Pierre Restany

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Pierre Restany, 1998 (Photo: Erling Mandelmann )

Pierre Restany (born June 24, 1930 in Amélie-les-Bains , Département Pyrénées-Orientales ; † May 29, 2003 in Paris ) was an internationally known French art critic , cultural philosopher and founder and namesake of the Nouveaux Réalistes group .

Live and act

Pierre Restany, born in the Pyrénées-Orientales department , grew up in Casablanca , moved to France in 1949 , attended the Lycée Henri IV in Paris and received his scientific training in France, Ireland and Italy . In Paris he got in touch with the art world. He wrote his first writings for the magazine Cimaise in 1952 . He campaigned for the painter Jean Fautrier , met Yves Klein in 1955 and dealt with lyrical abstraction in his publication Lyrisme et abstraction , 1958.

Yves Klein

In October 1955, Pierre Restany met the young painter Yves Klein, who first exhibited his Monochromes in the Editions Lacoste in Paris. Restany developed a spontaneous affection for this idealistic artistic personality and found emotional access to his ideas. Klein, although a utopian dreamer, had a clear artistic stance, but as "[...] a tightrope walker between genius and charlatan [...]", he had to rely on art critics to spread his conception. In Restany the artist found a congenial interpreter who understood his artistic approach intuitively, a skill Klein described as "direct communication". Restany not only became the artist's closest confidante, he became his most vehement advocate and henceforth formulated the literary and theoretical foundations for Klein's artistic positions.

When they first met at Lacoste, they agreed that Restany should write the foreword for the exhibition catalog Yves - Propositions monochromes (monochrome proposals) of the Colette Allendy gallery. Restany opened the exhibition in February 1956 with a speech that began with the words “La minute de vérité. A tous les intoxiqués de la mashine et de la grande ville, les fénétiques du rhythme et les masturbés du réel, YVES propose une très enrichissante cure de silence asthénique [...] "(" The minute of truth. All of the machinery and the big city intoxicated, the frenetic adherents of the rhythm and the reality masturbators, YVES proposes a very enriching cure of asthenic silence [...] ”) began.

The exhibition Yves - Propositions monochrome was then shown in the Galerie Apollinaire in Milan, from May 31, 1957 in collaboration with the Paris gallery Iris Clert at Alfred Schmela in Düsseldorf and in the same year in the Galerie One in London. In April 1958, the Iris Clert gallery presented the performance Le Vide (Die Void) by Yves Klein, which became legendary and 3000 visitors came to the opening alone. On the invitation card, Restany invited art lovers to attend the “manifestation of a perception synthesis”, which justified Klein's “[…] painterly search for an ecstatic and directly communicable emotion […]”. During the exhibition, Restany reformulated the title The Void in what was found to be more appropriate: “The specialization of sensitivity in the original state as permanent painterly sensitivity”. There were no works of art to be seen in the exhibition, the immaculate white walls of the gallery, illuminated by neon tubes, were completely empty.

After the exhibition Monochrome Painting in 1960 in the Städtische Galerie Leverkusen , Klein and Restany and friends founded the International Klein Bureau , which also promoted the patenting of the legendary IKB (International Klein Blue) , Klein's preferred painting surface.

Nouveau Réalisme

In the 1960s, Restany began to publish on contemporary art, the Nouveau Réalisme . He became the theoretical head of the group that was as inconsistent in style as the Surrealists and American Pop Art . On April 16, 1960, a first exhibition, Les Nouveaux Réalistes , took place at the Apollinaire gallery in Milan , which gave the group its name. The first manifesto , entitled Manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes , was signed by nine artists in Yves Klein's studio on October 27, 1960. In addition to Restany, Yves Klein, Arman , Jean Tinguely , Daniel Spoerri , Martial Raysse , Raymond Hains , Jacques de la Villeglé and François Dufrêne were signatories to the new loose artists' association , later followed by César , Mimmo Rotella , Gérard Deschamps , Niki de Saint Phalle and Christ . What united them was the idea of ​​the relationship between art and reality. Restany's philosophy was:

“The 'Nouveaux Réalistes' have become aware of their collective uniqueness. Nouveau Réalisme = new approach of the ability to perceive the real ”.

Between 1961 and 1967, Galerie J in Paris, run by his second wife Jeannine de Goldschmidt-Rothschild, became an important location for Restany's philosophy. Au 40 ° (Quarante degrés) au dessus de Dada (Forty degrees above Dada ), the second manifesto, was also the title of the first exhibition in Gallery J in May 1961. In the years that followed, the gallery showed artists such as Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg . Since 1963, Restany has worked with the art and architecture magazine Domus and wrote quarterly reviews for Ars magazine . The Nouveaux Réalistes group disbanded in 1970. In 1974 Pierre Restany published the first monograph on Yves Klein at Hachette in Paris, which was followed in 1982 by a second publication entitled Yves Klein , which became the standard work on the artist.

Pierre Restany's grave in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris

Since the 1960s, Pierre Restany traveled through Europe, Asia and the American continent. In the summer of 1978 he went on a boat trip on the Amazon with the artists Sepp Baendereck and Frans Krajcberg . He reflected the travel experience in “Le Manifeste du Río Negro”, which he wrote down in the jungle. In 1988 Restany gave a series of lectures on the state of Western art as part of an exhibition by Günther Uecker in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow . In January 1989 in Milan he met Dmitri Likhachev , member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and first President of the Russian Foundation for Culture, who had come to the opening of an exhibition on the Russian avant-garde . Since 1999 he has dedicated himself to promoting young contemporary artists at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In spring 2002, Pierre Restany took part in the Paris exhibition curated by Sarah Wilson . Capital of the Arts 1900–1968 at the Royal Academy in London .

Shortly before his 73rd birthday, Restany died on May 29, 2003 in Paris; his grave is on the Cimetière Montparnasse .

reception

In 2000, Les éditions Jacqueline Chambon published in Nîmes an anthology of the theoretical writings of Pierre Restany under the programmatic title "Avec le Nouveau Réalisme, sur l'autre face de l'art".

Fonts (selection)

  • The power of art. Hundertwasser, the painter-king with the five skins. Translated from the French by Philip Mattson. Taschen, Cologne 2001, ISBN 978-3-8228-6598-9 .
  • Yves Klein. Translated from the French by Rudolf Kimmig. Schirmer / Mosel , Munich 1982, ISBN 3-921375-71-1 .
  • Le Livre Rouge de la Revolution Picturale. Edition Apollinaire, Milan 1969.
  • La vie este belle, n'est-ce-pas, cher Vostell . In: Wolf Vostell , Galerie Lavignes Bastille, Paris 1990 (without ISBN)
  • Le Timbre d'Artiste. Lieu privilégié de l'identité poétique. In: Marie-Claude Le Floc'h Vellay (foreword): d'Artistes. Timbres. Editions Musée de la Poste, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-905412-21-6 , pp. 11-12; Pp. 209–210 (French / English)
  • Un vraie européen. In: Karl Ruhrberg (Ed.): Alfred Schmela . Gallery owner · pioneer of the avant-garde. Wienand, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-87909-473-X , pp. 148–152 (French / German)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Geneviève Breerette in Le Monde , May 31, 2003, on Restany's death : fabula.org (French), accessed November 15, 2010
  2. ↑ Max Hollein , in: Oliver Berggruen, Max Hollein, Ingrid Pfeiffer: Yves Klein. Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1446-4 , p. 9
  3. ^ Hannah Weitemeier: Yves Klein, 1928–1962: international Klein blue. Taschen, 2001, ISBN 3-8228-8824-9 .
  4. ^ Karl Ruhrberg (Ed.): Alfred Schmela. Gallery owner · pioneer of the avant-garde. Wienand, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-87909-473-X , p. 25 f.
  5. ^ Karl Ruhrberg (Ed.): Alfred Schmela. Gallery owner · Pioneer of the avant-garde. Cologne 1996, p. 25
  6. ↑ Nuit Banai: Yves Klein's Adventure in the Void. In: Oliver Berggruen, Max Hollein, Ingrid Pfeiffer: Yves Klein. Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1446-4 , p. 22
  7. ^ Les Nouveaux Réalistes , contemporart.voila.net, accessed on October 5, 2012
  8. ↑ Uwe. M. Schneede: The history of art in the 20th century , p. 204 f
  9. ↑ Quoted from web link The Independent , June 4, 2003
  10. ↑ Maria Huber: Inalienable things. Memory and Recollection in the Work of Daniel Spoerri. (PDF; 3.6 MB). Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 2009. In it for the exhibition Au 40 ° in the gallery J 1961 p. 16, footnote 26; Fig.n 22-25. (Accessed November 16, 2010)
  11. ↑ Kristine Stiles , Peter Selz : Theories and documents of contemporary art. A source book of artists' writings. University of California Press, Berkeley 1996, ISBN 0-520-20253-8 , pp. 306-309, Pierre Restany: The Nouveaux Réalistes Declaration of Intention (1960); Forty Degrees Above Dada (1961). (Two manifestos in English translation, accessed November 19, 2010).
  12. ↑ Biography on Pierre Restany ( Memento of July 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), deridia.com (English); Retrieved November 15, 2010
  13. ↑ Yves Klein. HN Abrams, New York 1982; Yves Klein. Le Chêne, Paris 1982; Yves Klein. Schirmer Mosel, Munich 1982
  14. ^ Pierre Restany: Manifeste du Rio Negro. August 3, 1978 (French), accessed November 15, 2010
  15. ↑ Elienne MW Lawson: Pierre Restany. Oracular artist-critic and champion of Nouveau Réalisme ( Memento of July 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), The Independent , June 4, 2003; Retrieved October 5, 2012
  16. ↑ Avec le Nouveau Réalisme, sur l'autre face de l'art . J. Chambon, Nîmes 2000
  17. ^ [1] Text by Pierre Restany about Wolf Vostell
personal data
SURNAME Restany, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French art historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Amélie-les-Bains
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 2003
Place of death Paris , France