Damage Control. Arman or the Mastery of Chaos: Preface and Catalog of the Works by Marc Moreau

Résumé En

Allures-Colères, Colères, Coupes, Explosions, Combustions, Sandwich-Combos or Fragmentations: the creative identity of the French-American artist Arman (1928-2005) was largely based on the exploitation and methodical declination of principle of irreversible destruction of the object as a process of artistic activation. The obvious recurrence of this approach to sometimes spectacular demonstrations and aiming at the deconstruction-transformation of the object in the context of public performance but especially of his studio practice, did not fail to capture the attention of the observers and to provoke questioning. Critics, journalists and art historians have been able to question the profound foundations of his modality of intervention, with a final analysis systematically correlated to a mental and physical preconfiguration of Arman disposing it to the destruction of the more or less common artifact: violin, alarm clock, coffee grinder, statuette, painting, armchair, sewing machine, car...This central and complex issue can today benefit from a privileged highlight thanks to the study of the correspondence exchanged by the artist and his first wife, the composer Eliane Radigue, from the beginning of the 1950s to the end of the years. 1960, a thousand letters kept by the Foundation A.R.M.A.N. of Geneva. Part of the author's letters are reproduced here alongside a selection of enlighting works by Marc Moreau, preface writer of the present work from the Damage Control exhibition presented by the Arman internet Museum since April 2018.