Arman began the series of artworks he called "accumulations" in 1959. He got the idea from boxes of old-fashioned glass-and-metal radio tubes he bought to use in his aret. The idea of collections of numerous like objects has occupied his work ever since. He has collected trash, nostalgic objects, and more recently new mass-produced objects for his works. His selection of specific objects often had political, social or personal meanings. The random arrangements of these objects also lent elements of chance to his work.

In 1961, Arman began a new series based on processes of destruction which he called "tantrums" and "slices" in which he carefully destroyed objects by smashing them, burning them, or cutting them into strips and encasing what remained. In this work the shoes are carefully cut in half before they are embedded in the polyester. He said,

"As far as I'm concerned, there is no fundamental difference between accumulating an object or smashing an object. One thousand objects are not fundamentally different than one thousand pieces of the same object."

Arman challenges us to think about what can transform an everyday object into a work of art. Earlier in the 20th century, Marcel Duchamp, one of Arman's major influences and his good friend, said that ready-mades --carefully selected single objects such as a snow shovel, a bicycle wheel or a urinal that Duchamp signed and therefore declared as art--were artistic because he had "created a new thought for an object."

Arman similarly creates new thoughts for ordinary things in his work. The viewer sees not just football shoes, but an arrangement of colors, textures and patterns. These works also bring up issues of our consumer-based culture and what that means for our society and for the environment. Arman said,

"I didn't discover the principle of accumulation; it discovered me. It has always been obvious that society feeds its sense of security with a pack-rat instinct demonstrated in its window displays, assembly lines, and garbage piles. As a witness of my society, I have always been very much involved in the ... cycle of production, consumption, and destruction. And for a long time, I have been anguished by the fact that one of its most conspicuous material results is the flooding of our world with junk and rejected objects."

Vocabulary Terms

random--Having no specific pattern, arrangement, or predictable outcome.

ready-mades--A label given by artist Marcel Duchamp to a series of works he created in the early 20th century in which common oBJects--such as bicycle wheels, urinals, snow shovels, and bottle racks--were altered slightly and signed with a fictitious name and presented as works of art.

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