Undivided Attention

In this work Arman piled pipe wrenches cast in bronze on top of and next to one another, forming a tower of these commonplace tools. Like his fellow members of the Nouveau Réalisme (new realism) movement in postwar France, Arman explored the aesthetics of ordinary objects. Undivided Attention is one of Arman’s “accumulations,” sculptures grouping together a number of nearly identical objects. He saw these works as collections of traces left behind by consumer society, its cycles of production, consumption, and destruction. Using the traditional medium of bronze, Arman emphasized the relationship between fine art and mass-produced objects.