New realism

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New Realism (in French: Nouveau Réalisme) refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by Pierre Restany and Yves Klein. Pierre Restany wrote the original manifesto for the group in April 1960, and a joint declaration was signed on October 27, 1960 by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Martial Raysse, Pierre Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and Jacques de la Villeglé; in 1961 these were joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gérard Deschamps. The artist Christo joined the group in 1963.

The first exposition of the "Nouveaux réalistes" took place in November 1960 at the Paris "Festival d'avant-garde. This exposition was followed by others: in May 1961 at the Gallery J.; in New York in 1962; and at the Biennale of San Marino in 1963 (which would be the last collective show by the group). The movement had difficulty maintaining a cohesive program after the death of Yves Klein.

The members of the group saw the world as an image, from which they would take parts and incorporate them into their works. They sought to bring life and art closer together. These artists declared that they had come together on the basis of a new awareness of their "collective singularity", meaning that they were together in spite of, or perhaps because of, their differences.

For all the diversity of their plastic language, they perceived a common basis for their work, this being a method of direct appropriation of reality, equivalent, in the terms used by Pierre Restany, to a "poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality" (60/90. Trente ans de Nouveau Réalisme, La Différence, 1990, p 76).

The New Realism movement has often been compared to the Pop Art movement in New York for their use and critique of mass-produced commercial objects (Villeglé's ripped posters, Arman's collections of detritus and trash), although New Realism maintained closer ties with Dada than with Pop Art.

For the school of early 20th-century epistemology, see New realism (philosophy)

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