CURATED LIBRARIES

The Nouveau Realistes

In 2010, Artforum ran an article by Tom McDonough on the great French decollage artist and founding member of the Nouveau Réalisme movement, Jacques Villeglé, on the occasion of his retrospective at the Pompidou. This article prompted us to collect this library of Nouveau Réalistes, that loosely assembled group of French artists who came together in 1960 to practice, as their manifesto put it, “the fascinating adventure of real seeing.” Nouveau Réalistes took the stuff of everyday life—meals, household items, advertisement hoardings, the contents of their workdesks—and presented them as chance assemblages of everyday life. In the case of Villeglé, there was also a political content: his lacerations of advertising posters rebelled against the incipient consumer bombardment of the 1960s, stripping off layers to create lively “de-collages.” Villeglé is a key figure in Nouveau Réalisme (Moderne Kunst Nurnberg, 2005), still the best book on the subject, a fantastic survey featuring all members of the group, among them Arman, Christo, François Dufrene, Yves Klein, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, and Jean Tinguely. Some of these names are well served by monographs, but Daniel Spoerri has fared less well, so Kerber’s great monograph, Coincidence As Master, which collects his famous “snare pictures” (in which the remains of meals eaten by individuals, including the plates, silverware and glasses are fixed to the table or board, which is then displayed on a wall) and other works is particularly important to this library. Kerber also published a monograph on a lesser-known side of Arman’s output, his Schwitters-inspired prints. Charta has two excellent books on Mimmo Rotella, who pioneered the art of effacage, the erasure of images from popular magazines: Rotella, from 1997, and Verbale N.2847 from 2005. Pierre Restany, who drew up the original Nouveau Réaliste manifesto of 1960, provides a nice introduction to Charta’s book on Niki de Saint Phalle’s famous Tarot Garden, and Hatje Cantz’s monograph on the artist remains unsurpassed as a broad survey. Poligrafa’s collection of Yves Klein writings and interviews is a welcome addition.

Daniel Spoerri was a pioneer both of Nouveau Realisme and of Fluxus, two post-War movements that continue to inspire young artists today.

My trap pictures should create discomfort... i like the contrast provoked by fixating objects, to extract objects from the flow of constant changes and from their perennial possibilities of movement

Daniel Spoerri