Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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Armand P. Arman, School of Fishes, 1982
welded steel and visegrips
64 x 96 x 3 in.

Born the son of an antiques and secondhand furniture dealer in Nice, France, in 1928, Armand Fernandez gave up his surname in youthful emulation of Van Gogh, and in 1957 he became Arman when a typesetter dropped the "d" from his name. A founding member of New Realism with artists Yves Klein and Jean Tinguely and theorist Pierre Restany, Arman continues to be one of the most innovative and provocative artists of our time. His formal training included studies at the National School of Decorative Arts in Nice and the Louvre School in Paris. Arman is also a student of archaeology and Asian art, as well as an amateur cellist, a judo expert, and a skilled chess player. After a brief military service in Indochina, he turned his attention to abstract painting and embarked on a series of "happenings" and events with Yves Klein. From 1947 to 1953 he became involved with Zen Buddhism, the Rosicrucians, Gurdjieff, and astrology. Around 1960 he began creating his now world-famous "destructions" (poubelles), and "accumulations.' His "accumulations," or constructions, have incorporated such ordinary objects as pliers, shoe trees, and wrenches, as well as scrapped industrial goods, broken bicycles, and discarded phonograph records, which he composes into broad, allover patterns. Other works have featured paint tubes embedded in Lucite or Plexiglas, with the paint partially squeezed out to form sculptural objects or self=referential paintings. His complementary series, "destructions," consists of musical instruments and other single objects that have been reduced to fragments. In 1961 he had his first New York show at the Cordier-Warren Gallery and was included in "The Art of Assemblage" at the Museum of Modern Art. He took up residence in New York in 1963, becoming friends with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Frank Stella. In 1964 he had his first solo museum show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, followed by one at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. In 1967 he began in "Art-Industry" collaboration with Renault, the French car manufacturer. He taught at U.C.L.A. in 1967-68. His work has been shown throughout the world, including the Venice Biennale and Documenta. Arman is notorious both for his large-scale installations and for his public "destructions," which have become more introspective, as seen especially in his bronze castings of ordinary objects. But as in his earlier work, the deliberate, orgiastic redundancy of his mature style offers a critique, at times humouous, of the excesses and eccentricities of modern life. A touring retrospective of his work was held in 1991-92.