 Arman Interviewed by
Michel Giroud
Ever since his
childhood, until he left art school, Arman never ceased to draw or make
sketches. All his future word is already prepared. Like with the old
masters, it is outlined and planned out with diagrams, schemes and
graphic notes. Such preparation with drawings and texts allows the
precision of each project to be understood. A clear approach to the
whole work, and a theoretical reasoning, consistent to each piece,
predetermined like a musical score “in progress”, leaves nothing to
chance while the work is executed by Arman and his assistants. Like
Picasso, there have been hundreds of notebooks and sketchpads. Arman’s
ideas are not revealed by a theoretical body of declarations, but by a
series of drawings. His aesthetics should be considered from the point
of view of the systematic in which chance is calculated and controlled.
In this way, a veritable set theory is constructed – a combination of
his personal taste, his own family context and art of his time. Arman
renovates and makes more profound the role of the object in our
society, and today he offers a new reading of his work which is part of
a general concern with the systematic. The Accumulations have such a
breadth and power that it is clear Arman has invented a style and a
vision that is among one of the greatest.
In a interview with Michel Giroud, Arman specified the
importance of the systematic in his
work.“The systematic
manifests itself in the way of working, of thinking, of exploring
variations of an idea. I cannot begin a series of works until it has
been planned out. I continue to experiment with different variations
until I reach a certain point of disgust. For example with the
paintings, after getting tired of the “all over chaud”, I’ll begin a
cold series – the same with the accumulations of the collection.
Otherwise the diversity, by its repetition, leads to a warming up. I
proceed as with a piano, with chromatic or normal scales. I systematize
them by the number of pieces chosen, by the strategy used
b y the
number of pieces made. My approach is conceptual, rational, not at all
instinctive. Chance , despite its appearance, is secondary. Only in two
cases does it play a role : when I break an object, like a cello, the
pieces stay right where the fell. Otherwise there is chance in the
auto-compositions of objects within a volume. But even though
they are restricted by the choice of volume and of the object, they are
not chosen by chance – they are elected objects, like the coffeepots,
the tools, the cameras, the coffee grinders, There is a series of
utensils with definite characteristics whose organic aspects interest
me, like the irons, the fans, the flytox… In general they tend to be
objects of my generation, and not objects with a contemporary, slick
design which, for me, lack character. But it’s not impossible that one
day I would use a series of sport shoes, like basketball sneakers,
because they have a special character, original and surprising – a
dynamic asymmetry. That which we take for chance often has a calculated
imbalance that follows a rhythm. That’s what struck me about the
traditional Japanese composition with its alternation between the void
and the full. My taste for systems is related to the notion of filling
up. Since I was a child I had a penchant for the quantity. It began as
a series of jam jars, and later in 1954, it was the revelation of
Pollock’s “all over”.
My passion for the cut, for
cutting up, also comes from my childhood; my father loved those world
fairs where the technical achievements of the present and the future
were displayed. At the expositions where I accompanied my father, there
were certain objects (cars, cameras) that were cut open to demonstrate
how their mechanisms functioned. It’s from there that I got the idea to
of cutting up unusual objects like violins and coffee grinders, and
began in 1969 to show the interior of thing, the intestines of objects.
The objects are cut up like words and they form hybrids, new words, new
objects. The cuts in the cement are like fossils of possible objects to
come. It was Picasso, who with Analytic Cubism opened the way to
cutting up with a systematic variation of planes. “Coupes et colères”
is the outcome of Picasso’s discovery. Van Gogh, Cézanne, the great
Japanese woodcuts, Duchamp, Man Ray Schwitters with his collages,
Pollock – they all made this approach possible, which is precisely in
keeping with the context of art of our century and which traverses my
own personal history.”(1) The
interviews with Otto Hahn, “Mémoires accumulées”, published by edition
Belfond, 1992, reveal Arman’s uncompromising lucidity on art and its
milieu, on his ideas and their elaboration. The caltalogue raisonné is
published by la Différence and the catalogue raisonné of prints was
published by Marval. It is odd that no museum retrospective in France
has ever shown the scope of such a
work.
source : Kanal - Special Serie
Arman - 1993
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