Texte narratif

His parents wedding

Armand, his mother and his father in Grasse, 1933.

FAMILY STORIES OFTEN GROW AROUND A SECRET.

Family stories usually perpetuate the history of secrecy in the repetition, often trans-generational of the hidden thing. As the particularity of the secret is to be unsaid, this repetition is expressed by some other means. Sometimes as a difficulty of to live, a symptom, other times it is by outperforming oneself, resilience prevails. Its strength always calls out the origin, the source, the foundation.

Going to the source, it is going back to the beginning. At the beginning of the story, to see.
Is there a hidden story?

Sometimes secrets are kept at the best place: the most visible.

ARMAN ? What is founding you ?

Armand and his mother in Grasse

Armand and his mother in Grasse, 1933.

ARMAN? What is founding you?

Arman was born in Nice in 1928. We do not know what ruled to his birth. Often we do not know, there is no text. For Arman, it is as often.

His mother, Marie Marguerite Jacquet was from Roanne’s countryside and arrived in Nice with her sister. She’s supposed to have run away. She finds a job at a pastry baker.

His father, Francisco Antonio Fernandez, a native of Algeria, falls for her when going to buy his bread.

A misalliance was the reason Arman’s paternal grandparents left Algeria. His grandmother, an aristocrat, had married a commoner. From their union four children will be born: one called Armando dies of illness in his youth, Antonio, the second will take care of his two sisters, somewhat mentally ill, for all of his life.

It is because of the first child's death and the health problems of the others that the rich family comes back from Algeria to Nice. Marguerite, a child of poor peasant parents makes a mirror to the original model: misalliance. Antonio hides his affair with Marguerite.

After Arman’s birth, she lives alone with him in Nice, then in a hotel in Grasse where Antonio gives them clandestine visits for five years. During this fifth year, Antonio falls ill for three weeks and is unable to give news, Marguerite gets very worried. It is after this event that their relationship is formalised to Antonio’s parents.

Arman lived with his mother in a very close relationship. He draws, a lot.

At the hotel he shares his drawings with staff and guests who admire his dexterity. And also the stories he tells about his drawings. He will describe this period as a lost paradise.

Armand and Micheline

Armand and Micheline at a flower parade in Nice, c. 1935.

Armand is 5 years old

He is five years old when he met his paternal grandparents, it is an educational shock: his grandmother used to order him to stand up straight in his chair at the table without moving because the chair would make noise. Alone with his mother, he was the king. After the marriage of his parents, he meets the obligations: hence he looses paradise... His father plays the cello and paints. His mother takes care of their apartment adjoining that of Micheline's parents, his childhood friend.

Micheline’s mother, Georgette, exchanges from one kitchen window to the other the good recipees. The two mothers will become close friends; this is the only known friendship bound of Marguerite apart the one with her sister Louise.

Arman is five years old when he meets Micheline who is only towards two. They play together in the square and the age difference does not prevent their complicity to develop without fault, as Arman will then go to the same school as hers in order to not be separated (the legend of the school only attended by girls is part of the reconstructions that occur when one repeats the story that becomes a fairy tale ... In fact, the POISAT girl school was mixed but Arman only saw the girls, already!)

He is 10 years old when Micheline’s family moves to Paris. Micheline's parents are going to divorce.

Portrait of Armand at 20 years

Armand at 20 years old, 1948.

Armand is 20 years old

Micheline is back in Nice with her mother, penniless after the separation. Georgette is seamstress and she creates a clothing workshop in her apartment.

Arman renamed his parents: Fatheur holds the furniture store "Au Foyer" and Pachatte remains housewife at their home. He considers his father has a weak character and he is very complicit with his mother who is smiling, pleasant, and seems subdued to the relationship with Fatheur. She opens herself in her relationship with Arman: they are very close in their common passion for animals; chickens, rabbits, spiders, it’s as it comes. The laughter of Pachatte remains the memory that qualifies her the best.

Their complicity in this link to animals will allow them both to perpetuate their privileged and exclusive relationship of the origins. Fatheur remains excluded: a figure slightly behind.

Pachatte and her grand-children

Pachatte and her three grand-children at Le Méou, c. 1960.

The Pachatte-Fatheur couple

The Pachatte-Fatheur couple will grow and age in a climate of guilt: in 1956 during a trip to Austria, they have a car accident where Pachatte, as passenger, is seriously injured. Fatheur refuses the emergency care proposed there and repatriates her to Nice. It is following that lost time that she will lose a part of her leg bone leading to a permanent disability (she has one leg shorter than the other). Fatheur will always wait on her hand and foot. Although surprisingly, after buying their land in Vence called "The Méou" for their retirement (the property which will become Le Bidonville),
Pachatte had asked for a balcony and a fire-place when they built their house. She will only obtain both many years later when they enlarge the house with the construction of an added room…

If Fatheur’s guiltiness may look like Pachatte was in a rather dominant position in their couple, in reality, it may not be the case.
The crucible of this complicity between Arman and his mother is perpetuated in this blur in the authority places. Pachatte remains a mother / friend / accomplice of always (even for Arman’s mischiefs). She will be a companion of game (including in those arguable “games” when he uses firecrackers and grenades in his post-war activist period...)

In his adolescence, Pachatte will say about her son "- Pay attention to your chicks, I let my rooster free!".

Her wish was a marriage with Micheline for who Arman will make a proper offer with a bouquet of red roses, an offer she will decline. While he is keeping a relationship with a “small hand” in the sewing workshop, Marianne, older than him, he meets Eliane, who is also doing sewing work as a feeding job.

Musician, she wants to become a composer. Pachatte never accepted the relationship with Eliane, which will be written in the repetition of the original secret:
That of a hidden story with a child.

LES MONTRES

1960
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Accumulation
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 13 x 12,8 x 3,9
MEDIUM: Wrist watch winding stems in a plastic box.

« – I was drawing watches ».

Armand is going towards his 25 years of age when they get married while Eliane is pregnant with their second child. They will have a very strict lunch between the young wife and her parents in law. They'll never succeed in developing a closer relationship. Pachatte wants to keep her privileged bound to her son.

When Armand lives with Eliane in their first apartment at "Parc de la Californie", while working at the furniture shop of his father to earn a living, he does harpoon fishing at night in the Mediterranean sea to feed his family. He is still having his lunch (already vegetarian) at his mother's place and she still takes care of his laundry.
In the living-room that is also their bedroom and his work place for painting, he draws on the walls. Eliane then whitens the walls with "casi arti" (a special cover for preparing paint fabrics). At these moments, he talks about his first five years of his life which are secluded in secracy in the family legend. He paints the regret he still feels of these moments when he used to tell the clients and people in the hotel his stories about the drawings he was making.
" - I was drawing a lot of watches...".
Could this be the source? The origin of the bound to the object that Arman has perpetrated all along his life?

ARMAN, WITH THE OBJECT, HE IS ALWAYS TELLING US A STORY.

History will show that a cycle of temporality and a model of relationship to the feminine was then initialized.

He is five when his mother and his father get married:

" - I have lost the paradise ".

The close bound mother-son undergoes a transformation at the same time as the bound with Micheline is being made (a bound that will last his life time). A bound in which the age difference (large at this age: Arman is 5 when Micheline is not yet 2 !) also makes a large difference in maturity (both physically and psychologically). Here, he is the one becoming an adult in a relation where he is doing the pedagogical transmission.
In his relation to his mother until then, an exclusive and close one, it was him who was learning from the other to grow up; in his fusion-like friendship (which is the model he has to make a bound) with Micheline, the roles are inverted.
Something remains in common: the fusion-like close relationship where places can be interchanged with respect to who is teaching and who is learning.
When five years later Micheline leaves to Paris, this distance reproduces a separation in the chance of a similar temporality.
These two times five years ending up in a form of separation are representing a ten years period which will make a temporal model for Arman's great love stories.

This temporality of a 10 years cycle has formatted a temporality of affection that will be retrieved all along his life.
Exactly like the exchangeability in the roles of master or pupil in the bound is also an illustration of his affective relation that will never be confounded.
This has also the effect to make a rebound of this relational dialog in his creative development: he grew up learning a great capacity to listen and be listened to, in a deep experience of the empathy (a talent that will be always present with him: he "knows" the other one and also knows how to show it !).

If the greatness of the Work has something to do with the ability to get in touch with the other one and to master the path to find the other one so as to be understood, Arman has cultivated from the beginning this potential to see and be seen, to understand and be understood. His work and the place Arman took in the history of contemporary art shows that he knew how to do with his public: the viewer knows to "make the picture" that Arman makes by showing it.

ElianArman kiss

ElianArman, c. 1957.

« PLEASE, DRAW ME ARMAN ».

He was between twelve and thirteen years of age when he decides to become a painter.

Not high rank studies, just Arts: "Arts décos in Nice and the Ecole du Louvre in Paris.
He is 22 when he meets Eliane in Nice.

She too had run away from overly authoritarian parents.
She is also untangling complicated sentimental stories of her twenties: they understand each others...

She played cards: "patience"
At the Café des Arts.
They both appreciate these small signs of destiny.
The name of the place will be the starting point of their love journey.
Neither of them will deceive the sign: the Arts will make them both famous.

The story? Once upon a time...
It’s a painting: 9, Parc de la Californie.
Not far away from the seaside and the Nice Cote d'Azur airport.

Armand letter to Éliane Radigue

Undated. 1952.

"This long letter
with lots of details is to explain to you
the life I have here as
a "weekly" caporal.
Receive my (lips) in a
very sweet (kiss) and all
the (love) I have in my (heart)
for you.

Armand"

THE CAFE DES ARTS

They met at the "Café des Arts".

She says that at first there was an exchange between their sharp-eyed glances: “ - his eyes…”

An intensity that draws the 20 years of this correspondence between ELIANE and ARMAN.

He is 22 years old, she is 19.
He accompanies her back while pushing her bicycle.
They talk, a lot.

As they discover the extent of their affinities.
He tells her how he navigates among spiritual concerns:
“… I envisage to take vows of chastity”.

We know what remained of that question!!!!

At the carriage entrance, the dice are thrown: the next rendez-vous is set, they kiss full on the lips…

The first of the filiation makes an instant reflection of their ardor in falling in love with each other…

He decides to anticipate his call to the army so that his military service would last less than the obligatory 18 months.

Engaged with and separated from her, he writes every day to tell her everything.

Envelope with a drawing of Arman

Mail posted March 18, 1953.

THEY GOT MARRIED AND…

ARMAN married ELIANE in February 1953 at the Nice city hall. He was finishing his military service.

Nicknamed “corporal never here” or “corporal air draft” by his superiors.

Because of his obsession throughout his military period (this was already all him: constant in his determination!) : to climb over the wall or to place a sick act to be able to see as often as possible his loved one.

Or as it was, his loved one and his first daughter; actually, in the "move", his second daugter was underway!

Therefore, he was quite happy with the wedding; another reason to obtain a leave permission, and this time an official one!!!

Besides, he said to his superior that in any case, within a few weeks, he would have obtained a new leave, this time for a birth !

It was “the marriage of the corporal and the dressmaker” who “drew the needle while he sold cigarettes that he didn't smoke to generate subsidies". He finished his military service and they settled at the “Parc de la Californie” in Nice with a pretty nice family already!

Armand and the three musketeers

Armand and his three children, Françoise (aka Marion), Anne and Yves, c. 1957.

Anne and Farouk

Anne and the dog Farouk, c. 1958.

A HELL OF A TURNING POINT.

When comes January 1956, ARMAN, who has been painting since the family moved to the "Parc de la Californie" in Nice, has his first exhibition at the gallery Haut-Pavé located opposite to the Notre Dame church in Paris; where he shows his gouaches. Claude Rivière is the gallery's director; it's not yet an enormous success but it puts “the foot with the clamp”.

Arman and Éliane take advantage of their trip there to get their first car which will have a place of major importance in their story (until the very end, Arman liked to talk about it every time he was questioned about this period of his life).

The question of the money is omnipresent at this period and therefore also for their roundtrip journeys to Paris. At the time of this exhibition, they pick up their Citroën 2CV with which they'll make their return trip to Nice. In one of the hardest winters in decades, with snowdrifts everywhere and Arman (it's all him!) decides to go override adversity at any cost to fulfill his desire: to get back home!
Between Aix-en-Provence and Cannes, car "cadavers" lay everywhere in the snowdrifts. The family legend says they were the only ones to arrive to destination that day!

Only to find out when they arrive that Arman's first collection is completely destroyed: that of his cactus plants. The succulents had not resisted through their absence and the harsh weather.
Was this some kind of metaphorical warning of all the bad news that was to come in this year 1956?

Anne, the second born daughter, must undergo a big surgical operation of her hip.

Arman's parents have a terrible car accident, leaving Arman's mother unable to walk for a year.

A few days after Anne comes out of hospital, Éliane is diagnosed with a tuberculosis that keeps her away.

She leaves to a sanatorium and a brand new family organization will have to set itself up.

This separation will last one year.

Farouk, the faithful four legs companion, is so ill he has to be put down.

Arman letter to Eliane Radigue

Undated. 1956.

Éliane
I am sliced into two, disgusted. I am fed up with all this.
Everything is running through my fingers, I fight until the end without
hope: my mother takes an increasingly waxy look and I
feel her vitality quickly declines, it will be more and more difficult
for her to walk if it is not already too late; I don't give
details on Farouk, he smells of death at full nose I wonder
how he's still holding, it's a wall collapsing in my universe;
Painting is also taking a serious hit and
if the wall has not fallen to the ground yet, it is nevertheless
very damaged and I am deeply tired.

I love you I miss you
Armand

Arman letter to Eliane

October 3, 1957.

Nice le 3 totobre 1957
PROFESSEUR ELIANE FERNANDEZ
CHEZ RADIGUE
5 Rue de la Lingerie
Paris Ist
My fâââââââââââââmme (=wife)
I am so much with you all the time that when
I called you I had taken with me
the statuette as if I could show it to you
it is significant. give me details on what's
preparing at “RUSA”. I want to know it all
hang around in all these events to
occur. the ideal would be if it bursts when
you'll be about to leave to Germany.
continue with the idea of the film, me I am working
that's it, I am back online to work
going ahead with palmed feet in the dish, flapping ears and
dribbling mouth- I devour you
with tender savage calculated kisses in the neck
your Jules (=man) not too ugly still.

Arman (with the “d” cased in a present attached at the end)

AS ATTESTED BY THE POSTMARK.

The end of a Legend...
And the importance of ARMAN's letters to ÉLIANE to write History.
Where the posthumous importance of the letters ARMAN wrote to ÉLIANE to attest of the History, accurately…
On the invitation card, a misprint of the printer transforms his first name into “ARMAN”, that's what the legend says.
In this letter sent on December 10th, 1956, Éliane is at the sanatorium to be cared for her tuberculosis. In the tearing apart of the family, Christmas is approaching and the idea is to succeed in regrouping all of us together. The letter cites this meeting of all of the family, in Paris and, for the first time, Arman raises a question at the end in relation to his signature (Jacques is a friend who came to live at Parc de la Californie (in Nice) where Arman is all alone(!)).
Is it simple coquetry? Or the beginning of the identity path of this big artist who marked his time?
History is on the move!
Then in a letter from October 3rd, 1957, his final decision is already attested in the signature that he'll keep to the end.
In his own way!
One can recognize him well here in the malicious visual humour which resembles him so much…
The decision is accomplished this day of October 9th, 1957 as attested by the postmark on the envelope!
In May 1958, the legend of the typographical error came to rebuild the historical truth.
Everything was ready BEFORE.
Just as ARMAN never went in his workshop without having planned and knowing before what he was going to do there, with his famous sentence “LET'S WORK!"
To wait with the appetite of realizing his idea, for the incisive meeting with the experimentation to readjust unexpected events and invent “the ways out” from the engagement with the material realization.
And find the WORK.
In the activity to create.

Portrait of Éliane

Éliane, c. 1957.

RESULTS OF THE RACES.

November 14, 1957; a springboard for ÉLIANE RADIGUE who is on her way to trace along her personal legend: music. She is in Dusserldorf, in Germany to make her way in her career of musician.
ARMAN is alone in Nice to take care of the three children (6,4 and 3 years old) in a context of financial and organizational trouble…
At this moment in time, ÉLIANE is the one who has the wheel in motion with her work.

They both realized they cannot leave the house together as they were doing before, the children being now at school. Both parents are facing the logistic questions that everyone knows when both are working…
The material situation remains difficult and ARMAN encourages ÉLIANE to take advantage of the opportunities: he asks her to have a drive and to succeed thus possibly ensuring a better future.
This November 1957, when Éliane returns to Nice in their home at "Parc de la Californie", it is the end of her expectations for personal achievement…
Everyday life didn't go well, the children are perturbed and in a disorder for both their feeding organization and their overall rhythm.
The father is rather depressed from the difficulties to deal with daily problems, in addition to his sentimental escapades. Arman is seeking for comfort in other arms while his beautiful one is absent…

Éliane will have to make a drastic decision for herself: give up leaving home to assume the continuity of the family life.

RESULT OF THE RACES: this will be Arman taking-off towards where we know!...

The trip to Iran

Éliane, the Father Stève and the 2 CV car, 1958.

THE TRIP TO IRAN.

Their trip to Iran, ARMAN liked so much to evoke it and tell us about it!

We are in November 1958, one year after Eliane decided to put aside her own professional path in the music world.

All along the year, Arman regularly makes round trips to Paris to multiply contacts, find exhibition places since there wasn't many opportunities in Nice.
He makes “CACHETS” and begins the “ALLURES D'OBJET”.

The first signs of a plan to come and live in Paris are raising, while one of their friend, a Dominican priest: the Father STEVE, an epigraphist (someone who studies inscriptions) has to travel back at the end of the year for a mission in Suze, South of Iran.
The idea of accompanying him there and make the trip together is adopted one evening.
As the project of an adventure a bit crazy: the car, a French 2 CV, should enable them to get there in 8 days and be back in as many days.
They rely for the logistics, on the experience of another friend Robert GODET who had just made a trip to Tibet with a 2 CV car.

They are sure they'll be back home for Christmas.

The car is packed with a tent to camp for when they don’t do halts in the lazarist monasteries, with two spare wheels, diving equipment to fish, in addition to a roller of large "cachets" which occupies all the length from the front seat to the back of the 2 CV.
Trying to set up an exhibition is also part of the travel plans.
A rifle complements this luggage in case of difficulties when crossing some instable areas.

At the beginning, things go rather well, until the first car breaks down when a gimbal "dies out".
With the 8 days waiting there for the replacement part to be sent from France.

Arman replaces the part and… he never turns around…

The crossing of Anatolia highlands between snow-drifts and snow falls will be a foretaste of the passage of the ford that they will need to jump over after having emptied the 2 CV from its content passed over on trunks. So that Arman could take a run with the light weighted 2 CV and land on the other side of the ford: as a result, no more springs on the right side of the car…

Never mind; they arrive in Teheran with the car all loaded on the left…
For 8 more days of immobilization…

They had already left for one month.

This burning cold will finally last three months.

They will not manage to be brought back by boat, but will leave as a thank to the French host who housed them, a large "cachet".
They will learn later how he was so happy he made “splendid lamp-shades with it”!!!

The rest of the cachets will be offered on the way back to the lazarist fathers who accommodated them…

Their way back will match the outward journey…
Flat tires twice a day; they remain blocked in snow mountains before choosing to go along the Black Sea.
Éliane travels with the rifle on her knees.

They will go across Italy non-stop and without sleeping to be able to sing their victory when reaching the panel FRANCE, coming out of the Tende pass.

They arrive with their wrecked 2 CV. Arman, who became specialist in mechanics, knows it by heart and decides to take it all apart and replace everything.
During this journey, he exerted his eye of collector and selected a series of Louristan bronzes that he intends to sell to reimburse their debts.

Picture of Arman

Arman, 1958.

Éliane and Arman

c. 1959.

SPRINGBOARD.

The beginning of the year 1959 will see, with ELIANE and ARMAN's return from their trip to Iran, the finalization of Eliane's decision to give up her professional career as a musician.

The hard times generated by the parental absences forces her back to the statute of “housewife” to be with the three children.

It is Arman who makes regular trips to Paris to advance in the establishment of his professional projects. He visits lots of galleries, meets people to convince them, to prepare, defend and finalize exhibitions.
And emerging from all this energy, things will fall in place.

The French television ORTF makes a film on Arman's "ALLURES D'OBJETS" (ink traces of Objects). Jacques BRISSOT is the director and Pierre SHAEFFER composes the music.
At the end of the year, Arman has his first personal exhibition in Milan at the Apollinaire Gallery.

But what will undoubtedly mark this year, is that Arman makes his first "POUBELLES" (garbage cans) and his first ACCUMULATIONS.

He makes compositions in boxes with garbage in a search to reconstitute and make trace of a kind of instantaneous photograph of the present.

One evening, he opens his drawer full with the radio bulbs he used, smashing them to make his "Allures d'Objets". Looking at the opened drawer, he has a sort of revelation: the serial repetition of the object making mass through its quantity will impose a decisive turn.

It is not only the trace now, but the OBJECT itself which becomes the vector to carry his act forever and become the definitive value.

Envelope with a drawing of Arman

Undated, 1962.

TOWARDS NEW ADVENTURES.

"Affairs”, ARMAN and ARMAND never were short of them and never deprived themselves from having some.

When Armand met Éliane, he's in the middle of a great sentimental story that will take some time to undo until each story finds its right place. Éliane's one is known: she became his wife. The other love story, itself intricates with another one, "between the two, his heart (and body) hesitates and it turnes out like common tales wants it to be: ÉLIANE, will be the third one, and the first to become his wife.

Éliane is rapidly pregnant again. The new spouses are not very happy by the lack of reliability of the famous Ogino method, based on temperatures, known for its remarkable effectiveness towards demographic explosion!

This pregnancy, lived together, is their new common affair. And the one that sees the return of the “affairs”… this time extra marital.

The couple, pioneer in many ways as you know, was also such in their private life. They wanted to be a “modern” couple: each one is free to undertake sentimental explorations but has to confess it all. Thus, the sharing of these affairs should strengthen their couple against adversity: each one is committed to keep the other one as the only "safe" for his/her secrets…
The following proves this beautiful concept to be wrong…
The organization of the “au pair girls" helping the families for the every day tasks, with the petti-coats borrowed to friends of friends, bike riding or walking to the work, will provide Arman with young girls who will actually be more than just "au pair".

Throughout his whole life, Arman will keep talking about his dream of competing with the greater seducers. He loved to be the best and win all the battles: especially those where the adversary proved to be a tough one.

Yes, he was a great ACCUMULATOR!

Détail of a letter

1960.

The “new adventures” date the fame coming up for ARMAN.

He always said how much luck, along his journey, consisted in "meeting the right persons at the right time".
 
IRIS CLERT remains an essential step in his story, just like for many other artists at that time, those on their way too at that time and who will also see the recognition of consecration.

Even if the word “precursory” is a quality which is declined only for male (in French), this woman remains the one who will have taken all the risks in the engagement of her choices.

Without really recovering the (financial) fruits for this later on when everybody will be on rails.

She will continue nevertheless to be defined as engaged until the end for “unlimited freedom”. 

FULL-UP

1960
EDITION SIZE: 500 copies from 1 to 500
TECHNIQUE: Poubelle (Garbage)
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 4,1 x 2,5 x 1,1
MEDIUM: Tin sardine can printed in a cardboard box with a notice, invitation to opening of the exibition "LE PLEIN" at Iris Clert gallery, Paris (France)
PUBLISHER: Iris Clert Gallery, Paris (France)
MAKER: Unknown, (France).

TAKING OFF.

The year 1960 will see ARMAN's notoriety take off.
The event that will single it out, is LE PLEIN, i.e. the “FULL UP”.

With the help of MARTIAL RAYSSE, Arman fills up the IRIS CLERT gallery, 3 rue des Beaux Arts in Paris for an opening on October 25th 1960.
They pile up all kinds of objects such as old records or defective lamps before realizing that filling the gallery will require a hefty volume of objects difficult to gather up. Therefore, they contacted the Abbé PIERRE and asked him for some old pieces of furniture.

“Arman, helped by a young friend from Nice, Martial Raysse, came and prepared his exhibition. After having emptied my gallery and put the items in my cellar, they started to pile up all kinds of objects, like defective Mazda lamps, old records, etc. But it was only a drop of water in a lake. We soon realized it would need an important volume to make this “Full up”. I asked help from the Abbé Pierre ( I've always been "successful" with clerics).

- Father, would you agree to sell me old unused pieces of furniture to fill a space?

- Yes, if you come to pick it up yourself.

For a 100 new French francs, this remarkable man filled up an entire truck for us.

For two days, Arman and Martial Raysse will pill up, accumulate, superimpose a bundle of wobbly pieces of furniture, chairs, tables, bidets, old bicycles. The result is amazing. The by-passers can see, in an 11,5 feet-high window, a spectacular accumulation of garbage.

Inside, at the back of the shop, a space is created for my desk and chair.

On a wall, I hang up some boxes of Arman, his Accumulations whose title and content were: DIRECT to the MOON (suppositories), RETURN of the CRUSADES (rusted keys), LIFE with all your TEETH (old dentures). A cube of glass filled with old pans, which I baptized "HOMAGE to the FRENCH CUISINE", is on the floor".

The invitation card for the opening is a sardine can filled up with wastes and containing a text by the French art critic PIERRE RESTANY: “A major event at Iris Clert 's in 1960 gives to the New Realism its architectonic dimension. In such a context, the fact is quite important. Up until now, no move of appropriation at the antipode of emptiness had encircled so closely the authentic organicity of contingent reality.”

HOMMAGE A LA CUISINE FRANCAISE

1960
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Accumulation
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 18,5 x 14,6 x 14,6
MEDIUM: Kitchen appliances in an old glass container for battery.

THE DEPLOYMENT.

No more photographs of ElianArman, they are not together for “LE PLEIN" at IRIS CLERT gallery in Paris.

ARMAN ensures his notoriety from the success after the event; he goes back and forth, according to the needs to climb up the ladder.

Éliane ceases her own artistic activities: no more conferences, no more concerts… She assures the day by day care of the children and keeps ensuring the continuation of Arman’s work at the store "Le FOYER" (the payment of invoices at the end of each month still had to be made regardless!)…

Arman is happy to realize his carrier and deploys the energy of his that we know, to make plans in order to further expand this starting notoriety to the rest of the world. Éliane stores in a corner, not realizing that she is thus preserving her own musician creative dynamism.

He still needs her, a lot, to exchange at a hundred miles an hour all the effects brought about by the new situation in the creative space with the "POUBELLES". It is in this contact of the discussions that define their relationship that the dialectic unfolds also to build and reinforce Arman.

They enter in a disagreement about that subject that will mark a beginning to the end.

Commensurate with these two geniuses!

To signify their intellectual divorce:

Eliane announces to him:

“ - You know, I am for the ascending metaphor and you are for the descending one ”.

And indeed, this draws two opposite movements

From an Arman letter to Eliane Radigue

Undated, 1960.

« MY CERTAIN MORNING, FOR GOD’S SAKE, WRITE BETTER »

His thirties have passed; they say it is a turning point. For Arman and Éliane and their ten years living together, it is the beginning of a rough crossing.

It will also last for ten years.

Arman advances towards social recognition while Éliane has had to give up her own: she has to wait until the children grow up.

With success, the financial resources are also coming.

A change in the picture occurs: the family settles Avenue de la Lanterne, on the heights of Nice, overlooking the bay, villa with garden. Lord, a gray-blue Great Dane arrives to enlarge the family. But above all, the garage turned into his workshop will make the difference: more space, more distance with life intimacy. All the gestures of Arman finish their establishment: accumulate, cut, break, burn, gestures to which the use of the polyester resin is added to include in transparency.

Talking about Arman to show him, one cannot omit to note that judo, a demanding martial art, sticks to his skin with all the energy and the mastering of gestures that accompanies it. He has a black belt.

Breaking becomes exploding; accumulating has deployed in increasingly large-scale productions as he grows and appropriates workspaces increasingly large too.

Filming of a piano combustion

Combustion of a piano on the roof of the studio/garage at Avenue de La Lanterne, c. 1966.

THE PRESENTATION OF THE OBJECT IS SOMETHING THAT MATTERS TO ARMAN.

Set the scene.

The sentimental scene is marked by an important event.

It is well known: words do not necessarily have the same meaning for everyone. Arman, in the current use of the meaning of words, he has always been unfaithful. While saying himself..., faithful "- faithful to my infidelity" he has repeatedly proclaimed. Since the beginning, the woman, women, are a subject that foresee his qualifying trait: ACCUMULATING.

But what happens there with success, the trips back-and-forth between New York - Nice Côte d'Azur will make a difference. He meets a woman in New York who will become important. She becomes a liaison, for ten years. The decade returns and marks a temporality so dear to Arman.

For Eliane also, this too will make a difference.

In the language of Arman, FAITHFUL, means a whole bunch of multiple adventures (one still recognizes him well). In the present case, he admits: INFIDELE. Yes, he still loves and forever anyhow his "Eliane Panther". But the other love on the other side of the wave comes to be the interlocutor to what always happens with his creative matters.

JOURNALIST :

She also asks questions and she listens carefully to his answers ... Eliane, moved to conspicuously absent from all these questions: they have a conflict of contrary motion and their lives will settle on parallel lines. Of those of side by side that will not be reunited.

The new comfort of life won’t do anything to the case (especially as the territories are becoming, themselves, mixed: Arman dares to bring his love during the period dedicated to the south of France). In short: it's like for everyone in the pain of separation. Hard - hard at the end: Ten years is a long time...

Arman postal card to his children

Colombia 1972.

ref @Fondation A.R.M.A.N. 0539

THE FORTY’S ARE APPROACHING: THE CRISIS.

The forty’s are approaching: is it true then ? The image that sticks to the 40th birthday.

The Crisis ?

The year before, everything is decided: they will separate. Éliane is moving up to Paris with their three teenage children. With caution: they had some Shakespearean times, but they take care to protect their movement in the form of a play for juridical purpose. Adultery is attested in a studio in Nice, at six in the morning / bailiff, to put on record Arman's fault. Éliane does not want to be accused of having abandoned the marital home...

Everything accelerates! For his Mediterranean venues he must retreat at the parental home of Pachatte and Fatheur at the Méou in Vence. To quickly build his workshop and also the family house. The one to re-gather everyone in a wish that will not come through. Arman, fears nothing as usual, he will even play the bigamist: in the wake of the events, he marries in Mexico his liaison who untied ElianArman.

40 years. Even those who do not like birthdays usually decide to celebrate the decades! Yet it is because of the celebration of the seventeen years of his first child who wants to go dancing, that the "Siesta" night-club on the beachfront of Cagnes-sur-Mer, will change the course of history.

He is an excellent dancer and it is well known how much girls like it: a good dancer!

Here we are: there were stone water lilies placed in psychedelic lights.

She was dancing.

About twenty years younger.

And it is her who will change the course of history.

She will become and remain Mrs. Arman.

The dies are cast at crossroads: the repetition of the initial trinity.

Micheline - Marianne - Éliane.

Éliane - Joan - Corice.

The watch jumps on a stop on time:

Official Divorce - Final separation - towards a remarriage.

Do not be mistaken, it is as ever and like the other time not so simple. Éliane wanted a divorce, Arman didn’t want. He asked her to accept a "bourgeois marriage," she refused. She no longer wanted him to continue "- slipping into my bed" and loving others at the same time.

End of the story: 1971, Arman marries Corice Canton in Nice and takes his wedding trip to the Galapagos with Jacques Matarasso (bookseller and support of Arman’s work from the beginning) and his wife Madeleine.

The Bidonville becomes the summer residence. Lord, the dog left in the Vence property during the separation, died of grief. The belongings of the house at Avenue de la Lanterne remained stored in the workshop cellar.

L'Éternel féminin

1995
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Transculpture
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 68,9 x 35,4 x 23,6
MEDIUM: Cut of statue and cut of sewing machine intermixed together, welded bronze and steel patinated green.

NOT THE SEWING MACHINE.

Eliane's Singer treadle sawing machine, the one that generated subsidies from sewing work and filled the wardrobes of the children, and of their dolls. As well as her own wardrobe: Eliane used to cut, sew ornaments to dresses with white cotton fabric that he would cover "All-Over" with "cachets" ...

THIS sewing machine, it is THERE.

Immortalized

In concrete: he said he liked concrete because it fossilizes...

Suspended in time, the sewing machine.

Is it diffacting the other one ? The one from the sewing workshop of Georgette, the mother of Micheline? Breaths and sounds of the feminine world of fabrics scents? Complicities, whispered secrets, laughters, the LAUGH ? THE laugh? That of Pachatte? Echo of the origins of the link, longtime so close to the hotel room in Grasse? The time of the stories telling the things he was drawing, Armandito?

MOTHER'S DAY ...

Woman, women, this sewing machine, which is rediscovered duplicated in multiples, even later. Sacred, exhumed from the concrete gangue to say and show the interior of things with the cut. And be accomplished to complete the story, in its title to write a destiny, Arman signs: Mother's day

THE ETERNAL FEMININE.

Éliane and Arman playing chess

Éliane and Arman are playing chess together in front of the « NAUFRAGE DE LA FRÉGATE -1966- ».

WHEN IN LOVE…

WHEN IN LOVE, IT IS ALWAYS THE FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME...

Eliane and Arman sealed their history in the assertion:

"- We grew each other up."

While they split from Arman’s infidelity, he remains faithful ... to his infidelities.

Understand: other multiple stories intertwine his affair. Intellectually he knows how to defend his creative path through exchanges in which he masters better and better his artistic language.

About his other gravitating love stories, he will say that they have finished his education.

"- In the end, I knew how to dress, I knew the practices of worldliness, the codes for dining in society, the habits and customs of politeness." He liked to say that social varnish is important because it can sometimes be used to replace talent. One must say that his new facility on two continents: New York – South of France and traveling around the world carried by the recognition of his work, brings a lot more adventures from port to port... Until the curtain call, with ten years accomplished to start again, end of story.

Arman, Yasmine and Philippe

c. 1989.

« – I HAVE BEEN FAITHFUL… »

About the early years of his remarriage he will assert :

"- I have been faithful."

During…

10 years...

As always.

Reformulating the reference of the dictionary that is his for the word "faithful" = no love affair.

Meanwhile, he has grown up, therefore educated himself, he decides with the logic that goes with the fact of continuing to learn: to transmit. It is true that one learns a lot from teaching to the other.

By creating his "School of Maieutic" he postulates that everyone should be able to give birth, to shape his own creation capacity. Equal to himself: diehard, Arman, he accompanies a few life-paths of other ones, without failing in his personal navigation. Including by taking a function of Pygmalion at home. In order to reach the legend of this sculptor of antiquity which created a woman of such beauty that he fell in love with her. The requirement for the best, Arman. For providing authority to drive the improvement of performance: levelling to the top.

Outside, it is under the form of financial aid to carry out studies to one and to the other that he seals his educational conviction.

He himself resumes with learning. After his first love of Chess from his youth, in which he had developed enough to earn a few stripes, it is with the game of Go that he learns in order to reach as always with him: the most complete mastery. At the same time, he commits himself completely to his collector’s appetite, in all direction and especially in African Art that he made a specialty of high competence.

Until some morning, when he wakes up with the energy of its creed:

"- What matters in art, it is the decision."

He puts on his work overalls towards the workshop, it is irrevocable. In the discipline acquired from his practice of martial arts, he puts Go and African art back to their place: that is to say after his own creative work.

Meanwhile two children came to enlarge his second family.

UNTITLED

1959
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Allure d'objet
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 29,5 x 42,9
MEDIUM: Traces of object on paper.

IT IS THE TIME OF FIFTIES.

It is the time of his fifties and one has to celebrate it: back to the task for another decade. With what will go along with this additional decade: it's like every time...

He engages in a new love affair, anyway.

Faithful to his infidelity.

That will last again ten years with no surprise...

During these ten educational years, he used techniques he made his own in a connoisseur's appetite: he selects, sorts out and takes final options regarding the choice of the objects he uses to make his trademark. It will be the objects that are the best tamed and shaped by human hand.

From his surfing on the teaching wave, he clearly keeps a selective choice of what he wants to accumulate, cut, break, burn or include in the resin or concrete.

The 1980’s will see him develop and explore one of his techniques: THE CUT.

That is always his way of proceeding: explore, revisit, decline to the dregs each of his initial gestures from the beginning.

The cut of the object, Arman gives it two virtues: one is the possibility to go with the look to inside of things. The other is the diamond sharp slice represented by the edge portion of the cut. He looks for it and wants it to shine, present to sparkle the lights and shiver his line. As an echo of his work to use the object at the beginning? The imprint to make a slice of the "Allure d'objet" that was itself unwinding the movement of the object?

To reveal simultaneously the motion with the imprint of the crossing of the motion, to divert the frozen frame to the benefit of the hologram certifying that nothing is fixed, it all breathes like the first breath, a sort of ode to life ?

No, he does not select his objects by chance: he only wants those that are the most recognizable as possible and as many as possible.

"- A violin remains a violin and everyone recognizes a violin."

The treatment he inflicts to the object will set a narrative to draw its fate.

As Arman tells stories with the object.

Always. This decade 1980, when he decids to treat the issue of statuary, to do a spell to ancient objects charged with history to go back in time and to see the interior of things, he does not talk at all in the void.

Because the careful and competent interlocutor this time is:

AN ART HISTORIAN.

Specialist of Quattrocento, No less.

So he can deploy himself, Arman, thirsty for culture as he is: from mythology that he transforms with the humorous form of his multiple drawer-shaped titles to color the story, to give sense. He is understood, totally fulfilled. And ready to live a first time once again, as always ...

In 1992 he decides to write a diary. Going over his sixties and the repetitions he can perceive in the sad tiredness of failing to find his grail, the letter correspondence is no longer in fashion, he wants to fix on paper because of the time passing by.

To understand.

UNTITLED

1963 - circa
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Empreinte (Imprint)
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 25,6 x 19,7
MEDIUM: Imprints of statuette silhouette on paper.

Portrait of Arman

Le Bidonville, Vence

THINK AND UNDERSTAND.

THINK AND UNDERSTAND : THIS IS THE ROLE HE GIVES TO ART.

His "never and always" contradictory love fluctuations of his soul are questioning the need to shed some light on the propensity he has for many others, for another one at the same time as other ones over the edge and under his skin.

Raised, educated in the mastering of who he his and what he knows he can give, he comes back to the blank page, to make a reflection of it, a revelation.

From now on, he is very well organized in his current life: telephone has replaced the letters. He uses it day by day and it takes him a lot of time. He wants to schedule without fault what he calls the "damage control" of his multiple love stories. One must say that between the faithful ones and infidelity, all this makes a lot of alcoves.

His appointment books mustn’t betray anything, annotations are done with bilingual numbering; number one, number two and so on. The simultaneity of the repetitions does not lose the original move from the trinity.

Arman took as his own for everything in his life Lavoisier’s motto "nothing is made newly, nothing is lost, everything gets transformed".

Remaining true to form, he practices, he explores, he readjusts and he reconsiders. Because what is for sure, is that each one mattered and counted. Besides, concerning the accounts, they are becoming a major concern: he never turned down his responsibilities and it ends up making a lot of accounts to supply. Although the official version focuses on his tendancy to collect, but what the archives do not say, it’s that this feminine Multiple is not innocent regarding some professional decisions and developments: one needs to assume.

Arman and Yves

c. 1990.

TURNING OF THE DECADE.

Especially since the responsibility of a bond, for life this time, comes in addition to complete the picture. A child is born from a romantic getaway who forms a third family, hidden. One says "out of wedlock".

1989, his sixty years of age are barely celebrated, an end of a story in a wrong turn on the road. His first son Yves dies and signs a stop in time.

Turning of the decade:

A woman with a hidden child echoes to the beginning.
Families often grow around a secret...

WALL PIECE

1983

EDITION SIZE: Unique and original work of art

TECHNIQUE: Wall Relief

DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 70,1 x 55,9 x 0,8

MEDIUM: Spoons welded together.

« – THOUSAND SPOONS ARE MORE SPOON THAN A SINGLE SPOON. »

ARMAN WHAT IS FOUNDING YOU?

For sure, now we know: the REPETITION, SEEN-TAKEN the object and we start again.

Because "- Thousand spoons are more spoon than a single spoon. "

Yes, he makes the multiple in multiples; but do not get it wrong and go back to the basis, to not risk losing Arman on the way: his legendary way, Arman, is to ACCUMULATE.

The luck of this diary, that he decided to put words, mirroring today when he is no longer here to explain, is that he begins with the idea of writing and drawing for himself. Later, celebrity and getting old will incite him to choose to skim it, like for milk, to make it more digestible. Here, in his early writing, he is not confiding for posterity where all things are not necessarily good to be heard. Here, when one is heading slowly towards the new decade, the last one as he enters his twilight of life.

LA GUITARE DE MARC

1989
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Shooting Colors
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 45,3 x 35,4
MEDIUM: Broken guitare, traces of colors (blue, yellow, orange, brown) on canvas

HE ALWAYS LIKED WORDS.

For those who are a little bit connoisseurs, or even gourmets, of Arman, his caustic relation to words is not a scoop. He ALWAYS loved words. To Remember:

HE DREW AND TOLD STORIES.

He also always cultivated his passion for words, he loved books, poetry, and used to say that no matter where he was, even in an anonymous hotel room, with books, he was at home.

This time, the infidelity of this decade is written in this aspection.

SHE IS A WOMAN OF LETTERS.

And shares abundantly the: "LOCURA ESENCIAL. "
Essential madness. What do you know, a tip of the Hispanic origin of the Fernandez family for the verve that comes back? Besides, he effectively returns at the beginning: a return to painting. In a cornucopia of colors because of this verve? In all cases the gesture will never pull any punches and will raise emotions inside, tempo sustained! Staccato or highlight of flamenco, master the foot that shoots colors to make a paint arch covering the object. YES: locura esencial. Beethoven in his ninth symphony loudly played in the workshop for joy to remain: hot stuff. An essential return for him, Arman.

To the source, to the origin: to paint. That decade.

View from the sculpture studio

Le Bidonville, Vence

AND HERE WE ARE TONIGHT…

At the edge of his end of life on earth. As everyone becomes a legatee of his gestures, of all these transformed objects. Of those that he gave to us to see in order to give us to understand. Of those who shaped his tongue: his way of speaking to us, saying it in his own way.

The work of art questions the issue of communication in an essential way: the sharing of aesthetic shock is like the delicious recognition of the taste, the sound, the color to make some unforgettable moments together. Because what underlies this fact is the state of certainty confirmed by the experience that defines an index of truth. Body sensation, the feeling from the experience that attests that it is true, you are not dreaming, since it becomes real and this dual relation confirms it. The one who creates and the one who looks at the picture.

We like (or sometimes hate!), it is a strong occurrence which is not necessarily explained and not necessarily justified (except for "art experts").

It's like love: should love at first sight be just defined as and reduced to a hormonal surge? No, what founds the magnitude of the event is that it materializes a dialectical encounter to the other, we understand each other and we love what we understand together.

When the viewer looks at the picture, he shares intimately without words the artist's text and path of thoughts. To live an experience in the depth of unspeakable inasmuch as here things are expressed just by being shown. A kind of gateway to an absolute in the relationship, an accomplishment that takes to find each other and interact and recognize it in the silence created by the work.

Success and fame remain a question below this experience. Art has a function that has always been granted as a separate status. An essential and privileged one because art when it becomes visionary, it offers solutions including the power to UNDERSTAND AND UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER.

Detail. Ground of Arman's studio

Le Bidonville, Vence.

ONE MUST ALWAYS GET TO THE END.

In the division of the work, it is the essence of the link that is found in the "as close as possible" of the artist. As close as possible, Arman knew well how to do it...

The women in his life, in their number and their differences, ALL, have one thing in common: the conviction that they have been UNIQUE. A nice paradox with respect to the multiple, right? Arman had the savoir-faire! And it is not by accident, as it might seem at first.

One must always get to the end...

Last decade: the same pattern repeats itself as always in his love life to pass the seventies. Arman knows that he his repeating to each and all of them he loves them: including his "fidelities" that eventually become infidelities despite the seismic risks to shake the architecture of his daily life, forcing him to an organization beset by permanent emergency to find arrangements.

He liked it "- finding ways out", confident in his knack, still in appetite to get back to serial work and start again.

THIS EVENING...

PETITS DÉCHETS BOURGEOIS

1959
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Poubelle (Garbage)
DIMENSIONS IN INCHES.: 23,6 x 15,7 x 3,9
MEDIUM: Household garbage in a glass box.

THIS EVENING…

2004: the indignations from the bad news about his health are gone. He is very ill, and things are not going in the right direction.

This September sees a family gathering of his first family for a celebration. Arman has now accepted that he cannot be the patriarch he wanted to be for a family reunification of his entire pack. Today his family from the "first bed", , gathers up, that of his first wife of the letters to his muse. They had not seen each other in a long time, Eliane and Arman. They both retreat in the small living room of the Bidonville, tired and a little hungry.

We found them later, asleep side by side in front of the feast: camembert and sip of red wine carefully chosen.

Amazing - THIS - Camembert! The one whose brand won’t be named in order to avoid advertising, even though! This is one in his first "Poubelle"! The Poubelle of their intellectual disagreement which formed their final contrary moves! That camembert box recovered among the waste picked up by Arman who had rushed to his parent in-law’s flat in Paris! This waste included a box of the favorite Camembert of Eliane's father to make the "PETITS DECHETS BOURGEOIS"!

Last lap: These "Poubelles" of their disagreement and here they are in ... AGREEMENT. Sleeping together because of favorable circumstances to be in the same rhythm. Around the small snack, did they look up and see the trade name?

Could this be the WHOLE question to Arman's feminine: to AGREE.

TRACTION AVANT, TRACTION APRÈS

1991

EDITION SIZE: Unique

TECHNIQUE: Atlantis

DIMENSIONS IN INCHES: 62 x 217,7 x 144,9

MEDIUM: Car cast in bronze

MAKER: Fonderie d'Art R. Bocquel S.A., Bréauté (France)

JANUARY 2005.

His last trip to the Bidonville.

In addition, snow is falling, it's hard. It's cold, he is cold, he is more than tired. But still, he carries on, he is stubborn..., he carries on watching the clock of time for next winter by formulating a request : to make "- this home more comfortable in winter."

There will be no other winter.

And here we are in the evening around this table he had wanted under a closed veranda of the terrace, in front of TRACTION AVANT - TRACTION APRES, under a blanket of snow. Together around the soup, this soup just as he likes it: the vegetables are cut into small squares, sauté with a spoon of olive oil before being covered with water for cooking. One of Pachatte’s recipes.

It’s true that the sharing of the meal, when there is no need for representation linked to his fame: cameras in alert, obligatory laughter to all jokes- it does not matter if they the jokes are not funny, it has nothing to do with this here...

And yet, yes there is something to see. His hands feel so cold that assistance has to provide him with leather gloves that are lined, the wool alone was not enough... Don’t try, it’s not easy to eat with them... And here he needs to eat...

So giving him the spoon, moving the glass forward, pushing the slice of bread for his favorite cheese, goat cheese that time, to combine with the soup as he remains as precise in the composition as he is in his work.

Only flawless knowledge in the intimate link with perfectly orchestrated relay makes grace happen here: in the form of feeding him.

As a duet, in a "pas de deux" that should not make missteps. No stumbling, to succeed in the WORK, in some way. Without words, in these whereabouts to know the right time of the other one... As for know-how, all figures must be carried out smoothly, the towel and the move in time to the mouth.

A MAN'S STORY.

But there is no woman attending this ritual.
This tango is a man’s story now.

And indeed it is strange because Arman talks at this moment: of masculine.
Of his son, Yves.
Of his father, Fatheur.
His absent ones.
The clock has stopped time, it no longer gives the time.
Except for that of...
WAITING.
How to show this image...
THE ABSENCE.

He drew clocks, Armandito...
" - I DREW CLOCKS. "

Those so much looked at?
By him and by the other.
They have waited so much for him:
Antonio, his father, until this time when he was not coming for days...
This time that sets the occurrence of a possible deconstruction.
The hypothesis of a catastrophe.
A decomposed time.
To recompose.

Immediately he explained how it all went wrong against normal course with this car rolling out of the road this February 14th 1989 near Saragosse (here again Spain, a fate...)
" - This is when I started my cancer of the widow ".
Really? So he became the other one: the woman who carries in her...

His father.
He died later but in the right order of things, he was old, but still Arman's heart exploded... With the superimposed memory of these two moments when he was unable to go to recognize them, neither one nor the other, he was just breathless.
Because the look, the vision is so much for real, that the end, this particular end, he could hear it, by force, ears cannot be shut. But there is no other solution than close your eyes to the images. Not "-way out" here. Movement is gone, breathing is gone. The body to contact is lost: to the subscribers of... the absence.
Just emptiness.

How to re-compose again without betraying the bang ?
How to restore the sight, the sound, the image, the story, the full ?

Night of 17th to 18th Feb. 94

Few days since I have not written anything and yet with Valentine day there would be things to say. It is still vivid, and painful this anniversary that has now become more the memory of my son's death than the day for lovers. In a sense the party was over and all there is to do now is to extinguish the (party) candles - which have turned into (liturgical) candles.

THE KEY TO THE WHOLE STORY

If that was the key to the whole story ?

The key to the question of his womanizing man's life and his works to be accumulated ?

Art historians, take your pens: Arman did not imitate Don Juan or Casanova.

Only embody to the female interlocutor. For real.

What is more natural than talking together? This talk about the origin? About the the secret link. With the one with whom so much was said of their five years of life shared together, mother and son, in this room of the Grand Hotel de Grasse. Tonight he persists in trying to find the meaning of things, finding the place, the place of his father, his son; the father, the son.

Him.

A man's place that would not be that of the dependent child to know the face of the other who listens to him and who he listens to. Tonight, he builds the story to recompose the image.

I look and listen...

As we did so often...

To think and try to understand, this is our education.

These women, all women are parading with sound and images to connect to their unique place in multiple and I know they are not mistaken.

He loved them, each one, all of them, a single one, the same together.

In the infinite appetite of sharing culture: sound, writing, journalism, history of art, photography, Film.

For words.

For the thing one has to say, show, listen.

THE LETTERS.

WOMEN of letters.

In the shadow and light of a library of knowledge, those that provide instruction... Yes of course he said so often and showed his admiration for her!

From Arman’s diary, December 31, 1992 entry.

"Mademoiselle, you may have noticed that I have seen you move and have followed you several times. I would like to leave in your letter box this missive. I have the audacity to ask you one thing, if you're not too annoyed by my behavior. The next time we will come across each other, if you smile I will feel encouraged in the interest I have for you and the desire I have to know you.

respectfully,

Antoine Fernandez"

From Arman’s diary, December 31, 1992 entry

I think he was encouraged because I'm here to attest it.

But these years 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - bear the burden for my mother of insecurity and humiliation.

I remember an image, being in her arms and she was crying. Also as early as I can remember, the visits of my father he was staying a part of the evening and he was leaving, returning to his mother's home. The question. 1°) if they didn't loose their wealth would my father still have married my mother ?

2°) what was the schedule normally day after day of the visits and length of stay of my father ?

From Arman’s diary, December 31, 1992 entry.

3°) when my mother was expecting me and after, how did my father support her and us, because I believe she was not working any longer.

4°) when exactly did he open the pastry shop ? I think I recall that my mother and her sister louise were working there. And how long this venture lasted ?

5°) when exactly my father broke the news to his family. what was said, what was the answer and subsequently why we had to take residence in Grasse in order for my parents to get married. (That residence was held at the palace hotel of Grasse, a grand palace old fashion and maybe it is why I developed a taste for palace all my life).

6°) what was the arrangement between my father, his family, my mother

From Arman’s diary, December 31, 1992 entry.

although I don't think she had much to say, for the two apartments rented rue Marechal Joffre; a big one for the family, a small one for us. What exactly was the financial agreement between my father and his family. as I recall he was the bread earner but giving all the bulk of the money to his father. I am asking myself those questions now, because maybe the events of the last few years somehow seem sometimes to have been engineered partially in the past, at least in my mind.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE D'ALEXANDRIE

1968
EDITION SIZE: Unique
TECHNIQUE: Accumulation of combustionsv DIMENSIONS IN INCHES: 78,7 x 63 x 7,1
MEDIUM: Burned violins in a plexiglas box

HYPATIA!

And her library in Alexandria, a mythical woman raised by her father who introduced her to mathematics and philosophy. Passed to posterity from the violence suffered for having made herself guardian of the temple of her library, priestess of knowledge in this far time when the thing was not well considered for a woman. Burned, butchered, called a witch. She claimed to remain ... a virgin, for the right to non-seigneur.

Burned… COMBUSTION...

Dismembered… CUT… EXPLODE...

This library...

Accumulated to diffract, close to the loss of identity generated by the number. Wire tightrope, clinging to her(their) shadow, to keep this thread tight: Critical Mass that he recomposes.

Here : THE OBJECT - INSIDE –

THOUSAND WOMEN …

So, Arman; You wanted her like that? The one(s) to whom you could speak.

Knowledgeable, who dared to say no and claimed so.

You wanted her, despite the risk of punishment, of death, of the danger of combat.

To lose her?

Who or what?

The mastering of your gesture?

He raises one eyebrow above his dark eye, this expression is so much his own.

Above the concentration on the work he is trying to accomplish with a brush, with color, a cutter, or any thing else, with the tip of his tongue kept tight between his lips. The smirk smile with wrinkles on the forehead as he is about to say, with harmonic southern accent on the vocal cord for something a little paradoxical as he likes it:

“ – well, this is gay… “

THOUSAND WOMEN MORE WOMEN THAN ONE WOMAN?

In his secret of things?

To mix the identity and recompose to his heart content and uncompromised each reflection of quantity.

Point of arrival: UNITY ...

Eternal...

Feminine.

If the price of eternity had to be through the diffraction to repeat in multiple for the metamorphosis to achieve making the reflection, a mirror to understand and recognize oneself?

Touched...

Lets give back the titles of nobility to this great value of accumulation without flinching nor be afraid of the number. To honor and take the duty of the memory.

Pardon, not just one memory, but for a just memory.

Marion Moreau

31st of August 2015

From Arman’s diary, March 12, 1992 entry

I want a lot,
but I also give a lot. I do not mean
what I can give materially,
but what I bring as, world,
climate, creative exaltation, fundamental anxieties.
etc., etc. and I need a dialogue, not
a monologue - ya veramos