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Meet Arson, contemporary French sculptor: an artist's life
Arson, Un talent brut: the founding childhood of the artist-sculptor
It's the story of a meeting between man and material. A bronze sculptor, the artist shapes plaster, clay, resin and acrylic. Indeed, to create is to exist: Arson comes alive when he works with matter. Creating, shaping... artistic expression is inscribed in the French sculptor's DNA. Born into an illustrious family from Nice, Arson spent his early childhood with a maternal grandmother surrounded by artists. She was friends with Poliakoff, Prat, André Lhote and Dali. He then followed his parents to Gordes, an emblematic Provencal village facing the Luberon. It was there, as if by destiny, that he found traces of these genius painters and visual artists. In fact, it was back when Gordes was a source of pure inspiration, nurturing Chagall, Vazarely, Pol Mara, Jean Deyrolle and so many others who lived there.
Arson's premises: the beginnings of the subversive contemporary French sculptor
Arson entered the Beaux-Arts at the age of 16, where he studied painting and then architecture. He then worked for an architect for a while, before refusing military service. Instead of following a career path mapped out for him, he spent a year training as a potter with a renowned master potter in the Gordes region. The budding artist's desire to emancipate himself from castrating rules was already apparent. Indeed, Arson has a vital need to express himself through matter, just as some artists take up the pen or take up the battlefield. The living French sculptor speaks of his need to work with any material, of the deep pleasure he takes in transforming a lump of earth into a model, carving a stone or pouring metal into a plaster mould created from modelling or carving.
Coming of age: Arson, the adventurous sculptor
After gaining experience in the food industry by taking over a family restaurant, Arson moved to Canada. Some time later, he settled back in France, in the Lot region, where he set up a sculpture workshop. Following the birth of his daughter, and the responsibilities that this entailed, the contemporary French sculptor went on to set up a construction business, which he continued until 1994. Before returning to his art, which has never left him. A "polymorphous" artist, he resumed his sculpting activities, took to the stage - as an amateur - for four years, painted and wrote. He published an autobiography, two detective novels(Sur le Coeur), a collection of poetry(Arsonneries) and a political memoir(Lettre à Voltaire).
Artistic inspirations: contemporary French sculptors tell their stories
Arson knows how to find himself where he is least expected. The contemporary French sculptor refuses labels and frees himself from them. In life as in artistic expression, Arson is free. The artist navigates between "pop art" inspirations (found in his sensual sculptures of Les Esculmaux, or Bonbons Candy...), surrealism (Le Téléphone, Les Valises), women's freedom (Musulmane) and the environment(Atlas and L'Arbre à planches). Moreover, there is no stylistically careerist desire on Arson's part to follow a single path, a single style consecrated by success, but ideas, life forces on subjects marking the times: giving meaning to his work through reflection and questioning. An artist with a thousand facets, modern and provocative, Arson is also a great traveler. In fact, it was during his sojourns to the four corners of the globe that he "breathed in truths that were different from those we're made to swallow at home", and which nourished his art. A cinephile and jazz aficionado, he is also "addicted to chess" (to which he pays tribute with the spectacular Cavalier d'échecs).
Arson, an artist sculptor against the grain? An artist's view of the world around him
As he grew older and became a doting grandfather, did the committed artist become more subdued? An eternal rebel and libertarian, the modern, provocative artist has lost none of his ardor: without idols or accepted masters, in his eyes "Anarchy is the freedom of men who deserve it", in other words, men who are educated and respectful of others. Through his monumental, impertinent and sometimes outrageous works, Arson sculpture invites viewers to enter into a dialogue with his sensual sculptures, his pop sculptures. The aim is to challenge an established order and an ultra-normative, soporific world, to awaken the critical spirit... To forget the foul stupidity of certain contemporaries and those who govern us, to fight against this world of money, interests and pride, which no longer knows any sense of the value of things and feelings.