Fleurs (Flowers, 1959) is an historic piece: the very first monumental ‘accumulation’ Arman ever made. Organized as an artistic event in his hometown of Nice, Fleurs was destroyed as the artist could not afford to store it afterward.Fleurs is one of Arman’s most successful examples of the genre he created: From an accumulation of common objects, he creates both a minimal and baroque sculpture. Creating a forest of 60 coat racks, he reinterprets a classic subject of art history – the still life of flowers. His logic works perfectly: Although a coat rack is nothing other than a piece of furniture; sixty of them create a new beast, an environmental piece. In an interview in 1992 with the French art critic Otto Hahn, Arman reflected: ‘In 1959, everything happens at the same time. I am like a gun stuffed with powder that asks only to leave. My language is organized, the different facets are articulated […] The object is the common denominator of my work. I then have two well-defined directions: accumulation and destruction […] The quantity creates a change, the object is canceled as an object.’Given its historical importance, Arman decided, on the occasion of his first retrospective in his native city in 2001, to recreate this fantastic piece.
