OwnReality (6)
Sophie Cras
Nouveau Réalisme: From Socialist Realism to Capitalist Realism
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What common ground could possibly exist between one of the most famous French avant­garde art movements, which was founded by the critic Pierre Restany in 1960, and a group of artists in the late 1940s­
early 1950s who practised a deliberately traditional painting style supported by the French Communist Party? At first glance, there appears to be none. That is, apart from the name they share: Nouveau Réalisme. This paper sets out to investigate the shared use of this name and to postulate that it was neither a random coincidence nor without consequence, but that, on the contrary, it highlights a political context, deeply affected by the Cold War, that informed art practice and discourse and strongly influenced the initial reception of Nouveau Réalisme.
What is the explanation for Restany's decision to borrow the term Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) for his movement when it had already been employed to define and describe French Socialist Realist painting between roughly 1947 and 1954? This decision is all the more astonishing given the underlying Gaullist, anti­
communist stance that drove French art criticism from the 1940s, which is well documented in archives and interviews.1 As Restany stated in reference to this period, "The atmosphere created by the left­wing cultural milieu when I arrived in Paris [in 1949] was unbearable to me." 2 In Paris, Restany promptly joined the "Rassemblement du Peuple Français" (RPF, the Alliance of the People of France), the party founded by General de Gaulle in 1947. His authorised biographer writes, "On Saturdays, it was not unusual to see Pierre handing out leaflets or putting up posters. Students regularly got into fights with communists on the boulevards."3 Restany's political activism enabled him to serve in the French government as a ministerial speech writer throughout the 1950s, as well as to establish crucial initial contacts with the art world. 4 A number of his first articles on art were published in an anti­communist, pro­American journal produced by the "Association des Amis de la Liberté" (Friends of Freedom Association).
Not only did Restany take a political stand against communism, but he also consistently criticised its official See, in particular, Michele Cone, "The Early Formative Years of Pierre Restany", in The Florence Gould Lectures at New York University, vol. VI, 2002­2004, pp. 73­79. 1
"Interview with P. Restany, Milan, 22 February, 1992", in Lucrezia De Domizio Durini, Pierre Restany, L'Eco del Futuro, Milan, Silvana Editoriale, 2005, p. 30.
2
3
Henry Périer, Pierre Restany, L'alchimiste de l'art, Paris, Éditions Cercle d'Art, 1998, p. 27. At the campaign offices supporting the right­wing political party RPF, Restany met Hélène Copin, and later Henri Kamer, who gave him the opportunity to work at the Kamer Gallery in 1956. During a visit by Charles de Gaulle to the Côte d'Azur, he met the artist Arman, who was acting as de Gaulle's bodyguard at the time (see ibid., p. 63 and p. 138). Note that Restany made no distinction between his ministerial activities and his work as an art critic, "Remember that my job at that time specifically involved studying social, economic and productivity issues, and translating them into political terms. […] I recall being isolated from my colleagues [art critics] because of my awareness of socio­economic subjects, which inspired me to seek out with particular interest any art events that aimed to illustrate reality in a new way" [De Domizio Durini, 2005 (note 2), p. 32].
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aesthetic style, Socialist Realism. One event that left a lasting impression on him was the famous "Portrait Affair" in 1953, in which the French Communist Party accused Picasso of disrespecting the official representational codes in his portrait of Stalin. Restany deemed the affair "deplorable", and in the years that followed expressed an overt contempt for Georges Boudaille, an art critic who worked at the time of the event for the cultural journal Les Lettres Françaises. This contempt was reignited in 1959 when Boudaille was appointed director of the Paris Biennale.5 Restany's aversion to Socialist Realism can be traced in particular to his close connections with artists from the Eastern bloc countries as early as 1960 and throughout the decade that followed.6 During the summer of 1960, at the time that Nouveau Réalisme was founded, he wrote:
"Since we are on the subject of wishful thinking, let us hope, once and for all, that popular democracies will one day understand that the spiritual concerns of the working class do not necessarily coincide with the conventionalism of functional, socially­committed art. While nationalistic folklore […] can appeal to our sentimental natures and our taste for the exotic, our bodies balk at the painful digestion of national anthems while at work and the hackneyed praise of the socialist homeland. The USSR and its satellites inflict their customary dose of Socialist Realism on us. [...] It bears repeating that the Venice Biennale is an international institution. It is therefore appropriate that it reflects a large­scale opposition between the two irreconcilable perspectives of art and social concerns."7
Restany believed, more strongly than many other art commentators of the period, that the art world was divided into two irreconcilable camps: socialism and capitalism. 8 Why, then, did he appropriate a term utilised by the opposite camp? At the time that Restany's movement was founded and then when it was first presented outside France, the expression "Nouveau Réalisme" was infused with differing political connotations according to local ideological orientations in relation to the international context: the division of the world between capitalism and communism.
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The founding of Nouveau Réalisme
Part of the answer to the question posed above can be found in the general atmosphere of the 1950s, the period in which Pierre Restany gained experience as an art critic. The French art scene at the time was both 5
Périer, 1998 (note 3), p. 126.
Pierre Restany, Une vie dans l'art. Entretiens avec Jean­François Bory, Neuchâtel, Éditions Ides et Calendes, 1983, p. 105. Pierre Restany's archives, which are kept in the Archives de la Critique d'Art in Rennes, France, bear witness to the intensity of these connections with artists.
6
"La XXXème Biennale de Venise", typescript signed by Pierre Restany, dated "August 1960", Archives of Pierre Restany, PREST.XSF36, Identification no. 5133, p. 20.
7
This view runs contrary to what historiography leads us to believe through the almost systematic omission of any mention of the presence of France in Socialist Realist movements (in France or abroad) in general histories of the period. See, for example, Ernest Goldschmidt, Depuis 45: L'Art de notre temps, Brussels, Éditions de la Connaissance, 1969; Paris­Paris: Créations en France 1937­1957, exh. cat. Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Gallimard, 1981.
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extremely dynamic and fractious, torn between the hostile "camps" of abstraction versus figuration (the most extreme form of which was the figurative style promoted by the Communist Party). Within abstraction, there was a conflict between geometric and lyrical styles, which were themselves split into numerous sub­
movements.
"In this turbulent environment, recalls Restany, there was no room for a middle ground, and I decided very quickly which camp I belonged to by working out who my friends were and, especially, weighing up my options. In the abstract versus figurative quarrel that raged in the early 1950s, it was an open field. The scales had not yet tipped conclusively in favour of non­figurative art."9
Yet while these separate camps opposed each other artistically, ideologically and on a personal level, they nonetheless shared common points of reference. These include the hotly­disputed term of "realism". There was nothing particularly new in this, considering that the so­called "historical" avant­garde movements of the early 20th century had already quarrelled over the notion of realism, as much in an effort to remain faithful to a particular tradition – that of 19th century French art — as to prevent their opponents from claiming a monopoly over the term. Indeed the necessity to distinguish between "superficial realism" and "deep realism" was one of the key arguments put forth by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger in 1912 to defend Cubism against accusations of distorting reality.10 This viewpoint continued in art discourse through the interwar years. While at the same time the widespread mood of "a return to order" led to a rise in popularity of the terms "realism" and "reality", on the left of the spectrum Aragon began advocating "French Realism" (a national version of Socialist Realism) and the abstract artists least associated with the notion of imitation, such as Mondrian, also identified themselves with realism. 11
From this perspective, there was no distinct separation between the periods before and after World War II. "Realism" continued to be a highly­valued attribute to which all camps claimed allegiance, in both the figurative and abstract traditions. The latter group chose the name of "Réalités Nouvelles" (New Realities), a term borrowed from Apollinaire, as a title for their association of artists dedicated to non­figurative art, the "Salon des Réalités Nouvelles" founded in 1946. The term "reality" is thus paradoxically a unifying term that brings together all these conflicting abstract art movements. 12 The following year, André Fougeron assumed leadership of Nouveau Réalisme, the French version of Soviet Socialist Realism, which aimed to follow in the realist tradition of Courbet. This appropriation of the concept of "realism" by the French Communist Party 9
Restany, 1983 (note 6), p. 5.
Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du Cubisme, Paris, Eugène Figuière Éditeurs, 1912. Following their lead, avant­
garde artists frequently strove for a form of "realism" in their work, such as Malevitch, who in 1916 championed his own form of "New Pictorial Realism".
10
Christian Derouet, "Les réalismes en France, rupture ou rature", in Les Réalismes, 1919­1939, exh. cat. Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1981; Michel Seuphor, "Piet Mondrian et le nouveau réalisme", in Vrai et Faux Réalisme dans l'art contemporain, XXe Siècle, no. 9, June 1957, pp. 8­9.
11
Dominique Viéville, "Vous avez dit géométrique? Le Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, 1946­1957", in Paris, 1981, Paris­
Paris (note 8), p. 407.
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sparked outrage throughout the art world at the time, as observed by Michel Ragon:
"From 1948, the Communist Party unleashed its bomb of 'Socialist Realism' – which was not yet called 'Nouveau Réalisme' – on abstract art. […] [However,] one of the powerful voices of art­world authority [supporting traditional figurative painting] was Claude Roger­Marx at Le Figaro Littéraire, and these anti­communists could not tolerate the Communist Party stealing realism from them. [...] He was stupefied by the idea that the communists hijacked not only the term 'Nouveau Réalisme', but that they also claimed allegiance to the person responsible for the dismantling of the Place Vendôme column [Courbet]. […] This led Claude Roger­Marx and his friends to seek out a non­
communist 'New Realist' who could stand as an alternative to Fougeron. They found him in a young man fresh from the École des Beaux­Arts […]. They awarded him the Critics' Prize, thus launching the career of Bernard Buffet."13
Although perhaps a little caricatured, this account highlights the fact that stealing terminology from the camp which you most vehemently opposed was common practice in a divided art scene in an era in which one's affiliations and the words employed to defend them were of utmost importance. The French art journal XXe Siècle was at the centre of this battle to appropriate realism, and in 1957 offered an overview of the "true" and "false" forms of realism in contemporary art. Without explicitly mentioning it, the journal denounced the realism of the Communist Party, stating that the word "realism" must be "taken for what it effectively signifies, that is, not the reality of the visible in which everything is relative, but rather, its other meaning, which is far removed from deceptive appearances and refers instead to the inner, hidden source of existence." 14 After excluding Socialist Realism from any consideration, the journal claimed to accept all forms of realism, from figurative to abstract, stating, "The real belongs to all eras and reality belongs to all the arts". The article continues with a study entitled "To Each His Own Reality", which effectively drains all meaning from the notion of reality, arguing that "there are words that do not easily lend themselves to exact definition".15
When Restany borrowed the concept of Nouveau Réalisme, he merely engaged in the pursuit for appropriating a prescriptive term, or value, that was vehemently disputed by all rival camps and movements at the time. The multiple interpretations of the term brought together artists ranging from Jacques Villeglé, who published an article entitled "Des Réalités Collectives" ("Collective Realities") in the journal Grammes in 1958, to Yves Klein, who, since 1959, had been studying a concept of "today's realism" that was far more Platonist than materialistic in orientation.16 Well aware of the competitive battle in full swing, Restany Michel Ragon, 25 ans d'art vivant: Chronique vécue de l'art contemporain, de l'abstraction au pop art, Paris, Éditions Galilée, 1986, pp. 49­50. Voices were also raised among Communist abstract artists against the Communist Party's monopoly on "realism". One of these artists was Auguste Herbin, who defended the "reality" of abstract art in L'Art non figuratif, non objectif, Paris, Éditions Lydia Conti, 1949.
13
Pierre Courthion, "Réalité du cubisme", in Vrai et Faux Réalisme dans l'art contemporain, XXe Siècle, 1957 (note 11), pp. 3­6.
14
15
"A chacun sa réalité", a study by Pierre Volboudt, in ibid., pp. 21­35.
Jacques de la Villeglé, "Des réalités collectives", in Grammes, no. 2, May 1958, pp. 9­14; Yves Klein, "Le réalisme authentique d'aujourd'hui", typescript on paper, September 1959, 29.2 x 20.8 cm, Div.s no. 450, Yves Klein Archives, Paris. See "Postface" by Denys Riout, in Pierre Restany, Manifeste des Nouveaux Réalistes, Paris, Dilecta, 2007, note 3, p. 13. See also Restany's views on the subject in "'La prise en compte réaliste d'une situation nouvelle', un entretien 16
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proclaimed, "This new realism is the genuine one."17 Nonetheless, his attempts to deprive his enemies – the communists and abstractionists – of their own forms of realism and to beat them at their own game led him to make a connection with an artist from the previous generation: Fernand Léger.
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Léger, like his contemporaries, used the term "realism in conception" 18 to describe his work process from 1910 onwards, but he also later developed his own distinctive approach – particularly following trips to New York in the 1930s – which he called Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism).19 For Léger, Nouveau Réalisme entailed incorporating everyday objects into the world of art, ranging from raw materials to the latest technological inventions and commercial display materials.20 The similarities between the themes and vocabulary of Léger's Nouveau Réalisme and that of Restany are striking, both in their emphasis on the object and the idea of embracing modern industrial society and so­called "sociological factuality". 21 Did Restany the art critic take his inspiration from Léger the artist, who was then at the height of his fame? 22
Pierre Restany's archives support this hypothesis. From the time of Léger's death in 1955 until the end of the 1950s, Restany collected and documented press articles about the artist. 23 His personal library included thirty­four books on the work of Léger, dating from the 1950s to the 1990s. Restany mentioned Léger many times in his own articles from the late 1950s, notably describing him as "showing brilliant initiative". 24 In an article about an exhibition on the subject of machines, Restany condemns the "failure of realism", which was incapable of "assimilating this new reality". "The absence of Léger", he writes, "was strongly felt."25 Restany's interest in Léger was perhaps stimulated by his friendship with André Verdet, who was a friend of Léger and a leading specialist on his work. Restany's archives provide a record of his close relationship with Verdet from the mid­1950s onwards, as shown by their regular meetings, book dedications, invitations to events and avec Pierre Restany", in 1960 Les Nouveaux Réalistes, exh. cat. Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1986, p. 19.
Typed document (1965): "Paris: une synthèse des arts pour le troisième millénaire" (PREST.XSF17), in Écrits: Tapuscrits de Pierre Restany, France 1 et 2, Archives of Pierre Restany, p. 13.
17
See Fernand Léger, "Les réalisations picturales actuelles" (1914), in Sylvie Forestier (ed.), Fonctions de la peinture, Paris, Gallimard, 2004.
18
19
See, on this subject, Roger Garaudy, Pour un réalisme du XXe siècle – Étude sur Fernand Léger, Paris, Grasset, 1968.
See Manuscript for the lecture by Fernand Léger entitled "Léger, sa vie son œuvre son rêve", in Guido Le Noci, Fernand Léger, sa vie son œuvre son rêve, Milan, 1971, n.p.
20
Fernand Léger quoted by Lawrence Saphire in "Paysages américains, filles américaines. Adieu New York et La Grande Julie", in Fernand Léger, exh. cat. Paris, Centre Pompidou, 1997, p. 219.
21
This view is convincingly argued by Hélène Lassale in "Art Criticism as Strategy: The Idiom of 'New Realism' from Fernand Léger to the Pierre Restany Group" (trans. Ann Cremin), in Malcolm Gee (ed.), Art Criticism Since 1900, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 1993, pp. 199­218. In his own writings, Restany discussed the importance of Fernand Léger in the 1950s, cf. Périer, 1998 (note 3), p. 53.
22
23
See Archives of Pierre Restany, file no. PREST XT046/2 to 8.
24
"Les sources du XXème siècle", Archives of Pierre Restany, file no. 00115392/PREST.XE007.
"L'âge mécanique: face à la machine, l'artiste demeure un apprenti­sorcier", Archives of Pierre Restany, file no. 00115392/PREST.XE007, pp. 2­3.
25
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correspondence. As it happened, Verdet was one of the most outspoken defenders of Léger's Nouveau Réalisme. In his monograph of the artist's work published in 1955, he writes in the opening lines, "Everything [in Léger's work] is consistent with this sociological function" – words that bring to mind the "sociological continuation" that Restany extols repeatedly in his first manifesto on Nouveau Réalisme.26 A little further on in this monograph, Verdet reproduces a leaflet that was handed out in Léger's studio, signed by the artist:
"Every era has its own realism.
That of the Impressionists is very different from ours.
The distinguishing physical feature of our time is the liberation of the object as having intrinsic artistic value; it has value in itself, which was necessary to emphasise.
That is how Nouveau Réalisme can be defined. […]"27
In another monograph on the work of Léger published ten years later, which is included in Restany's personal collection, Verdet points to the connection between Léger and Restany's Nouveau Réalisme. He writes, "As for the new generation of artists, […] and I am thinking in particular of those who align themselves with Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art, many of them, if we draw them into a discussion on the subject, would end up acknowledging the direct influence of Dada and Fernand Léger on their movements."28 Indeed, as Restany's diary entry of 12 May, 1960, shows, while on his way to Milan for the very first exhibition entitled Nouveau Réalisme at the Galleria Apollinaire (which gave its name to the movement) he attended the inauguration of the Fernand Léger Museum in Biot, in southern France, along with André Verdet and Raymond Hains. Hains later recalled that he and Restany had discussed Léger's work and praised his realist style.29
Restany may also have been impressed with Léger's position as an "unorthodox communist", since Léger had always maintained his opposition to Socialist Realism, much to the dismay of certain art critics who were Party members.30 As early as the 1930s, during the period of the so­called "quarrel with realism", Léger had openly positioned his own Nouveau Réalisme in opposition to the French version of Socialist Realism championed by Aragon.31 Moreover, in the 1950s, Léger wrote in the communist magazine La Nouvelle Critique to defend the notion of artistic pluralism and promote an alternative conception of realism. 32 26
André Verdet, Fernand Léger, Le dynamisme pictural, Geneva, Éditions Pierre Cailler, 1955, p. 19.
27
Ibid., p. 45.
28
André Verdet, Fernand Léger, 1965, n.p., library of Pierre Restany (LEGE.1965).
Périer, 1998 (note 3), p. 159. Restany had previously visited Biot at least on one occasion to celebrate the laying of the museum's foundation stone, as shown on the invitation list. I wish to thank Nelly Maillard from the Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot for providing me with this information in an email from 1 March, 2011. To mark this occasion, Restany wrote a report for the magazine Cimaise entitled "Le Musée Fernand Léger à Biot (Alpes Maritimes)", Archives of Pierre Restany, file no. 00115392/PREST.XE007.
29
Dominique Berthet, Le P.C.F., la culture et l'art (1947­1954), Paris, Éditions de la Table Ronde, 1990, p. 207 and following pages.
30
31
Serge Fauchereau (ed.), La Querelle du réalisme, Paris, Cercle d'Art, "Diagonales", 1987.
32
Fernand Léger, "Discussion sur la peinture", in La Nouvelle Critique, no. 53, March 1954.
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Restany's decision to name his movement Nouveau Réalisme was thus both a means of paying tribute to an artist whom he admired and a way of thumbing his nose at French Socialist Realism. In a letter to Restany in 1962, André Verdet makes little attempt to hide his scorn for the Communist Party, writing, "As an interesting reference, I wish to draw your attention to an article on my exhibition published in the Communist Party magazine La Nouvelle Critique, which discusses the idea of 'zero momentum'. Appearing as it does in an orthodox Marxist literary journal, its implications are perhaps worth pursuing." 33
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The reception of Nouveau Réalisme
While the ideological clash between communism and capitalism was certainly a driving factor behind Restany's creation of Nouveau Réalisme, it was equally relevant when the movement was first exposed to the public eye in the early 1960s. In the United States, and then in Europe, the movement's name evoked an ironic association with the Soviet aesthetic, despite the fact that it increasingly, and consistently, became allied with the idea of capitalist propaganda.
As Restany himself acknowledged, Nouveau Réalisme did not truly gain international recognition until after its exposure in the United States.34 The exhibition held at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1962 was entitled The New Realists and juxtaposed work by Restany's group of Nouveaux Réalistes with that of the emerging generation of American artists who would soon be known as Pop Artists. 35 This juxtaposition strongly influenced the reception of the Nouveaux Réalistes, both in the United States and Western Europe, with the result that for several years Nouveau Réalisme became confused with Pop Art. First in the United States – a nation in the throes of the Cold War and profoundly affected by the Cuban missile crisis – the term "realism" was a shocking one, appearing to have its roots in the Soviet cultural discourse. 36 When applied to the Pop Art movement, which specifically drew on images from capitalist consumer society, the term appeared to be paradoxical. Hence the art critic David Bourdon described Andy Warhol in 1962 as a "Social Realist in reverse".37
Letter from André Verdet to Pierre Restany, undated (postmarked 13/3/1962), Archives of Pierre Restany, Dossier André Verdet, FR ACA PREST ART 372 (1).
33
For Restany, this exhibition was "a very important factor in accelerating the impact of Nouveau Réalisme" [Restany, 1983 (note 6), p. 60].
34
On the choice of the term "New Realists", as opposed to "Pop Art", see the audio interview with Sidney Janis by Paul Cummings, July 18, 1972, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. The term "Pop Art" was officially introduced in late 1962 thanks to the Symposium on Pop Art organised by Peter Selz at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on 13 December, 1962.
35
According to Max Kozloff, the exhibition The New Realists was interpreted, in the context of the Cold War, as taking a political stance in favour of one or other camp. See Max Kozloff, "American Painting During the Cold War", in Artforum, vol. XI, no. 9, May 1973, p. 52.
36
"Warhol interroge Bourdon" (1962­63), in Kenneth Goldsmith (ed.), Andy Warhol, Entretiens, 1962­87 (trans. Alain Cueff), Paris, Grasset, 2005, p. 32 [original English publication: "Warhol Interviews Bourdon", in Kenneth Goldsmith (ed.), I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, 1962­1987, New York, Carroll and Graff, 2004]. Note that critics in the United States immediately drew a connection between the work of Fernand Léger and these European and American "New Realists", particularly in the case of Roy Lichtenstein. See, for example, Carol Anne Mahsun, Pop Art 37
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This paradox was even more apparent to European commentators when news of the critical response to the Nouveaux Réalistes reached Europe in 1962­63, first in articles in art journals, then in exhibitions: Nouveau Réalisme was now associated with Pop Art and was viewed as a manifestation of the Atlanticist spirit, at times even as an American import.38 In this way, David Bourdon's concept of "Social Realism in reverse" resurfaced even more forcefully in West Germany, where abstract art had long dominated the scene, having embodied the ideal of artistic freedom in the face of continuing repression in Eastern Europe. 39 This was the theme of the legendary exhibition Living with Pop: A Demonstration for Capitalist Realism staged by Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter in Düsseldorf in October 1963.40 These artists' "demonstration" consisted of taking over an entire multi­level furniture store and its contents, to which they added their paintings and installations of collections of utensils, newspapers, food and drinks, a papier mâché statue of President John F. Kennedy, as well as Lueg and Richter in person posing as part of the displays.41 These West German artists effectively redefined their own interpretation of Pop Art according to their experience of it, which was based notably on an article published in Art International in January 1963 about the New Realists show at the Sidney Janis Gallery, viewing it as indistinguishable from French Nouveau Réalisme.42 They humorously presented the movement as the capitalist equivalent of the Socialist Realism that prevailed at the time in East Germany. As Richter later explained, the term "Capitalist Realism" was "not intended to be taken seriously. There was Socialist Realism, which was very well known, especially to me. This was just the opposite. […] This term somehow attacked both sides: it made Socialist Realism look ridiculous, and did the same to the possibility of Capitalist Realism." 43
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In Belgium, the response to Nouveau Réalisme after its exposure in the United States was also highly and the Critics, Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1987, p. 107. Indeed, Sidney Janis had a particular interest in Léger, with his work regularly exhibited at his gallery during this period.
"The New Realism", in Art in America, vol. 51, no. 1, February 1963, pp. 102­104; Neue Realisten und Pop Art, exh. cat. Berlin, Academy of Art, 1964; Pop­Art, Nouveau Réalisme, etc., exh. cat. Brussels, Palais des Beaux­Arts, 1965. On the subject of the reaction to American Pop Art in Germany, see Catherine Dossin, "Pop begeistert: American Pop Art and the German People", in American Art, vol. 25, no. 3, Fall 2011, pp. 100­111.
38
Antje Kramer, L'Aventure allemande du Nouveau Réalisme: réalités et fantasmes d'une néo­avant­garde européenne (1957­1963), Dijon, Les Presses du Réel, 2012, p. 46.
39
An initial exhibition had previously been held in May 1963. See exhibition invitation in Ich nenne mich als Maler Konrad Lueg, ed. by Thomas Kellein, exh. cat. Bielefeld, Kunsthalle, 1999, p. 12.
40
The exhibition also featured a papier mâché statue of gallery owner Alfred Schméla, who exhibited Yves Klein's work. For a detailed description of the exhibition, see Martin Hentschel, "Konrad Lueg and Gerhard Richter, Living with Pop – A Demonstration on Behalf of Capitalist Realism", in Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture, exh. cat. Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, 2002.
41
To publicise their show they used a photograph of the exhibition featuring works by Baj, Wesselmann, Hains, Baruchello, Oldenburg and Thiebaud, which accompanied the article "Dada Then and Now", in Art International, vol. 7, no. 1, 25 January 1963, pp. 22­8. Note that the 2nd Festival of Nouveau Réalisme had previously been held in Munich in February 1963 and attracted "wide media coverage" [see Kramer, 2012 (note 39), p. 82].
42
43
Quoted in Coosje van Bruggen, "Gerhard Richter: Painting as a Moral Act", in Artforum, vol. 23, no. 9, May 1985, p. 84.
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political, particularly in Surrealist circles, which had ties with Communism but were staunchly opposed to Aragon's views on Socialist Realism.44 Édouard Jaguer thus warned against the "assault of waves of Pop Art crossing the Atlantic Ocean […] now accompanied, with help from Restany, by a tirade on the new social function of art".45 Here too, Restany's Nouveau Réalisme was confused with Pop Art, thereby paradoxically appearing to be imported from the United States, rather than France, and embodying capitalist ideology in all its forms. The avant­garde Belgian magazine Le Daily Bul went even further, categorising Nouveau Réalisme as an incontestably right­wing movement aligned with the defenders of capitalism, and ridiculed the alleged neutral and apolitical stance promoted in Restany's logic of "sociological factuality": "With Nouveau Réalisme, the Right had at last found its art form. The fact that this movement's theorists have taken great care to avoid any official association with a right­wing position in their writings and events in itself arouses suspicion."46
It was also in 1963 that the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers discovered Nouveau Réalisme, a term that was, as noted earlier, used in Belgium more or less interchangeably with Pop Art to describe European and American artists.47 This former communist who was highly critical of Aragon for defending Socialist Realism made an instant connection between the two terms. 48 As part of Broodthaers' exhibition in 1965, he offered visitors a "Lesson in National Pop Art" in the form of a happening, during which he played the role of "teacher", while his "students" had to respond to everything he said with respectful replies of "Yes, Master" or "No, Master."49 Nouveau Réalisme was thus parodied as a new form of official art, capitalist in content and national in form, considered by Broodthaers as a "sign of approval" and a "glorification" of modern civilization.50 The artist explained his views in an interview in 1965, in which, when asked about the possible link between Pop Art and Socialist Realism – "official popular art" – he replied that there was a "reverse See, for example, Christian Dotremont's pamphlet entitled, Le "réalisme­socialiste" contre la révolution from 1949, as well as the writings of Paul Nougé. See also Marcel Mariën, L'Activité surréaliste en Belgique (1924­1950), Brussels, Éditions Lebeer­Hossmann, 1979, p. 343.
44
Édouard Jaguer, "Accent circonspect", in Phases, no. 9, April 1964, p. 14, quoted and discussed in Jacques Van Lennep, "De Magritte à Broodthaers, Le surréalisme en Belgique quarante ans plus tard", in Bulletin des Musées Royaux des Beaux­Arts de Belgique, vol. 1­3, 1981­1984, p. 226.
45
Karl Feurbach, "Nouveau­Réalisme et Lumpen­Prolétariat", in Le Daily Bul, no. 9, 1963, n.p., quoted and discussed in Jill Carrick, Nouveau Réalisme, 1960s France, and the Neo­avant­garde, Topographies of Chance and Return, Surrey, Farnham, 2010, note 12, p. 39.
46
In his article "Gare au défi! Le pop art, Jim Dine et l'influence de René Magritte", Marcel Broodthaers refers to "this 'Nouveau Réalisme' or 'Pop Art' that is currently being discussed", in Journal des Beaux­Arts, Brussels, no. 1029, 14 November, 1963, p. 9.
47
The historian Jacques Van Lennep writes of Broodthaers: "At a gala event at the Palais des Beaux­Arts dedicated to the poetry of the Resistance, he shouted from the galleries, 'Louis Aragon, when will you stop compromising French poetry?'" [Van Lennep, 1981­1984 (note 45), p. 208].
48
Michael Compton, "In Praise of the Subject", in Marcel Broodthaers, ed. by Marge Goldwater, exh. cat. Minneapolis, Walker Art Centre, 1989, p. 32. The exhibition invitation is reproduced in Marcel Broodthaers, ed. by Catherine David, exh. cat. Paris, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, 1991, pp. 68­69. See also Claudia Schubert (ed.), Marcel Broodthaers, Texte et photos, Gottingen, Steidl, 2003, pp. 306­307.
49
Jean­Michel Vlaeminckx, "Entretien avec Marcel Broodthaers" (1965), republished in Marcel Broodthaers, Marcel Broodthaers par lui­même, Gand/Amsterdam, Ludion/Flammarion, 1998, p. 45.
50
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connection". "Let us just say [that Nouveau Réalisme] is the black humour of Socialist Realism", he stated. 51
Broodthaers strikes the right chord when he speaks of humour, particularly black humour. For was it not the height of irony for Restany to borrow the Communist Party's Nouveau Réalisme as the name for his own movement, one that was rapidly seen as a glorification of capitalism? In conclusion, let us note that in 1968 Restany changed the colour of his "black" humour with his Livre Rouge de la Révolution Picturale (Little Red Book of the Pictorial Revolution) published by the Galleria Apollinaire. This was an outright parody of Mao Tse­Tung's Little Red Book, in which he directly attacked activist artists whom he considered prisoners of the "shackles" of "obeying the dictates of propaganda" and "the painting of lofty socialist ideals". 52 The reaction to this "innocuous pleasantry", as Restany described his book, almost degenerated into a full­scale assault. He recalls having to run away from "a contingent Marxist­Leninists, who wanted to press charges against my book, accusing me of exploiting the Chinese Revolution for my own gains, which", he notes, "added a certain amount of spice to the situation."53
Translated from the French by Sarah Tooth Michelet
51
Ibid.
52
Pierre Restany, Le Livre Rouge de la Révolution Picturale, Milan, Edizioni Apollinaire, 1968, p. 16.
53
Restany, 1983 (note 6), p. 72.
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