Pierre Restany

Pierre Restany (1930–2003) was a French art critic and theorist who co-founded Nouveau Réalisme, championing art made from the materials and objects of everyday life.

Yves Klein: A French artist known for monochrome paintings, performances, and experiments with immateriality. Klein and Restany jointly launched Nouveau Réalisme in 1960.
Nouveau Réalisme Manifesto: A 1960 text by Pierre Restany that announced Nouveau Réalisme as a new approach to perceiving and appropriating reality. It states the principles Restany used to unite the movement’s varied practices.
Paris in the 1950s: A period of postwar cultural life in Paris shaped by reconstruction, new consumer goods, and competing artistic movements. Restany developed his criticism in the city where Nouveau Réalisme first took shape.
New Realism: A term for several artistic movements that pursued renewed representation or engagement with reality. The English phrase can obscure the specific French movement Restany named Nouveau Réalisme.
Arman: A French-American artist who made accumulations and compositions from discarded or manufactured objects. His assemblages exemplified the movement’s direct use of everyday objects.
Appropriation (art): The use of existing objects, images, or materials as elements in a new artwork. Restany framed artists’ selection of real objects as a new form of artistic expression.
European postwar art: Art made in Europe after the Second World War amid reconstruction and changing political and social conditions. Nouveau Réalisme was one response to the artistic landscape Restany encountered after the war.
Consumer society: A society in which buying and using mass-produced goods are central to economic and social life. Nouveau Réalisme made the objects and detritus of consumer society into artistic material.
Daniel Spoerri: A Swiss artist who fixed remnants of meals and other objects into tabletop assemblages. His trap-paintings made ordinary consumption a subject and material of art.
Readymade: An ordinary manufactured object designated as art through selection and presentation. The readymade offered a precedent for the movement’s use of found objects.

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Nouveau réalismeRelated: Restany wrote the movement’s founding manifesto and helped define its shared program.