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ARTS / Room for improvement: What are the ideal conditions in which to look at art? Dalya Alberge asks three experts to make an exhibition of their fantasy blueprints: The artist

Dalya Alberge
Tuesday 16 March 1993 00:02 GMT
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ARMAN (Armand Fernandez), the French artist, is best-known for his smashed musical instruments and typewriters. He adopted the name Arman after a printer's error on a catalogue in 1958, two years after his first solo show. Among his large-scale monumental sculptures are the welded bronze suitcases and clocks at the Gare St Lazare, Paris.

If money were no object, I would have a design that would constantly change. I'd have walls that could turn like a James Bond film and be changed on a computer.

The luxury of my design would be in the lighting: it would be modulated for each work - a completely different lighting for each sculpture, each painting, each assemblage . . . That would make each piece look extraordinary.

I would not have too many windows, but the design should not be too closed either. Otherwise you would feel isolated, as if in a tomb. I'd have a neutral space with perhaps grey and off-white shades. If you show contemporary art, a heavy setting competes with it.

But I wouldn't want a museum set up for my own work. I've refused several offers, from several countries, to have one devoted to me. I don't think an artist should be involved in the creation of his own museum in his lifetime . . . It would suggest I'm not sure of the future if I have to do it in my lifetime. If a museum is necessary in the future, it should be built after I've died. Otherwise, it would seem as if I'd died. I've some friends who were involved in setting up a museum to their art: they mummified.

(Photograph omitted)

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