The Nouveau Réalisme art movement emerged in Paris in 1960 as a reaction against media-saturated reality. Artists such as Arman, Tinguely, and Villeglé incorporated found objects and trash into their works to provide an unmediated experience of the real. Arman made "accumulation" and "portrait robot" sculptures from consumer goods, while Tinguely and Villeglé constructed kinetic machines and décollage collages respectively. The movement sought new perceptions of reality beyond representations.

1. French Nouveau Realism
Art 109A: Art since 1945
Westchester Community College
Fall 2012
Dr. Melissa Hall

2. Postwar European Art
Registered immediate trauma of
war
Focus on existential condition of
humanity

3. Marshall Plan
Recovery of European economy
Global capitalism
Rise of le culture de masse

4. La Culture de Masse
Cinema
Fashion
Advertising
Jacques Villegle, Rues Desprez et
Vercingétorix - "La Femme", 1966

5. La Culture de Masse
Roland Barthes: father of “cultural
studies”
Influenced by semiotics
Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1957

6. 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

7. The Society of the
Spectacle
Guy Debord argued that in a media
saturated society, “images” replace
reality
“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
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle,
1967

8. 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.

9. Nouveau Réalisme
“New Realism = new
perceptions of the real”
Manifesto 27 October, 1960.

10. Nouveau Réalisme
Reaction against media-saturated
“reality”
Jacques Villegle, Rues Desprez et Vercingétorix -
"La Femme", 1966

11. “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

12. 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

13. Nouveau Réalisme
“Accumulations” – accumulations of
massed produced consumer items
Arman, Accumulation, 1973
Museum of Modern Art

14. Arman, Accumulation, 1968
Arman, Malheur aux Barbus, 1960

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

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

17. 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

18. Nouveau Réalisme
Poubelles: accumulations of trash
Arman, Dechets Bourgeois (Bourgeois Trash), 1959 Galerie Valois

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

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

21. Nouveau Réalisme
Portrait robots: portraits of
individuals using objects
associated with them
Arman, Premier Portrait-robot d'Yves Klein, 1960
Image source:
http://humanscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/03/trash-master.html

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

24. Nouveau Réalisme
As George Carlin suggests, we are
defined by our “stuff”
Arman, Poubelle de Jim Dine, 1961

25. 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

27. Nouveau Réalisme
The invitation was placed in a
sardine can filled with trash
Arman, Le Plein invitation, 1960
Museum of Modern Art

28. Nouveau Réalisme
Daniel Spoerri: “trap pictures”
“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
Daniel Spoerri, Kichka’s Breakfast, 1960
Museum of Modern Art

29. “This is displayed on the wall so it "defies the laws of
gravity" and "the view to which we are accustomed,"
Daniel Spoerri, Kichka’s Breakfast, 1960 the artist says.
Museum of Modern Art Museum of Modern Art

30. Daniel Spoerri, Kichka’s Breakfast, 1960
Museum of Modern Art
Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955
Museum of Modern Art

31. Nouveau Réalisme
César – “compression sculptures”
made from crushed car bodies and
industrial scraps
César, Compression, 1966
National Gallery of Scotland

32. Nouveau Réalisme
Jacques Villeglé and his friend
Raymond Hains began making
works of art from torn billboard
posters
Jacques Villeglé, Comrades, 1956

33. Nouveau Réalisme
They called their “reverse collage”
technique “décollage” – literally,
“taking off”
“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
Jacques Villeglé, Rues Desprez et Vercingétorix -
"La Femme", 1965
Centre Pompidou

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

35. Nouveau Réalisme
“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
Raymond Hains, L’Affiche au Coup de Pied, 1960

36. “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

37. Nouveau Réalisme
The sculptor Jean Tinguely made
mechanical sculptures from scrap
metal, electrical lightbulbs, and
other random materials
Jean Tinguely, Narva, 1961
Metropolitan Museum

38. Nouveau Réalisme
The “Metamatics” were machines
that made art
Jean Tinguely, Metamatic No. 6, 1959. Museum Tingeuly, Basel
Image source: http://www.gg-art.com/news/photoshow/8432l1.html

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

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

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

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

43. “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
Marcel Duchamp

44. Jean Tinguely, Cyclograveur, 1960

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

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

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

49. New York Times, October 4, 1957
Jean Tinguely, Homage to New York, 1960
Museum of Modern Art

50. 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

51. With the assistance of Niki de
Sainte Phalle he planted explosive
devices that were detonated for a
televised live audience
Alan Grant, Desert Near Las Vegas, Nevada And Show Of Auto-
Destructive Art Work Of Artist Jean Tinguely, 1962
Life Magazine

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

53. 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

54. "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/
Alan Grant, Desert Near Las Vegas, Nevada And Show Of Auto-Destructive Art Work Of Artist Jean Tinguely, 1962
Life Magazine

55. 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/

56. 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

57. 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

58. Niki de Saint Phalle Untitled from Edition Mat 64, 1964 Niki de Saint Phalle Shooting Picture, Tirage 1961
Walker Art Center Plaster, paint, string, polythene and wire on wood
Tate Gallery

59. 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

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

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

62. 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

63. 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

65. 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.

68. Nouveau Réalisme
After this, he launched a successful
career as a monochrome painter
“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
Opening of the exhibition Yves Peintures, Club des Solitaires,
Éditions Lacostes, Paris, October 15th 1955.
Yves Klein Archives

69. 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

70. 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

71. “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
Yves Klein, Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB 82), 1959
Guggenheim

72. Nouveau Réalisme
Since it cannot be accurately
reproduced, the color must be
actually “experienced”
Yves Klein, Blue Monochrome, 1961
Museum of Modern Art

73. “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&te
xttype=10
Yves Klein, IKB 79 1959
Tate Gallery

74. 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

75. 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

78. “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
Yves Klein, Le Vide, Galerie Clert, Paris, 1958

79. 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

80. 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

81. Nouveau Réalisme
Klein also experimented with
applying his IKB pigment to other
surfaces
Yves Klein, Blue Sponge, 1959 Yves Klein. Bas-reliefs dans une forêt d’éponges
Guggenheim (Bas-reliefs in a sponge forest), at Iris Clert Gallery,
Paris, 1959

82. “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

83. Living Brush series
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

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

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

86. Anthropométries
For his Anthropométries series, he
covered the bodies of models with
IKB blue, and had them imprint
their bodies on paper
“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
Creation of an Anthropométrie, rue Campagne Première, Paris, 1960
Yves Klein Archive

87. 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

88. 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

89. The Living Brush
Series
“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 Anthropométries de l'époque bleue, Galerie internationale d'art
contemporain, Paris, March 9, 1960
Yves Klein Archive

90. Yves Klein's Untitled Anthropometry (ANT 100) (1960)
Hirshhorn Museum
Yves Klein, Anthropometry: Princess Helena, 1960
Museum of Modern Art

91. 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
Anthropométries de l'époque bleue, Galerie internationale d'art
contemporain, Paris, March 9, 1960
Yves Klein Archive

92. 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
Anthropométries de l'époque bleue, Galerie internationale d'art
contemporain, Paris, March 9, 1960
Yves Klein Archive

93. 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

94. 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

95. Leap Into the Void
Klein claimed to be literally entering
the “void”
“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
Yves Klein, Leap into the Void 1960. Photograph: Harry Shunk
Metropolitan Museum

96. 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

97. 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

98. Zones of Immateriality
After the transaction was made, the
owner would burn the certificate
and the artist would toss the money
into the Seine
“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
Yves Klein and Dino Buzzati engaged in the ritual transfer of
immateriality, January 26, 1962