Arman, mars 2001, photo Ville de Nice, © ADAGP, Paris, 2025
The MAMAC and the City of Nice commemorate the 20th anniversary of Arman’s death on October 22, 2005.
Arman and MAMAC
Arman had very close and ongoing personal ties with Nice and MAMAC. He is remembered for his presence every summer, walking through the museum’s galleries, offering insightful opinions on the works on display or acquisitions, with great wit and affection.
When the MAMAC opened in June 1990, the museum’s permanent collection already included two iconic works acquired in 1988: Allure aux bretelles (1959) and The birds 11 (1981).
Several other acquisitions followed: in 1997 Clair Obscur (1982); in 1999, Accumulation Renault (ca. 1968); in 2000, Vénus aux ongles rouges (ca. 1967).
The MAMAC presented a retrospective, “Arman, Passage à l’acte,” from June 16 to October 14, 2001.
“This personal retrospective shows the works in chronological order, punctuated by highlights: actions, happenings, installations, some reconstructed, others performed. This journey, dotted with events, gives it a special character due to the works in situ and thus distinguishes it from other retrospectives.” [Arman, manuscript, 2001].
The exhibition was spread across the first exhibition level and the contemporary gallery. In the contemporary gallery, Arman recreated a small bourgeois apartment from the 1970s, as he had done in 1975 at the John Gibson Gallery in New York, where, during a performance called Conscious Vandalism, he destroyed the entire set. He wanted to reproduce this performance for the retrospective in Nice. The day before the opening, with the help of a bulldozer, he once again pulverized furniture, objects, and wallpapered walls in front of a large and amused audience.
This retrospective led to the addition of several works to the permanent collection: Sans titre (1983); Sans Titre (1962); Poubelle de Warhol (1969); Anamorphose (1962); Le village de grand-mère 1962.
In 2004, Arman donated Camin dei Inglese, an accumulation of blue chairs from the Promenade des Anglais, for the facade of the museum’s interior patio.
In tribute to Arman’s death in New York on October 22, 2005, the central forecourt of the MAMAC was named after the artist: Parvis Arman.
A series of six stamps and four gouaches from the late 1950s was acquired that same year, completing the MAMAC’s collection on Arman.
A second exhibition, “Arman, Subida al cielo,” was presented in the museum’s Contemporary Gallery from June 30 to October 1, 2006, reiterating the posthumous tribute to Arman.
Focus on Works
Arman. Passage à l’acte June 16–October 14, 2001, MAMAC, Nice
“Within the trio formed by Yves Klein, Arman, and Martial Raysse, founding pillars of the School of Nice and vibrant components of New Realism, Arman identifies himself as the quintessential chthonic element. His work is deeply rooted in matter, matter that is constantly questioned, explored, dislocated, and recomposed until its every secret is revealed. He voraciously appropriates reality, exuding in the act of creation all the violence and transgression to which his obsession with objects leads him.”
Gilbert Perlein in cat. Arman. Passage à l’acte, MAMAC, 2001, p. 11.
In 1963, in Essen, Germany, Arman staged a performance in which he dynamited various objects (furniture, refrigerators, etc.), including a convertible car: filmmaker Charles Wilp’s white MG. Arman blew it up. He then bolted it to a large wooden panel so that the wreckage of the convertible could be hung like a painting or a hunting trophy. He called it White Orchid. “White Orchid is a car whose doors, twisted by the blast, evoke the petals of a magnificent flower, embalmed and pinned like a butterfly in an entomologist’s box.”
On the occasion of the Arman retrospective, Passage à l’acte, organized at the Mamac in 2001, Arman repeated this gesture in a quarry near Vence. This time, it was a Triumph Spitfire that was dynamited.
La Tulipe, or at least its charred remains, was then hung in the museum’s contemporary gallery, before being entrusted to the museum in 2011 by Corice Canton Arman, the artist’s widow.
