEIN
Sanitation, 1972
Jean-Pierre Mirouze, from an idea by Arman
13’51’’, 16mm, col., sound.
Music: A Rainbow in a Curved Air by Terry Riley,
Originally recorded 1969 by Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
© Jean-Pierre Mirouze
Art plein, 1960
Cameraman: Chardet
33’’, 16mm, b. & w., silent
Actualités Gaumont, October 1960. Reference: 1960-15-7.
Unique film of the exhibition “Le Plein,”
opened 25 October 1960, at the Iris Clert gallery,
3 rue des Beaux-Arts, Paris
© Gaumont Pathé archives
Arman le sculpteur de la poubelle dans le quartier
des Halles, 1961
Yvan Jouannet
4’53’’, 16mm, b. & w., sound.
Extract from magazine prog. “En Français dans le texte.
L’avant-garde,” broadcast 25 April 1961.
Paris : RTF. Distribution: Ina (RTF)
In partnership with the INA
THE CRITICAL MASS OF THE OBJECT
Accumulations naturelles, Nice 1960
Jean-Pierre Mirouze
4’09’’, 16mm, b. & w., silent
Edited by Jean-Pierre Mirouze
for the present exhibition
© Jean-Pierre Mirouze
Long Term Parking, 1982
Jean-Pierre Mirouze, from an idea by Arman
4’40’’, 16mm, col., sound.
Work funded and constructed by Jean Hamon
Music: Urban Sax
© Jean-Pierre Mirouze
Espoir de paix. Un monument d’Arman, Beyrouth, Liban,
1995
Alain Bizos
13’35’’, Betacam SP video, col., sound.
Editing: Alex Rodriguez
© Alain Bizos
COLÈRES AND COUPES
Die Wise Orchid, 1963
Charles Wilp
17’07’’, 16mm, b. & w., silent
© Art and Space – Ingrid Schmidt-Winkeler
Conscious Vandalism, 1975
Andy Mann
30’20’’, 16mm, digital beta tape from VHS,
col., sound.
Courtesy Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris
Action by Arman recorded at the John Gibson Gallery,
New York, 5 April 1975
[NBC Rage] Arman Creates 3-D Work With Bass Fiddle,
1961
3’26’’, 16mm, col., sound., OST, French subtitles
Extract from “David Brinkley’s Journal: Avant-garde and
Children’s Art,” broadcast 13 December 1961 on NBC
© NBC News Archives
© Adagp 2010
Colères, 1976-2010
Jacques Brissot
4’29, 16mm, col., sound.
Edited for the present exhibition
Music: J. S. Bach, Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor
© Jacques Brissot
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
École de Nice, 1966
Gérard Patris (director and producer)
31’30’’, 16mm, b. & w., sound.
Extract: 7’29’’. Distribution: Ina (ORTF).
First broadcast on the programme “Pour le plaisir”
1re chaîne, 3 January 1966
© Adagp 2010
In partnership with the INA
Archéologie du futur, 1976-2010
Jacques Brissot
3’10’’, 16mm, col., silent
Edited for the present exhibition
© Jacques Brissot
L’Aigle à deux têtes, 1974
Jean Ferrero
30’, Super 8, col., silent
1’55’’ extract from the film archive of Jean Ferrero
© Jean Ferrero
© Adagp 2010

26
ARMAN, RENAULT: ART AND INDUSTRY
Accumulations d’Arman, 1969
Carlos Vilardebo
45’, 16mm, b. & w., sound.
Extract of 5’58’’ from “Variances N° 2”
(broadcast 8 December 1969) by Claude Gallot
Production: Michèle Arnaud, Michel Pamart
Paris : ORTF, 1969. Distribution: Ina (ORTF)
© Adagp 2010
In partnership with the INA
I AM A BORN AGAIN PAINTER
Shooting Paintings, around 1990-1991
Jean Ferrero
30’, VHS, col., sound.
4’02’’ extract from the film archive of Jean Ferrero
© Jean Ferrero
© Adagp 2010
Arman, portrait d’un sculpteur, 1998
Dominik Rimbault
52’, vidéo, col., sound.
Extract of 2’7’’ with the “Pinceaux piégés” sequence
Production: DAP, La Cinquième, CNC, Atelier D.
Distribution: Atelier D. (Dominik Rimbault)
© Dominik Rimbault
© Adagp 2010

7. PARTNER
INA PARTNERS THE «ARMAN» EXHIBITION AT CENTRE POMPIDOU
More than fifty years of artistic memory in Ina’s collections
Ina is teaming up with the Centre Pompidou for the retrospective dedicated to the artist “Arman”.
A member of the Ecole de Nice and one of the co-founders, with Yves Klein, of the Nouveaux Réalistes
group, Arman devoted his life to artistic research and experimentation. Through historic audiovisual
documents from Ina’s archives, visitors will be able to immerse themselves in the poetic universe of the
artist and find out more about the chronological evolution of his creative work.
In 1960, Jacques Brissot made a four-minute experimental film for the Research Department of the ORTF
entitled “Objets animés”, inspired by the early works of Arman, with music by Pierre Schaeffer. In 1961,
one year after the founding of the Nouveaux Réalistes group, the TV cultural magazine programme
“En Français dans le texte” featured a report on young artists entitled “L’avant garde”, in which the director
interviews Arman, and films the artist as he carries out his work of collecting objects.
In 1998, a series of five radio programmes for the magazine “A voix nue : grands entretiens d’hier
et d’aujourd’hui” enabled Arman to speak at length about the genesis of his work.
To coincide with the “Arman” retrospective, an educational exhibition-workshop for young people is being
held, entitled “L’aventure des objets”. It is introduced by a 15-minute film which brings together previously
unreleased items from Ina’s archives, providing visual keys for an understanding of the work and actions
of the artist, and the various facets of his personality.
Ina, the world leader in digital archiving and archive value enhancement, conserves, enhances and
transmits a heritage of more than 3 million hours of radio and television programmes. Its consultation
and research centre for researchers and academics, its training courses for the image, sound and digital
technology professions, and its production of documentaries are laboratories for reflection on the media
which pave the way for the expertise of tomorrow.
It is by disseminating its images and sound recordings in the widest variety of forms in festivals,
retrospectives, exhibitions and museums, and at other cultural events, that Ina gives them meaning
and helps build a common memory. It shares them with the widest possible audience through its web site
ina.fr, its publication and co-publication policy, and its commitment as a partner of cultural events
throughout France. In its constant efforts to contribute to a better understanding of the world, Ina
supports artistic creation (artists’ residencies with Centquatre/104) and innovation (international webTV
festival, coproduction of the Internet site for the Elles@centrepompidou exhibition), and has developed
a longstanding and fertile relationship with museums (such as the Louvre, the Musée des Arts décoratifs,
the Centre Pompidou-Metz, and the Louvre-Lens project).
It was therefore only natural that Ina should team up with the Arman exhibition project at the Centre
Pompidou.
Something new every day at www.ina.fr

28
8. VISUALS FOR THE PRESS
All or some of the works reproduced in this press pack are protected by copyright. Works copyrighted to ADAGP
(www.adagp.fr) may be published on the following conditions:
• for periodicals that have an agreement with ADAGP, see the terms there provided
• for other publications:
- Two images no larger than a quarter page may be reproduced free of charge to illustrate an article on a current
event;
- For images in excess of two or reproduction in a larger format, royalty will be payable;
- Reproduction on the cover or front page requires permission from the Press Department of the ADAGP;
- In the case of on-line publications, definition is limited to 400 x 400 pixels and resolution may not exceed 72 dpi.
- Any reproduction will be accompanied by a copyright notice in the form: artist’s name, title of the work,
© Adagp, Paris 2010, whatever may be the origin of the image or the person or institution that holds the work.
- Jean Ferrero is represented by the ADAGP, which will therefore charge royalty in respect of his photographs
on the same basis as for the works by Arman, with same provision for publication free of charge in connection with
a current event.
WORKS FORMING PART OF THE EXHIBITION
La Vie à pleines dents, 1960
© ADAGP Paris 2010
phot. Philippe Migeat
Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN
Poubelle des Halles, 1961
© ADAGP Paris 2010
phot. Philippe Migeat
Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN

29
Chopin’s Waterloo, 1962
© ADAGP Paris 2010
phot. Adam Rzepka
Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN
Le Fauteuil d’Ulysse, 1965
© ADAGP Paris 2010
phot. Jean-Claude Planchet
Accumulation Renault n° 150, 1968
© ADAGP Paris 2010
phot. Jean-Claude Planchet
Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens, 1961
© ADAGP Paris 2010
phot. Jean-Claude Planchet

30
Home, Sweet Home, 1960
© ADAGP Paris 2010
Collection Centre Pompidou, Dist. RMN
Arrêt de temps, 1963
© ADAGP Paris 2010
phot. Jean-Claude Planchet
COMPLEMENTARY IMAGE
Arman doing kung fu
with his wife Corice Arman
and his teacher, 1975
Photo: Jean Ferrero
© ADAGP, Paris 2010

31
PRACTICALITIES AT THE SAME TIME AT THE CENTRE MANAGEMENTT
Centre Pompidou
75191 Paris cedex 04
telephone
+ 33 (0) 1 44 78 12 33
metro
Hôtel de Ville, Rambuteau
Opening
exhibitions open
every day except Tuesdays
11am – 9 pm
9. PRACTICALITIES
Admission
¤10 - ¤12, depending on time,
concessions
¤8 - ¤9
ticket valid the same day for the
Musée National d’Art Moderne
and all exhibitions
Free for under-18s and
members of the Centre
Pompidou
(holders of the annual pass)
Information
01 44 78 14 63
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www.centrepompidou.fr
GABRIEL OROZCO
15 SEPTEMBER 2010 -
3 JANUARY 2011
press officer
Dorothée Mireux
+ 33 (0) 1 44 78 46 60
PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP
SAÂDANE AFIF
FROM 15 SEPTEMBER
2010
press officer
Dorothée Mireux
+ 33 (0) 1 44 78 46 60
L’AVENTURE DES OBJETS
EXPOSITION–ATELIER AUTOUR
D’ARMAN
22 SEPTEMBER 2010 –
10 JANUARY 2011
press officer
Céline Janvier
+ 33 (0) 1 44 78 49 87
Jean-Michel Bouhours
curator
assisted by Marie Bertran
and Patrick Palaquer