1.
Pierre Restany
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Pierre Restany, was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher. Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca, on returning to France in 1949 he attended the Lycée Henri-IV before studying at universities in France, Italy and Ireland. From their first meeting in 1955, Restany maintained a strong tie with Yves Klein, in 1960 Pierre Restany created the idea and coined the term Nouveau Réalisme with Yves Klein during a group show in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. It was an idea that united a group of French and Italian artists, Nouveau Realisme was the European answer to the American Neo-Dada of Fluxus and Pop Art. 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 davant-garde. Their work was an attempt at reassessing the concept of art, from 1963 onwards, Restany edited the art and architectural magazine Domus and divided his time between Montparnasse, Paris and Milan, Italy. In the early 1970s he took interest in the work of the Sociological art collective, in 1982 he co-founded Domus Academy, the first postgraduate design school. From the early 1990s up to his death, Restany took a keen and growing interest in working in the areas of computer art, new media art, digital art. In 1992, he was director of the group show Art & Tabac, in Rome, Vienna, Pierre Restany died in Paris in 2003 and is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. Décollage Ultra-Lettrist César Mimmo Rotella Niki de Saint Phalle Christo Yves Klein Carlos Ginzburg Laurence Gartel Pierre Restany, manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes, Editions Dilecta, Paris,2007. Voyages de Ginzburg, Editions Julien Blaine, Paris, France,1980, la vie este belle, n’est-ce-pas, cher Vostell. Wolf Vostell, Galerie Lavignes Bastille, Paris,1990
2.
Yves Klein
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Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of art, and is seen as an inspiration to. Klein was born in Nice, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France and his parents, Fred Klein and Marie Raymond, were both painters. From 1942 to 1946, Klein studied at the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande, at this time, he became friends with Arman and Claude Pascal and started to paint. During the years 1948 to 1952, he traveled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Japan. In Japan, at the age of 25, he became a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan from the Kodokan and he also stayed in Japan in 1953. Klein later wrote a book on judo called Les Fondements du judo, in 1954, Klein settled permanently in Paris and began in earnest to establish himself in the art world. Parodying a traditional Catalogue raisonné, the featured a series of intense monochromes linked to various cities he had lived in during the previous years. Yves Peintures anticipated his first two shows of oil paintings, at the Club des Solitaires, Paris, October 1955 and Yves, Proposition monochromes at Gallery Colette Allendy, February 1956. From the reactions of the audience, realized that. viewers thought his various, uniformly colored canvases amounted to a new kind of bright, abstract interior decoration. Discovered with the help of Edouard Adam, a Parisian paint dealer, the optical effect retained the brilliance of the pigment which, Klein later deposited a Soleau envelope for this recipe to maintain the authenticity of the pure idea. This colour, reminiscent of the lapis lazuli used to paint the Madonnas robes in medieval paintings, was to become known as International Klein Blue, the paintings were attached to poles placed 20 cm away from the walls to increase their spatial ambiguities. The show was a critical and commercial success, traveling to Paris, Düsseldorf, the Parisian exhibition, at the Iris Clert Gallery in May 1957, became a seminal happening. To mark the opening,1001 blue balloons were released and blue postcards were sent out using IKB stamps that Klein had bribed the postal service to accept as legitimate, concurrently, an exhibition of tubs of blue pigment and fire paintings was held at Galerie Collette Allendy. Thanks to a publicity drive,3,000 people queued up. The art historian Olivier Berggruen situates Klein as one who strove for total liberation, Klein had studied judo in Japan between 1952 and 1954, and also displayed an interest in Zen Buddhism. Recently my work with color has led me, in spite of myself, to search little by little, with assistance, for the realization of matter
3.
Milan
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Milan is a city in Italy, capital of the Lombardy region, and the most populous metropolitan area and the second most populous comune in Italy. The population of the city proper is 1,351,000, Milan has a population of about 8,500,000 people. It is the industrial and financial centre of Italy and one of global significance. In terms of GDP, it has the largest economy among European non-capital cities, Milan is considered part of the Blue Banana and lies at the heart of one of the Four Motors for Europe. Milan is an Alpha leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research, and tourism. Its business district hosts Italys Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the largest national and international banks, the city is a major world fashion and design capital, well known for several international events and fairs, including Milan Fashion Week and the Milan Furniture Fair. The city hosts numerous cultural institutions, academies and universities, with 11% of the national total enrolled students, Milans museums, theatres and landmarks attract over 9 million visitors annually. Milan – after Naples – is the second Italian city with the highest number of accredited stars from the Michelin Guide, the city hosted the Universal Exposition in 1906 and 2015. Milan is home to two of Europes major football teams, A. C. Milan and F. C. Internazionale, the etymology of Milan is uncertain. One theory holds that the Latin name Mediolanum comes from the Latin words medio, however, some scholars believe lanum comes from the Celtic root lan, meaning an enclosure or demarcated territory in which Celtic communities used to build shrines. Hence, Mediolanum could signify the central town or sanctuary of a Celtic tribe, indeed, the name Mediolanum is borne by about sixty Gallo-Roman sites in France, e. g. Saintes and Évreux. Alciato credits Ambrose for his account, around 400 BC, the Celtic Insubres settled Milan and the surrounding region. In 222 BC, the Romans conquered the settlement, renaming it Mediolanum, Milan was eventually declared the capital of the Western Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian in 286 AD. Diocletian chose to stay in the Eastern Roman Empire and his colleague Maximianus ruled the Western one, immediately Maximian built several monuments, such as a large circus 470 m ×85 m, the Thermae Herculeae, a large complex of imperial palaces and several other buildings. With the Edict of Milan of 313, Emperor Constantine I guaranteed freedom of religion for Christians, after the city was besieged by the Visigoths in 402, the imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. In 452, the Huns overran the city, in 539, the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan during the Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569, a Teutonic tribe, the Lombards, conquered Milan, some Roman structures remained in use in Milan under Lombard rule. Milan surrendered to the Franks in 774 when Charlemagne took the title of King of the Lombards, the Iron Crown of Lombardy dates from this period
4.
Arman
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Arman 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 to using them as the painting itself and he is best known for his accumulations and destruction/recomposition of objects. Armans father, Antonio Fernandez, a dealer from Nice, was also an amateur artist, photographer. From his father, Arman learned oil painting and photography, after receiving his bachelors degree in philosophy and mathematics in 1946, Arman began studying at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice. He also started judo at a school in Nice where he met Yves Klein. The trio bonded closely on a subsequent hitch-hiking tour around Europe, completing his studies in 1949, Arman enrolled as a student at the École du Louvre in Paris, where he concentrated on the study of archaeology and oriental art. In 1951, he became a teacher at the Bushido Kai Judo Club in Madrid, during this time he also served in the French military, completing his tour of duty as a medical orderly during the Indo-China War. Early on, it was apparent that Armans concept of the accumulation of vast quantities of the objects was to remain a significant component of his art. Ironically, he had focused more attention on his abstract paintings. Only when he witnessed viewer reaction to his first accumulation in 1959 did he fully recognize the power of such art, in 1962, he began welding together accumulations of the same kinds of metal objects, such as axes. Inspired by an exhibition for the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters in 1954, Arman began working on Cachets, at his third solo exhibition held in Pariss Galerie Iris Clert in 1958, Arman showed some of his first 2D accumulations he called cachets. These stamps on paper and fabric proved a success and provided an important change of course for the artists career. At the time, he was signing with his first name as an homage to Van Gogh, and, thus, in 1957, Arman chose to change his name from Armand to Arman. On January 31,1973, upon becoming a citizen of the United States, he took the American civil name, nevertheless, he continued to use Arman as his public persona. From 1959 to 1962, Arman developed his most recognizable style, accumulations were collections of common and identical objects which he arranged in polyester castings or within Plexiglas cases. His first welded accumulations were created in 1962, the Poubelles were collections of strewn refuse. In 1960, he filled the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris with garbage and these works began to garner the attention of the European art community. Joined later by Cesar, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Christo and they were reassessing the concept of art and the artist for a 20th-century consumer society by reasserting the humanistic ideals in the face of industrial expansion
5.
Daniel Spoerri
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Daniel Spoerri is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri was born Daniel Isaac Feinstein, on 27 March 1930, in Galați, although his father, Isaac Feinstein, had converted to Christianity, after Romania entered the War on the side of Nazi Germany he was arrested and killed in 1941. His mother, born Lydia Spoerri, was Swiss and was able to emigrate with her family of 6 children to Switzerland in 1942. There, he was adopted by his maternal uncle Professor Theophil Spoerri and registered as Daniel Spoerri, in the 1950s he was active in dance, studying classical dance with Olga Preobrajenska and in 1954 becoming the lead dancer at the State Opera of Bern, Switzerland. He later staged several plays including Ionescos The Bald Soprano. In the late 1950s, Spoerri married Vera Mertz, one of the best known works produced by Editions MAT was Man Rays Indestructible Object. Spoerri is credited with coining the term multiples for such works, in 1960, Spoerri made his first snare-picture. Spoerri later explained snare-pictures as follows, objects found in chance positions, only the plane is changed, since the result is called a picture, what was horizontal becomes vertical. Example, remains of a meal are fixed to the table at which the meal was consumed and his first snare-picture, Kichkas Breakfast was created from his girlfriends leftover breakfast. The piece is now in the collection in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one snare-picture, made in 1964, consists of the remains of a meal eaten by Marcel Duchamp. This work holds the auction record for Spoerri, selling for €136,312 in January 2008, distantly followed by another snare-picture from 1972. In connection with a show of his snare-pictures at the Galerie Lawrence in Paris in 1962. Spoerri was then living at the Hotel Carcassone in Paris, in room number 13 on the fifth floor, to the right of the entrance door was a table which his wife Vera had painted blue. Spoerri drew on a ‘map the overlapping outlines of all the 80 objects that were lying on the table on 17 October 1961 at exactly 3,47 p. m. Each object was assigned a number and Spoerri wrote a description of each object. The descriptions cross referenced other objects on the table which were related, the Topographie Anécdotée* du Hasard was printed as a small pamphlet of 53 pages plus a fold out map and index and was distributed as an advertisement for the exhibit. The Anecdoted Topography of Chance has been called a tour de force. In 1966, the Something Else Press in New York City published an English translation of the Topographie Anécdotée* du Hasard by Emmett Williams, roland Topor added sketches of each object and additional annotations were added at random by Williams and others and by Spoerri himself
6.
Jean Tinguely
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Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition, Tinguelys art satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in advanced industrial society. Born in Fribourg, Tinguely grew up in Basel, but moved to France in 1952 with his first wife, Swiss artist Eva Aeppli and he belonged to the Parisian avantgarde in the mid-twentieth century and was one of the artists who signed the New Realists manifesto in 1960. 2, detonated successfully in front of an audience gathered in the desert outside Las Vegas, Tinguely married fellow Swiss artist Eva Aeppli in 1951. In 1971, Tinguely married his wife, Niki de Saint Phalle with whom he collaborated on several artistic projects such as the Hon-en-Katedrall or The Cyclop. Jean Tinguely died in 1991 at the age of 66 years in the Bern Hospital after a heart illness, chaos I, sculpture in The Commons, Columbus, Indiana, USA Le Cyclop outside of Milly-la-Forêt. The Stravinsky Fountain near the Centre Pompidou, Paris, a collaboration with Niki de Saint Phalle, the exhibition consisted of a sculpture of a colorful pregnant woman lying on her back with her legs wide apart. The sculpture was 25–26 meters long, about 6 meters high and 11 meters wide and it was built of scaffolding and chicken wire covered with fabric and fiberglass, painted with brightly-coloured poster paint. Through a door-sized entry in the location of the womans vagina, inside was a screen showing Greta Garbo films, a goldfish pond and a soft drink vending machine. Johann Sebastian Bachs organ music played through speakers, the exhibition was created by Niki de Saint-Phalle, Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvedt. It had 80,000 visitors during the period from June 4 to September 9,1966. in ‘Meridians 2_ compmqenan ate a pie 2001 ‘Relief Meta-Mechanique Sonore I’ incl. New Realism Rube Goldberg—Conceptual pioneer of complex machinery Useless machine Arthur Ganson Museum Tinguely in Basel Chapter on Tinguely in Calvin Tomkins The Bride. K. G. Pontus Hultén, Jean Tinguely Méta, london, Thames & Hudson,1975 G. Bischofsberger, Catalogue raisonné,3 Vols. Margit Hahnloser-Ingold, Pandämonium – Jean Tinguely, Bern, Benteli,1988 Heidi E. Violand, Jean Tinguelys Kinetic Art or A Myth of the Machine Age. Diss, New York University,1990 Museum Jean Tinguely, Die Sammlung, Bern, Benteli,1996 Museum Jean Tinguely, Jean le Jeune. Tinguely-Museum in Basel Biography by the Tinguely Museum in Basel Art Cyclopaedia, Jean Tinguely http, //www. art-public. com/cyclop/cyclop_g
