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Lot Essay
“Arman (…) humbly accepts the destiny of reflecting the inconsistencies in the patterns of thought, feeling, and action that exist in the world around him. In terms of the lives we actually live, the elimination of the various modes of dialectical contradiction is no more than an aspiration- one of society’s fledgling tendencies that we can do our best to strength; but nonetheless, this tendency itself remains a contradiction within the fabric of things as they stand today.”
—H. MARTIN, quoted in H. N. Abrams, Arman, New York, 1968
With its intricate pattern of convoluted strings contained by a painted wooden box, Arman’s La Fortune sourit aux audacieux (1962) extols aesthetic purity in its critique of materialism. Arman twists his string into a baroque arrangement of swirling line, creating a dramatic surface of caveats and rivets. For Arman, the relationship between medium and concept is of primary concern. By elevating detritus to the status of high art, he critiques the wasteful consumerism of modern society. Developing his practice amidst the aesthetic anarchy of the 1960s, Arman was a leading exponent of nouveau réalisme. Coined by art critic Pierre Restany, the term refers to a French movement that paralleled many of the developments of American Pop Art, particularly in the work of artists such Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The term ‘real’ references the raw prosaic materials which these artists transformed into new artistic media. The practice of incorporating waste into art has been a definitive part of Arman’s oeuvre since 1959, often taking the form of his renowned ‘accumulations’ in which the artist created assemblages of identical objects constructed into a formalized presentation. Arman’s La Fortune sourit aux audacieux is a subtle reiteration of this program – his Duchampian medium is assembled in a delicate rhythm that does not forgo aesthetics in its conceptual exploration of materiality.
—H. MARTIN, quoted in H. N. Abrams, Arman, New York, 1968
With its intricate pattern of convoluted strings contained by a painted wooden box, Arman’s La Fortune sourit aux audacieux (1962) extols aesthetic purity in its critique of materialism. Arman twists his string into a baroque arrangement of swirling line, creating a dramatic surface of caveats and rivets. For Arman, the relationship between medium and concept is of primary concern. By elevating detritus to the status of high art, he critiques the wasteful consumerism of modern society. Developing his practice amidst the aesthetic anarchy of the 1960s, Arman was a leading exponent of nouveau réalisme. Coined by art critic Pierre Restany, the term refers to a French movement that paralleled many of the developments of American Pop Art, particularly in the work of artists such Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The term ‘real’ references the raw prosaic materials which these artists transformed into new artistic media. The practice of incorporating waste into art has been a definitive part of Arman’s oeuvre since 1959, often taking the form of his renowned ‘accumulations’ in which the artist created assemblages of identical objects constructed into a formalized presentation. Arman’s La Fortune sourit aux audacieux is a subtle reiteration of this program – his Duchampian medium is assembled in a delicate rhythm that does not forgo aesthetics in its conceptual exploration of materiality.