Arman will produce forms from the objects

Violins in pieces as if it was raining, the accumulations of coffee makers, brushes, tongs or cars. It keeps the creation of Arman, died in 2005, an image of artist burdened objects - objects of its production.

Whatever the legitimacy of a painter or a sculptor to make money, the stamp of "commercial" artist is a screen that prevents to really appreciate his work. This is what happened to Armand Fernandez, the Nice, born in 1928, compère of Yves Klein.

A player, an epicurean

A remarkable intelligence, this scholar, by also known for its legion collections in such areas as eclectic as the Japanese armor or African sculptures, created a work prolific, but at the end of the relevant account. Ecrémée of his commercial avatars, it is shown at the Centre Pompidou on 1,000 square metres. Three quarters of the 120 exposed works date from the years 1955 to 1975. "About its commercial production, he spoke of"Divertimento", says one who was his assistant for 12 years, Alain Bizos, today photographer." It was a player, an epicurean. At home, money, it was travelling.

Arman is a child of the consumer society. He imagines works from nothing, i.e. objects of everyday life that it mixes, maltreats, crushed, destroyed, assemble at giving a new form, a form of art.

"It was to create a new object which would produce an aesthetic effect," said the curator of the exhibition, Jean-Michel Bouhours. But in the beginning is the painting. I started as a painter ...." "I need physically, virtually, to touch the color", he explained. "Having found this system to capture the painting out of tubes, the taking in the Plexiglas or po-lyester, it becomes object." The color becomes object. "The exhibition opens on amazing paintings of the 1950s. Arman leaves traces of objects on the canvas, as later Klein will leave traces of bodies of women coated paint.

In 1954, a discovery is for young Arman: the creations of Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), a German poet and artist. Anarchist, Member of the movement Dada, its creation is based on industrial production, assembled and diverted waste. Alain Bizos said: "Kurt Schwitters and Marcel Duchamp were his two favourite artists." But it also keeps its directory of one of his family: his maternal grandmother. "He told me how he was fascinated by the multitude of boxes that his grandmother retained carefully pre-war, in the Cantal Department." Inside, it store the buttons and other treasures.

"Strata of civilization".

Arman will produce forms from the objects. And unlike other art classic French post-war, Caesar, he wants that go fast. Quickly done, well done... For example, in 1962, it creates an accumulation of shoes. Presented at heel needle shoes in a large box-showcase. The stilettos are willing to suggest a movement - the waves of colour.

The same year, he produced what he calls a "anger". It reduced in crumbs a piano has carefully remains on a red background. In 1963, of a cello he slices, that he has so cubisante (always aesthetics...). For the first Fiac, in 1976, he lights of old television that it destroyed in public. From 1970, garbage, accumulated, which he called "of the layers of civilization", are fossilized in resin polyester framed in the Plexiglas. It still freezes in concrete. And destroyed by fire before replicate in bronze of the furniture have a charred appearance. A reference to the effect of a nuclear explosion.

One of the idols of current art, Adel Abdessemed designed in 2006 in terracotta and actual size of calcined car wreck - in reference to the riots in the suburbs. He appears as the heir of Arman. Which could give other examples of this "quote" of the object in contemporary art. Evidence that Arman, commercial artist, was actually invented in art.

Judith Benhamou-Huet blog on