The Day After

“The Day After” (made in 1984), is Arman’s melancholy statement on the march of time and our own mortalities. Seven pieces of furniture, in the Classical French style, make up a functioning Sitting Room. The artist has burnt them so that they are not useable yet retain their identities, and then casts these fragile remnants into the formidable material of bronze, that which is used for public monuments of heroes and kings. Arranged in the Sitting Room of the apartment of the Maharaja at Madhavendra Palace, they speak of the lives of the former inhabitants of this structure and the many memories it contains. The work is both a monument to the passing of dynasties and a warning on the fragility of the human species.