The Nouveaux Réalistes –From Yves Klein to Joseph Beuys

Trend News?by Karen Moller

The?Nouveaux Réalistes –From Yves Klein to Joseph Beuys

In 1961 Robert Rauschenberg had an exhibition in that wonderful Gallery Iris Clert,?3 rue des Beaux-Arts.?The gallery was in the forefront of many avant-garde exhibitions, including Arman, Tinguely, and?Yves Klein.?The critic Pierre?Rastany and Yves Klein?founded?the?Nouveaux Réalistes?in 1960 proclaiming it as?new ways of perceiving the real.?Robert Rauschenberg neatly fit the narrow definition set by Pierre,?however his particular choice of found objects and rejects of life: vulgar commercial materials, comic books, and ads were very American.?

??????????I was not particularly familiar with?Yves Klein’s work the day I met him in Tinguely’s studio.?Later, when I asked Tinguely about Klein, he smiled and remarked, “Klein’s happy intensity makes life into a poem overflowing with good humor. He is magic itself.”?Yves?Klein’s mother?Marie Raymond?was?quite remarkable; an early example for me of what was possible for a woman painter. In the Paris pre-war period, she and her husband lived a bohemian life style in Montparnasse.?She exhibited her?Imaginary Landscapes?at the 1945 Salon des Surindépendants?as?part of the avant-garde with?Jacques Villon and Frank Kupka?and later at the Denise René gallery.?‘Marie’s Mondays’ were gathering of gallery?owners, collectors, and later?Nouveaux Réalistes, which included Klein, Tinguely, Dufrêne, Hains, Villeglé, Arman, and César.

Yves?Klein’s exhibition in 1958 of?Monochrome?Propositions?at the?Gallery Iris Clert?consisted of a?single blue monochrome in the window, with a number of similar monochromes on the gallery walls.?Klein called them as imprints of absence.?His?next exhibition,?le Vide?(The Void), he described as ‘a concern with emptiness and a disavowal of self.’?He removed everything in the gallery except?a single empty display case, which he painted a glossy white, and labeled?Art. The gallery's window he painted blue and hung a blue curtain at the entrance; republican guards presented blue cocktails.?It was not actually the color blue that interested him, but the?blue of the void.?In its way it was performance art before performances became performance art.?That?exhibition was a shock for both the critics and the public, for some it was a revelation. Klein claimed that the color blue was his and he took out a patent on a shade of chemically intensified ultramarine blue, a chemical that was suspect of having affected his health and contributed to his early death.?

Personally, I was intrigued by?Klein’s theory that he could permeate matter with his spirit and that art was not sensory, but extrasensory. He explained it as,?‘The understanding of art is an intimate collaboration on the part of both the creator and the viewer.?Art enters into the person and the person enters into the work of art.’

This?seemed to echo?Joseph?Beuys theory that his?audience experienced a state of mind where an idea could simultaneously be?felt?as well as?understood. Another of their similarity was the way both Klien and?Beuys set about creating their identity by blurring fact and fiction. Beuys’ story about his plane crashing and Tatars?bringing him back to life by?wrapping him in insulating layers of felt and fat caused controversy very similar to?Yves Klein’s photomontage,?Leap?into the Void?showing him jumping off a wall arms outstretched.?The fantasy writings by artists one knows are always fascinating to read and Beuys self-consciously fictionalized account of his life, in which the historical events mingle with the metaphorical (he refers to his birth as the ‘Exhibition of a wound’) are amazing.

After art college he filled?six exercise?books of drawings related to James Joyce's?Ulysses, which he calls?Ulysses Extension?a seminal novel carried out ‘At Joyce's request’. Naturally that could only have come through channeling, as the writer was long dead.?Beuys was a perfectly fit for the optimistic 60s. His hope for humanity was vast, as was?his faith in the political capacities of art to improve the world, ‘The revolution is within us and how we chose to live’, he said.

Beuys had remarkable foresight and many of his apparently wacky ideas have now become central to our way of thinking. Unfortunately his?commitment to the demystification and dis-institutionalization of the ‘art world’, which included exploring different media forms to?improve and?perpetuate open discourse on art and politics never became a reality.?I’ve never forgotten?Beuys’?words to me in 1969, “Today I look to the strength and the unused spiritual power of women to lead us forward. Most of the world’s suffering has come from male rigidity.” That statement filled me with hope and yet there are still few women leading anything.?