4.5 nouveau realism

Art 109A: Art since 1945 Westchester Community College Fall 2012 Dr. Melissa Hall

French Nouveau Realism

Postwar European Art Registered immediate trauma of war

Focus on existential condition of humanity

Marshall Plan Recovery of European economy

Global capitalism

Rise of le culture de masse

La Culture de Masse Cinema Fashion Advertising

Jacques Villegle, Rues Desprez et Vercingétorix - "La Femme", 1966

La Culture de Masse Roland Barthes: father of “cultural studies”

Influenced by semiotics

Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1957

La Culture de Masse Media produces “false consciousness”

“We inhabit a world, then, of signs which support existing power structures and which purport to be natural. The role of the mythologist . . . is to expose these signs as the artificial constructs that they are” Roland Barthes http://seacoast.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/myth.htm

The Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord argued that in a media saturated society, “images” replace reality

Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1967

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” Guy Debord http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

Nouveau Réalisme French Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) was launched in Paris in 1960

Meeting of the French Nouveau Réalistes at the apartment of Yves Klein 27 October, 1960. From left to right: Arman, Tinguely, Rotraut Uecker, Spoerri, Villeglé, Restany.

Nouveau Réalisme

Manifesto 27 October, 1960.

“New Realism = new perceptions of the real”

Nouveau Réalisme Reaction against media-saturated “reality”

Jacques Villegle, Rues Desprez et Vercingétorix - "La Femme", 1966

“The passionate adventure of the real perceived in itself and not through the prism of conceptual or imaginative transcription.” Pierre Restany http://www.yveskleinarchives.org/documents/bio_content_us.html

Nouveau Réalisme The “junk sculptures” of Arman exemplify the Nouveau Réaliste aesthetic of an unmediated encounter with real “things” rather than representations

Arman, Accumulation, 1961

Nouveau Réalisme “Accumulations” – accumulations of massed produced consumer items

Arman, Accumulation, 1973 Museum of Modern Art

Arman, Accumulation, 1968

Arman, Malheur aux Barbus, 1960

Arman, Home Sweet Home, 1962 Arman, Doorbells, 1961 Hirshhorn Museum

Arman, Alarm Clocks, 1960 Image source: http://jacindarussellart.blogspot.com/2011/09/chicago.html

Commodity Fetishism

“Fetishism in anthropology refers to the primitive belief that godly powers can inhere in inanimate things (e.g., in totems). Marx borrows this concept to make sense of what he terms "commodity fetishism.” . . . People in a capitalist society . . . begin to treat commodities as if value inhered in the objects themselves, rather than in the amount of real labor expended to produce the object . . .” http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/theory/marxism/modules/

marxfetishism.html

Prada Hobo Bag, $1,495.00 @ saks.com

Nouveau Réalisme Poubelles: accumulations of trash

Arman, Dechets Bourgeois (Bourgeois Trash), 1959 Galerie Valois

Arman, Les Poubelles des Halles, 1961 Image source: http://anetcha-parisienne.blogspot.com/2010/08/volumes-contemporains.html

Arman, Hommage a la Cuisine Fransaise, 1960 Image source: http://humanscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/03/trash-master.html

Arman, Premier Portrait-robot d'Yves Klein, 1960 Image source: http://humanscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/03/trash-master.html

Nouveau Réalisme Portrait robots: portraits of individuals using objects associated with them

Arman, Portrait robot d'Iris Clert Image source: http://www.galerie-melki.fr/page/artists-works-archive?page=18

Arman, Poubelle de Jim Dine, 1961

Nouveau Réalisme As George Carlin suggests, we are defined by our “stuff”

Nouveau Réalisme For an exhibition at the Iris Clert Gallery in 1960 called Le Plein, Arman filled the gallery with junk

Arman, Le Plein exhibition at the Galerie Clert, Paris, 1960

Nouveau Réalisme The invitation was placed in a sardine can filled with trash

Arman, Le Plein invitation, 1960 Museum of Modern Art

Nouveau Réalisme Daniel Spoerri: “trap pictures”

Daniel Spoerri, Kichka’s Breakfast, 1960 Museum of Modern Art

“Spoerri, a self–proclaimed "paster of found situations," made this assemblage from his girlfriend Kichka's leftover breakfast while waiting for some visitors. "I pasted together the morning's breakfast, which was still there by chance” Museum of Modern Art


“This is displayed on the wall so it "defies the laws of gravity" and "the view to which we are accustomed," the artist says. Museum of Modern Art

Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955 Museum of Modern Art


Nouveau Réalisme César – “compression sculptures” made from crushed car bodies and industrial scraps

César, Compression, 1966 National Gallery of Scotland

Nouveau Réalisme Jacques Villeglé and his friend Raymond Hains began making works of art from torn billboard posters

Jacques Villeglé, Comrades, 1956

Nouveau Réalisme They called their “reverse collage” technique “décollage” – literally, “taking off”

Jacques Villeglé, Rues Desprez et Vercingétorix - "La Femme", 1965 Centre Pompidou

“Décollage, in art, is the opposite of collage; instead of an image being built up of all or parts of existing images, it is created by cutting, tearing away or otherwise removing, pieces of an original image.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decollage

Raymond Hains, Pour la Paix La Démocratie le Progrés Social, 1962

Nouveau Réalisme

Raymond Hains, L’Affiche au Coup de Pied, 1960

“These were ready-made abstractions; the bits were unaltered so the layering was a matter of chance, not orchestrated by the artists, although obviously they chose which bits to take. Mr. Villegle described wanting ''spontaneous, iconoclastic gestures of passers-by -- a whole repertory of rips, scratches, slashes, scrawls, smears, gashes, gougings, abrasions, inscriptions and over-pastings.'’ Michael Kimmelman, “Art in Review: Jacques Villegle,” NYTimes, Sep 24, 1999

“At the same time, his works most immediately bring to mind what some of the American Abstract Expressionists were doing in the 1950’s . . . and they anticipate, in their focus on popular imagery and the culture of the street, Pop . . . 70's public art, graffiti art and on and on.'’ Michael Kimmelman, “Art in Review: Jacques Villegle,” NYTimes, Sep 24, 1999

Nouveau Réalisme The sculptor Jean Tinguely made mechanical sculptures from scrap metal, electrical lightbulbs, and other random materials

Jean Tinguely, Narva, 1961 Metropolitan Museum

Jean Tinguely, Metamatic No. 6, 1959. Museum Tingeuly, Basel Image source: http://www.gg-art.com/news/photoshow/8432l1.html

Nouveau Réalisme The “Metamatics” were machines that made art

Michael Landy with Jean Tinguely's work at Tate Liverpool. Photo: Minako Jackson. Jean Tinguely Méta-matic No.17, 1959 Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Loomis Dean, Exhibition of Jean Tinguely’s Meta-Matics, Iris Clert Gallery, Paris, 1959 LIFE Magazine

Loomis Dean, Artist Jean Tinguely (Fore) at Iris Clert Gallery, 1959 LIFE Magazine

Marcel Duchamp

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen . . . The public will keep on buying more and more art, and husbands will start bringing home little paintings to their wives on their way from work, and we’re all going to drown in a sea of mediocrity. Maybe Tinguely and a few others sense this and are trying to destroy art before its too late.” Marcel Duchamp commenting on Jean Tinguely’s Homage to New York

Jean Tinguely, Cyclograveur, 1960

Jean Tinguely at work on Homage to New York (1960) Courtesy Museum Tinguely, Basel, and The New York Times Tate Gallery

Nouveau Réalisme Homage to New York was a self–constructing and self–destroying work of art composed of bicycle wheels, motors, a piano, an addressograph, a go–cart, a bathtub, and other cast–off objects.

Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York, 1960 Museum of Modern Art

Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York, 1960 Museum of Modern Art, David Gahr

Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York, 1960 Museum of Modern Art

New York Times, October 4, 1957

Tinguely's Study for the End of the World, was performed before an audience in the desert outside Las Vegas in 1962

Alan Grant, Desert Near Las Vegas, Nevada And Show Of Auto-Destructive Art Work Of Artist Jean Tinguely, 1962 Life Magazine

With the assistance of Niki de Sainte Phalle he planted explosive devices that were detonated for a televised live audience


Photographers and reporters gather near Frenchman Flat to observe the Priscilla nuclear test, June 24, 1957. During the 1950s, the spectacle of nuclear testing attracted curious members of the public from all over the country, including media members and military personnel. Las Vegas capitalized on the test site’s close proximity with beauty pageants, special events and bomb-viewing vacation packages. “TV Audience Views Atomic Bomb Test for the First Time, Las Vegas Sun 22 April 1952


"Jean Tinguely’s anomalously early desert artwork, Study for an End of the World No. 2 (1962), provides a lucid aperture onto two technologies that emerged in the decades following World War II and profoundly impacted the period: the atomic bomb (representing the potential end to all technology) and television (representing the potential translation of all into spectacle). His Nevada “study” addressed both simultaneously, critically mimicking atomic tests and their mass mediation on television." http://visualartsmediaarchitecture.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/welcoming-dr-emily-scott/

Nouveau Réalisme A former fashion model, Niki de Saint Phalle was the only female member of the French Nouveau Réaliste group

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely Image source: http://eaobjets.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/niki-de-saint-phalle-jean-tingely-ausstellungnur-noch-bis-6-januar/

Nouveau Réalisme She began making art by shooting at canvases filled with sacks of paint and other materials

Niki de Saint Phalle's exhibition 'Feu a volonte', Galerie J, Paris, 1961 Image source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3675483/Niki-de-Saint-Phalle.html

Harry Shunk, Niki de Saint Phalle and others using guns to create a painting, Impasse Ronsin, Paris, June 1961Image source: http://artintelligence.net/review/?p=497

Niki de Saint Phalle Shooting Picture, Tirage 1961 Plaster, paint, string, polythene and wire on wood Tate Gallery

Niki de Saint Phalle Untitled from Edition Mat 64, 1964 Walker Art Center

Nouveau Réalisme She claimed to be shooting against all men, society, the church . . . .

“Performing public ‘shoot-outs’ in France and America, Saint Phalle defied all that angered her. She shot at patriarchal society and political crisis. Driven by contemporary events, as much as by personal anguish, many of the Shooting Paintings have a political resonance.” Tate Gallery

Niki de Saint Phalle making one of her shooting pictures. Image source: http://www.laboratoiredugeste.com/spip.php?article32

Niki de Saint Phalle, Feu au volonte (Fire at Will), Gallery J, Paris, 1961 Image source: http://artintelligence.net/review/?p=497

Tir de Robert Rauschenberg, 1961 Tir de Jasper Johns, 1961

Nouveau Réalisme One of the most significant members of the Nouveau Réalistes was Yves Klein

Yves Klein, 1961. Image courtesy Yves Klein Archives. Image source: http://newsdesk.si.edu/photos/yves-klein

Nouveau Réalisme One of his first “works” was the publication of a catalog, with a preface by Pascal Claude and plates illustrating his work

Yves Klein, Yves Peintures, 1954

The preface consisted of lines rather than words. It was followed by plates consisting of monochrome rectangles affixed to the page and identified by year and location — Nice, London, Madrid, Tokyo.

Nouveau Réalisme After this, he launched a successful career as a monochrome painter

Opening of the exhibition Yves Peintures, Club des Solitaires, Éditions Lacostes, Paris, October 15th 1955. Yves Klein Archives

“Yves Klein took up monochrome painting at the end of 1949. At the time he described this activity as "a means of painting that is against painting, against all the anxieties of life, against everything" [Stich 1994, pp. 23/253]” http://radicalart.info/nothing/space/klein/index.html

Nouveau Réalisme Klein then began painting monochrome blue canvases using a pigment he later patented as IKB (International Klein Blue)

Yves Klein, Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 82), 1959 Guggenheim

Nouveau Réalisme Klein believed the color represented the immateriality of the cosmos -- a kind of pure spirituality

Yves Klein, Blue Monochrome, 1961 Museum of Modern Art

Yves Klein, Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 82), 1959 Guggenheim

“Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions . . . blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.” Yves Klein

Nouveau Réalisme Since it cannot be accurately reproduced, the color must be actually “experienced”

Yves Klein, Blue Monochrome, 1961 Museum of Modern Art

Yves Klein, IKB 79 1959 Tate Gallery

“Each blue world of each painting, although the same blue and treated in the same way, presented a completely different essence and atmosphere . . . The prices were all different, of course.” Yves Klein http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=8143&tabview=text&texttype=10

Nouveau Réalisme When the paintings were shown at Iris Clert’s gallery in 1957 the artist released 1,001 blue balloons into the sky to celebrate the advent of his “Blue Period”

He called it an “aerostatic sculpture”

Yves Klein, Sculpture aérostatique, Paris, 1957 Yves Klein Archives

Nouveau Réalisme Klein’s next exhibition at Clert’s gallery was titled: La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée, Le Vide

(The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void)

Yves Klein, Le Vide, Galerie Clert, Paris, 1958 Yves Klein Archives

Yves Klein, Le Vide, Galerie Clert, Paris, 1958

“The object of this endeavor: to create, establish, and present to the public a palpable pictorial state in the limits of a picture gallery. In other words, creation of an ambience, a genuine pictorial climate, and, therefore, an invisible one.” Yves Klein http://web.tiscali.it/nouveaurealisme/ENG/klein5.htm

Nouveau Réalisme 3,000 guests arrived to experience the pure immateriality of “the void”

“Iris Clert invites you to honor, with all your affective presence, the lucid and positive advent of a certain reign of the sensitive. This manifestation of perceptive synthesis confirms Yves Klein's pictorial quest for an ecstatic and immediately communicable emotion. Monday April 28, 9 pm.” Pierre Restany

Nouveau Réalisme They were served blue cocktails that turned their urine blue -- proof they had been filled with a new spiritual essence

Yves Klein, Le Vide, Galerie Clert, Paris, 1958

Nouveau Réalisme Klein also experimented with applying his IKB pigment to other surfaces

Yves Klein. Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d’éponges (Bas-reliefs in a sponge forest), at Iris Clert Gallery, Paris, 1959

Yves Klein, Blue Sponge, 1959 Guggenheim

“Thanks to the sponges—raw living matter—I was going to be able to make portraits of the observers of my monochromes, who . . . after having voyaged in the blue of my pictures, return totally impregnated in sensibility, as are the sponges.” http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_md_76_1.html

Living Brush series

First experiment of the living brushes in Robert Godet’s apartment, rel le Regrattier, Paris, June 5th, 1958 Yves Klein Archive

The “living brush” series began with an experiment in the apartment of a friend

“Yves covered in blue paint the naked body of a young woman, who, through a series of rotating movements, left her bodily prints on a sheet of paper set on the floor, until the support was fully saturated. The result was a blue monochrome.” Yves Klein Archive

First experiment of the living brushes in Robert Godet’s apartment, rel le Regrattier, Paris, June 5th, 1958 Yves Klein Archive

Anthropométries For his Anthropométries series, he covered the bodies of models with IKB blue, and had them imprint their bodies on paper

Creation of an Anthropométrie, rue Campagne Première, Paris, 1960 Yves Klein Archive

“February 23: at his home, in the presence of Pierre Restany, Yves Klein did imprints of Rotraut and Jacqueline who pressed the blue stamp of their bodies onto a large sheet of white paper fastened to the wall. The participants named the work Célébration d’une nouvelle Ere anthropométrique (Celebration of a New Anthropometric Period). With these imprints inscribed on a support, Klein sought to capture the marks of fleeting "states-moments of flesh.” Yves Klein Archive

The Living Brush Series In 1960 Klein staged a performance at the Galerie internationale d’art contemporaine that echoes the Happenings then taking place in New York

Anthropométries de l'époque bleue, Galerie internationale d'art contemporain, Paris, March 9, 1960. Yves Klein Archive

The Living Brush Series Dressed in formal attire, Klein gave his models instructions, while musicians performed his “Monotone Symphony” -- a musical work consisting of a single prolonged note

Anthropométries de l'époque bleue, Galerie internationale d'art contemporain, Paris, March 9, 1960. Yves Klein Archive

The Living Brush Series

Anthropométries de l'époque bleue, Galerie internationale d'art contemporain, Paris, March 9, 1960 Yves Klein Archive

“Yves Klein had three nude models cover themselves in blue paint and affix their body prints on the white papers, laid out on the gallery walls and floor. A complex body language, staged by Klein himself, brought the figures to life in a sort of strange ballet, in which the actresses rolled and dragged their hands on the ground, before the audience’s eyes. The formally dressed audience, made up of numerous artists, collectors, and critics, was subsequently invited to take part in a general discussion, in which Georges Mathieu and Pierre Restany participated.” Yves Klein Archive

Yves Klein, Anthropometry: Princess Helena, 1960 Museum of Modern Art

Yves Klein's Untitled Anthropometry (ANT 100) (1960) Hirshhorn Museum

The Living Brush series The living brush series was often compared to Action Painting, but Klein adamantly denied the connection

“Many critics claimed that by this method of painting I was doing nothing more than recreating the method that has been called "action painting". But now, I would like to make it clear that this endeavor is distinct from "action painting" in so far as I am completely detached from all physical work during the time of creation.” Yves Klein The Chelsea Hotel Manifesto


The Living Brush series


“It would never cross my mind to soil my hands with paint. Detached and distant, the work of art must be completed under my eyes and under my command. As the work begins its completion, I stand there - present at the ceremony, immaculate, calm, relaxed, perfectly aware of what is taking place and ready to receive the art being born into the tangible world..” Yves Klein The Chelsea Hotel Manifesto

Leap Into the Void In 1960 Klein and the American photographer Harry Shunk staged a famous photograph of the artist leaping into thin air

Yves Klein, Leap into the Void 1960. Photograph: Harry Shunk Metropolitan Museum

Leap Into the Void The photograph was published in Dimanche -- a self-produced newspaper that was sold at newsstands throughout Paris for one day

Yves Klein, Dimanche, Sunday, 27 November, 1960

Leap Into the Void Klein claimed to be literally entering the “void”

Yves Klein, Leap into the Void 1960. Photograph: Harry Shunk Metropolitan Museum

“To paint space, I owe it to myself to go there, to that very space… without illusions or tricks, nor with a plane or a parachute or a rocket ship: [the painter of space] must go there by his own means, with an independent individual force, in a word, he must be capable of levitation.”” Yves Klein

Zones of Immateriality In another performance piece Klein contrived a scheme for packaging and selling “immateriality”

Yves Klein and Dino Buzzati engaged in the ritual transfer of immateriality, January 26, 1962

Zones of Immateriality Titled Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, the work involved the sale of “immaterial space,” which was certified by a check issued by the artist

A cheque used to certify the purchase of a Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle. This copy was bought by Jacques Kugel December 7, 1959

Zones of Immateriality After the transaction was made, the owner would burn the certificate and the artist would toss the money into the Seine

Yves Klein and Dino Buzzati engaged in the ritual transfer of immateriality, January 26, 1962

“Through the Ritual Rules for the Transfer of Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Space, Yves Klein examined societal notions of ownership and purchase. For the first time in art history, buyers and collectors were expected to buy artwork that was intangible. The art could not be displayed, resold, or even escalate in value. Part of the reason for this is that there was no substantial proof that one owned the work. Klein insisted that in order to own the actual "void," the receipt (the material object which verified the existence of the exchange and the space itself) must be burned. The gold used for the purchase was then tossed into the Seine river as a means of solidifying the "contract."http://www.uwo.ca/visarts/projects/kleinmystery/galleries/jen.htm

4.5 nouveau realism

Education

nouveau ralisteaesthetic

nouveau ralismereaction

nouveau ralismethey

nouveau ralismefor

nouveau ralismepoubelles

nouveau ralismejacques

nouveau ralismethe invitation

nouveau ralisme daniel