Arman

Galleria Schwarz, Milan

Svensk-Franska, Stockholm

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1966

Milan, Galleria Schwarz, Arman, 1963, n.p., no. 1707

Denyse Durand-Ruel, Ed., Arman: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II, 1960-62, Paris,  1991, p. 151, no. 298, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is deeper and richer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals some minor handling to the edges and a hairline crack to the right of the penultimate violin slice which appears to be original. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra violet light.
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Created in 1962, Dosilasolfamirédo Deuxieme Gamme is one of the earliest examples of Arman’s iconic dissections of musical instruments; collectively known as the Coupes, or sliced objects, Arman sustained this very inquiry until the very end of his life. The unerring continuation of this series is thus utter testament to the artist’s consummate satisfaction with the power of the motif and the potential beauty of its arrangement. Consisting of a violin, precisely cut into seven slices and mounted on a board, this work gracefully unites lyricism with destruction and boldly juxtaposes beauty with ruin.

A key member of the Nouveaux Réalistes, Arman stood at the forefront of the European Pop movement. By the late 1950s he had ceased to look for abstract solutions to the problem of making art in an era of mechanical production, instead appropriating objects and ideas from his every-day surroundings. He fetishised the commonplace, presenting unique reinterpretations of the Duchampian readymade. Where Marcel Duchamp had elevated industrially produced objects, such as bottle racks and urinals, to a high-art setting, Arman presented the detritus of an object’s destruction. In the present work, the deliberate breakdown of a violin, supposedly an object of value with a long symbolic heritage, conveys a decadent, almost arrogant, lack of reverence for the hand-crafted object and symbol of culture and accomplishment within the throw-away era of factory manufacture. Where his Pop peers in America – Warhol, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg – presented art that tackled the all-consuming advance of capitalist consumption, Arman goes one step further to create art that literally consumes itself; its tangible forms devoured for the sake of its artistic message.

This destruction is not without purpose, however. As the artist himself said, “There is also a logic to destruction. If you break a rectangular box, you arrive at something cubist. If you break a violin, you get something romantic” (Arman quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Arman, 1977, p. 30). Indeed, an homage to the history of Analytical Cubism is unmistakable within these pieces. Arman does not annihilate these objects, but rather treats them with an almost tender precision. In contrast to the corpus of Colères, or tantrums, in which destroyed and broken musical instruments are displayed as debris, the Coupes are purposeful and exact; as in the present work, each cut is long, clean, and overtly considered. His destruction is onomatopoeic: through these cursive lyrical lines, punctuated into a regular rhythm, the artist imbues his composition with a musical mood, even recalling the deft firm strokes of a horsehair violin bow. It is typical of Arman’s subversive approach that through attacking the physical form of the object, he further recalls its purpose, acting almost as if to crystallise the violin in action.

Though undoubtedly echoing the concerns of his American counterparts, Arman owed a significant debt to his European contemporaries. The introduction of cutting as the decisive compositional strategy here evokes the tremendous impact of Lucio Fontana, who had already gained repute for his pioneering and celebrated series of tagli. Both Fontana and Arman showed courage to attack bastions of continental culture, upon which masterpiece after masterpiece had been forged: the canvas and the violin respectively. Their confidence and consideration in destruction paved the way for countless artists and put them at the forefront of a new avant-garde.

Created early in Arman’s career, Dosilasolfamirédo Deuxieme Gamme is a consummate example of the artist’s manipulation of everyday objects to create lyrical and engaging concetti. As redolent in the present work, he cuts the violin into graceful strips with all the elegance and deftness of a bow plucking strings.