Pierre Restany (1998) by Erling Mandelmann

Pierre Restany (24 June 1930 – 29 May 2003), was an internationally known French

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

and cultural

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

. Restany was born in

Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda (; ca, Els Banys i Palaldà) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. Prior to 1942, it was known as Amélie-les-Bains. It is situated in the Tech valley, and combines the old and the ne ...

Pyrénées-Orientales Pyrénées-Orientales (; ca, Pirineus Orientals ; oc, Pirenèus Orientals ; ), also known as Northern Catalonia, is a department of the region of Occitania, Southern France, adjacent to the northern Spanish frontier and the Mediterranean Sea. ...

, and spent his childhood in

Casablanca Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...

. On returning to France in 1949 he attended the

Lycée Henri-IV The Lycée Henri-IV is a public secondary school located in Paris. Along with the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, it is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious and demanding sixth-form colleges (''lycées'') in France. The school educates more than ...

before studying at universities in France, Italy and Ireland. From their first meeting in 1955, Restany maintained a strong tie with

Yves Klein Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein w ...

(to whom is attributed Klein-blue).

Conceptions of New Realism / Nouveau Realisme

In 1960 Pierre Restany created the idea and coined the term

Nouveau Réalisme Nouveau réalisme (French: new realism) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Pierre Restany wrot ...

with

during a group show in the

Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire) of the Wąż coat of arms. (; 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918) was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic of Polish descent. Apollinaire is considered one of the foremost poets of the ...

gallery in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

. It was an idea that united a group of French and Italian artists. Nouveau Realisme was the European answer to the American

Neo-Dada Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, a ...

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

and Pop Art. The group included

Martial Raysse Martial Raysse (born 12 February 1936 in Golfe-Juan) is a French artist and actor. He lives in Issigeac, France. He holds the record for the most expensive work sold by a living French artist. Biography Raysse was born in a ceramicist family in ...

Arman Arman (November 17, 1928 – October 22, 2005) was a French-born American artist. Born Armand Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman was a painter who moved from using objects for the ink or paint traces they leave (''cachets'', ''allures d'objet'') to ...

François Dufrene Francois Dufrene (François Dufrêne) (born Paris, 21 September 1930; died Paris, 12 December 1982) was a French Nouveau réalisme, Nouveau realist visual artist, Lettrist and Ultra-Lettrist poet. He is primarily known as a pioneer in sound poetry ...

Raymond Hains Raymond Hains (9 November 1926 – 28 October 2005) was a prominent French visual artist and a founder of the Nouveau réalisme movement. In 1960, he signed, along with Arman, François Dufrêne, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeg ...

Daniel Spoerri Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by in ...

Jean Tinguely Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century. Tinguely's art s ...

Jacques Villeglé Jacques Villeglé, born Jacques Mahé de la Villeglé (27 March 1926 – 6 June 2022) was a French mixed-media artist and affichiste famous for his alphabet with symbolic letters and decollage with ripped or lacerated posters. He was a membe ...

- and was later joined by César,

Mimmo Rotella Domenico "Mimmo" Rotella (Catanzaro, 7 October 1918 – Milan, 8 January 2006) was an Italian artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. Best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advert ...

Niki de Saint Phalle Niki de Saint Phalle (; born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle; 29 October 193021 May 2002) was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monume ...

and

Christo Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific art, site-specific environmental art, environmental art i ...

. Restany defined this group of artists as sharing "new perceptual approaches to reality". The first exhibition of the "Nouveaux réalistes" took place in November 1960 at the Paris Festival d'avant-garde. Their work was an attempt at reassessing the concept of art and the artist in the context of 20th-century consumer society by reasserting

humanistic Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humani ...

ideals in the face of

industrial Industrial may refer to: Industry * Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry * Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems * Industrial city, a city dominate ...

expansion. In 1961 he co-founded with Jeannine de Goldschmidt the Galerie J in Paris. In 1963, Restany edited the art and

architectural Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings o ...

magazine

Domus In Ancient Rome, the ''domus'' (plural ''domūs'', genitive ''domūs'' or ''domī'') was the type of town house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras. It was found in almost all the ma ...

and divided his time between

Montparnasse Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has bee ...

, Paris and

, eventually becoming a regular contributor to the magazine until 2003. In 1969 he was one of the curators of the

São Paulo Biennial SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Saco Transportation Center (station code SAO), a train station in Saco, Maine, U.S. ...

. In the early 1970s he took interest in the work of the Sociological art collective. In 1976, Pierre Restany curated the French pavilion at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

and organised a group exhibition bringing together the Collectif d'Art Sociologique (Hervé Fischer, Fred Forest and Jean-Paul Thénot),

Alain Jacquet Alain Jacquet (22 February 1939 – 4 September 2008) was a French artist representative of the Nouvelle Figuration movement that was linked to the American Pop Art movement. Life and career Jacquet was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Th ...

, Bertrand Lavier, Jean-Pierre Raynaud and

Jean-Michel Sanejouand Jean-Michel Sanejouand (18 July 1934 – 18 March 2021) was a French artist. His work ranged from environments to monumental sculptures, from readymade-like objects, to paintings of oneiric landscapes in which (usually) one of his sculptures st ...

. In 1982 he co-founded the

Domus Academy Domus Academy is a private school of design in Milan, Italy. It offers post-graduate and professional courses in fashion, industrial design, and design management. It is not listed by the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Rice ...

, the first postgraduate design school in Milan. From the early 1990s up to his death, Restany took a keen and growing interest in artists working in the areas of

computer art Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditi ...

new media art New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of new media, electronic media technology, technologies, comprising virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video g ...

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names ...

and the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

. In 1984 he was appointed the editor of the visual art magazine ''D'Ars''. In 1992, he curated the travelling exhibition ''Art & Tabac'' (Rome, Vienna and Amsterdam) and in 1994 he co-curated with

Robert C. Morgan Robert C. Morgan (born 1943) is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and artist. Biography Robert C. Morgan received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1975 and his Ph.D. in art education f ...

the exhibition ''Logo, Non Logo'' held at Thread Waxing Space in New York City. In 1999 he was nominated President of the

Palais de Tokyo The Palais de Tokyo (''Tokyo Palace'') is a building dedicated to modern and contemporary art, located at 13 avenue du Président-Wilson, facing the Trocadéro, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The eastern wing of the building belongs to ...

in Paris. Restany died in Paris in 2003 and is buried in the

Montparnasse Cemetery Montparnasse Cemetery (french: link=no, Cimetière du Montparnasse) is a cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, in the city's 14th arrondissement. The cemetery is roughly 47 acres and is the second largest cemetery in Paris. The cemetery ...

Bibliography

* Pierre Restany. ''Manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes''
Editions Dilecta
Paris, 2007. * Pierre Restany. ''Voyages de Ginzburg'', Editions Julien Blaine, Paris, France, 1980. * Pierre Restany. ''La vie este belle, n’est-ce-pas, cher Vostell''.

Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are ch ...

, Galerie Lavignes Bastille, Paris, 1990.
Text about

* Pierre Restany. '' Bernard Childs, un language de notre temps''. Art International, Vol. III, 1959.

References

Sources

Kristine Stiles Kristine Stiles (born Kristine Elaine Dolan in Denver, Colorado, 1947) is the France Family Distinguished Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. She is an art historian, curator, and artist specializing in global cont ...

& Peter Selz, ''Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings'' (Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by Kristine Stiles) University of California Press 2012, Pierre Restany texts pp. 352–355

External links

* Geneviève Breerette, �
Pierre Restany, critique d'art
», ''Le Monde'', 30 mai 2003

sur le site des Éditions La Différence

essay from the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Restany, Pierre 1930 births 2003 deaths People from Pyrénées-Orientales French art critics French art historians Cultural historians Mass media theorists Nouveau réalisme artists Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery Lycée Henri-IV alumni French male non-fiction writers French art curators 20th-century French male writers

Conceptions of New Realism / Nouveau Realisme

See also

Bibliography

References

Sources

External links