Arman - Vicky David Gallery

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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.
Page 1 and 2: COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT PRESS PAC
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Page 13 and 14: 13 cocktail of materials and kitsch
Page 15: 15 Allure, to go beyond the simple
Page 19 and 20: 19 GALERIE 2, LEVEL 6 GUIDED TOURS
Page 21 and 22: 21 La Grande Bouffe, 1973 Accumulat
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Page 29 and 30: 29 Chopin’s Waterloo, 1962 © ADA
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Arman - Vicky David Gallery

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