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Publication of the research project“To each his own reality.The notion of thereal in the fine arts of France,West Germany,

East Germany and Poland, -”

Sophie Cras

Nouveau Réalisme: From Socialist Realismto Capitalist Realism

Translated from the French by SarahTooth Michelet

Editor:Mathilde ArnouxChief editor: Clément LayetAssistant managing editor: Sira LuthardtLayout: Jacques-Antoine Bresch

What common ground could possibly exist between one of the mostfamous French avant-garde art movements, which was founded by thecritic Pierre Restany in , and a group of artists in the late s-early s who practised a deliberately traditional painting style sup-ported by the French Communist Party? At first glance, there appears tobe 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 pos-tulate that it was neither a random coincidence nor without consequence,but that, on the contrary, it highlights a political context, deeply affectedby the ColdWar, that informed art practice and discourse and stronglyinfluenced 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 alreadybeen employed to define and describe French Socialist Realist paintingbetween roughly and ? This decision is all the more astonish-ing given the underlying Gaullist, anti-communist stance that drove Frenchart criticism from the s, which is well documented in archives andinterviews.As Restany stated in reference to this period,“The atmospherecreated by the left-wing cultural milieu when I arrived in Paris [in ]was unbearable to me.” In Paris, Restany promptly joined the“Rassemblement du Peuple Français” (RPF, the Alliance of the Peopleof France), the party founded by General de Gaulle in . His autho-rised biographer writes,“On Saturdays, it was not unusual to see Pierrehanding out leaflets or putting up posters. Students regularly got into

Nouveau Réalisme: From Socialist Realismto Capitalist Realism

Sophie Cras

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fights with communists on the boulevards.” Restany’s political activismenabled him to serve in the French government as a ministerial speechwriter throughout the s, as well as to establish crucial initial contactswith the art world. A number of his first articles on art were publishedin an anti-communist, pro-American journal produced by the“Associationdes Amis de la Liberté” (Friends of FreedomAssociation).Not only did Restany take a political stand against communism, but he

also consistently criticised its official aesthetic style, Socialist Realism.One event that left a lasting impression on him was the famous “PortraitAffair” in , in which the French Communist Party accused Picasso ofdisrespecting the official representational codes in his portrait of Stalin.Restany deemed the affair “deplorable”, and in the years that followedexpressed an overt contempt for Georges Boudaille, an art critic whoworked at the time of the event for the cultural journal Les Lettres Françaises.This contempt was reignited in when Boudaille was appointeddirector of the Paris Biennale. Restany’s aversion to Socialist Realismcan be traced in particular to his close connections with artists from theEastern bloc countries as early as and throughout the decade that fol-lowed. During the summer of , at the time that Nouveau Réalismewas founded, he wrote:

“Since we are on the subject of wishful thinking, let us hope, onceand for all, that popular democracies will one day understand that thespiritual concerns of the working class do not necessarily coincidewith the conventionalism of functional, socially-committed art.Whilenationalistic folklore […] can appeal to our sentimental natures andour taste for the exotic, our bodies balk at the painful digestion ofnational anthems while at work and the hackneyed praise of the social-ist homeland.The USSR and its satellites inflict their customary doseof Socialist Realism on us. […] It bears repeating that the VeniceBiennale is an international institution. It is therefore appropriate thatit reflects a large-scale opposition between the two irreconcilable per-spectives of art and social concerns.”

Restany believed,more strongly than many other art commentators of theperiod, that the art world was divided into two irreconcilable camps:socialism and capitalism.Why, then, did he appropriate a term utilised bythe opposite camp?At the time that Restany’s movement was founded andthen when it was first presented outside France, the expression “Nouveau

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Réalisme”was infused with differing political connotations according tolocal ideological orientations in relation to the international context: thedivision of the world between capitalism and communism.

The founding of Nouveau Réalisme

Part of the answer to the question posed above can be found in the gen-eral atmosphere of the s, the period in which Pierre Restany gainedexperience as an art critic.The French art scene at the time was bothextremely dynamic and fractious, torn between the hostile “camps” ofabstraction versus figuration (the most extreme form of which was the fig-urative style promoted by the Communist Party).Within abstraction,there was a conflict between geometric and lyrical styles, which werethemselves split into numerous sub-movements.

“In this turbulent environment, recalls Restany, there was no room fora middle ground, and I decided very quickly which camp I belongedto by working out who my friends were and, especially, weighing upmy options. In the abstract versus figurative quarrel that raged in the earlys, it was an open field.The scales had not yet tipped conclusivelyin favour of non-figurative art.”

Yet while these separate camps opposed each other artistically, ideolog-ically and on a personal level, they nonetheless shared common pointsof reference.These include the hotly-disputed term of “realism”.Therewas nothing particularly new in this, considering that the so-called “his-torical” avant-garde movements of the early th century had alreadyquarrelled over the notion of realism, as much in an effort to remainfaithful to a particular tradition – that of th century French art — asto 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 Gleizesand Jean Metzinger in to defend Cubism against accusations ofdistorting reality.This viewpoint continued in art discourse through theinterwar years.While at the same time the widespread mood of “a returnto order” led to a rise in popularity of the terms “realism” and “real-ity”, on the left of the spectrum Aragon began advocating “FrenchRealism” (a national version of Socialist Realism) and the abstract artists

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least associated with the notion of imitation, such as Mondrian, alsoidentified themselves with realism.

From this perspective, there was no distinct separation between theperiods before and afterWorldWar II.“Realism”continued to be a highly-valued attribute to which all camps claimed allegiance, in both the figu-rative and abstract traditions.The latter group chose the name of “RéalitésNouvelles” (New Realities), a term borrowed fromApollinaire, as a titlefor their association of artists dedicated to non-figurative art, the “Salondes Réalités Nouvelles” founded in .The term “reality” is thus par-adoxically a unifying term that brings together all these conflicting abstractart movements. The following year, André Fougeron assumed leader-ship of Nouveau Réalisme, the French version of Soviet Socialist Realism,which aimed to follow in the realist tradition of Courbet.This appropri-ation of the concept of “realism”by the French Communist Party sparkedoutrage throughout the art world at the time, as observed by MichelRagon:

“From , the Communist Party unleashed its bomb of ‘SocialistRealism’ – which was not yet called ‘Nouveau Réalisme‘ – on abstractart. […] [However,] one of the powerful voices of art-world author-ity [supporting traditional figurative painting] was Claude Roger-Marxat Le Figaro Littéraire, and these anti-communists could not tolerate theCommunist Party stealing realism from them. […] He was stupefied bythe idea that the communists hijacked not only the term ‘NouveauRéalisme‘, but that they also claimed allegiance to the person respon-sible for the dismantling of the PlaceVendôme column [Courbet]. […]This led Claude Roger-Marx and his friends to seek out a non-com-munist ‘New Realist’ who could stand as an alternative to Fougeron.They found him in a young man fresh from the École des Beaux-Arts[…].They awarded him the Critics’ Prize, thus launching the career ofBernard Buffet.”

Although perhaps a little caricatured, this account highlights the fact thatstealing terminology from the camp which you most vehemently opposedwas common practice in a divided art scene in an era in which one’s affil-iations 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 appro-priate realism, and in offered an overview of the “true” and “false”forms of realism in contemporary art.Without explicitly mentioning it, the

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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 real-ity of the visible in which everything is relative, but rather, its other mean-ing,which is far removed from deceptive appearances and refers instead tothe inner, hidden source of existence.”After excluding Socialist Realismfrom any consideration, the journal claimed to accept all forms of real-ism, from figurative to abstract, stating,“The real belongs to all eras and real-ity belongs to all the arts”.The article continues with a study entitled “ToEach His Own Reality”, which effectively drains all meaning from thenotion of reality, arguing that “there are words that do not easily lendthemselves to exact definition”.

When Restany borrowed the concept of Nouveau Réalisme, he merelyengaged 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 rangingfrom Jacques Villeglé, who published an article entitled “Des RéalitésCollectives” (“Collective Realities”) in the journal Grammes in , toYves Klein,who, since , had been studying a concept of “today’s real-ism” that was far more Platonist than materialistic in orientation.Wellaware of the competitive battle in full swing, Restany proclaimed,“Thisnew realism is the genuine one.” Nonetheless, his attempts to deprive hisenemies – the communists and abstractionists – of their own forms ofrealism and to beat them at their own game led him to make a connec-tion with an artist from the previous generation: Fernand Léger.

Léger, like his contemporaries, used the term“realism in conception” todescribe his work process from onwards, but he also later developedhis own distinctive approach – particularly following trips to NewYorkin the s – which he called Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism). ForLéger,Nouveau Réalisme entailed incorporating everyday objects into theworld of art, ranging from raw materials to the latest technological inven-tions and commercial display materials. The similarities between thethemes and vocabulary of Léger’s Nouveau Réalisme and that of Restanyare striking, both in their emphasis on the object and the idea of embrac-ing modern industrial society and so-called “sociological factuality”.

Did Restany the art critic take his inspiration from Léger the artist, whowas then at the height of his fame?

Pierre Restany’s archives support this hypothesis. From the time ofLéger’s death in until the end of the s, Restany collected and

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documented press articles about the artist. His personal library includedthirty-four books on the work of Léger, dating from the s to thes.Restany mentioned Léger many times in his own articles from thelate s, notably describing him as “showing brilliant initiative”. In anarticle about an exhibition on the subject of machines,Restany condemnsthe“failure of realism”,which was incapable of “assimilating this new real-ity”. “The absence of Léger”, he writes, “was strongly felt.” Restany’sinterest in Léger was perhaps stimulated by his friendship with AndréVerdet, who was a friend of Léger and a leading specialist on his work.Restany’s archives provide a record of his close relationship withVerdetfrom the mid-s onwards, as shown by their regular meetings, bookdedications, invitations to events and correspondence. As it happened,Verdet was one of the most outspoken defenders of Léger’s NouveauRéalisme. In his monograph of the artist’s work published in , hewrites in the opening lines, “Everything [in Léger’s work] is consistentwith this sociological function”– words that bring to mind the“sociologicalcontinuation” that Restany extols repeatedly in his first manifesto onNouveau Réalisme.A little further on in this monograph,Verdet repro-duces 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 theobject as having intrinsic artistic value; it has value in itself,which wasnecessary to emphasise.That is how Nouveau Réalisme can be defined. […]”

In another monograph on the work of Léger published ten years later,which is included in Restany’s personal collection,Verdet points to the con-nection between Léger and Restany’s Nouveau Réalisme.He writes,“Asfor the new generation of artists, […] and I am thinking in particular ofthose who align themselves with Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art,manyof them, if we draw them into a discussion on the subject,would end upacknowledging the direct influence of Dada and Fernand Léger on theirmovements.” Indeed, as Restany’s diary entry of May, , shows,while on his way to Milan for the very first exhibition entitled NouveauRéalisme at the GalleriaApollinaire (which gave its name to the movement)he attended the inauguration of the Fernand Léger Museum in Biot, insouthern France, along with AndréVerdet and Raymond Hains. Hains

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later recalled that he and Restany had discussed Léger’s work and praisedhis realist style.

Restany may also have been impressed with Léger’s position as an“unorthodox communist”, since Léger had always maintained his oppo-sition to Socialist Realism,much to the dismay of certain art critics whowere Party members.As early as the s, during the period of the so-called “quarrel with realism”, Léger had openly positioned his ownNouveau Réalisme in opposition to the French version of SocialistRealism championed by Aragon. Moreover, in the s, Léger wrotein the communist magazine La Nouvelle Critique to defend the notion ofartistic pluralism and promote an alternative conception of realism.

Restany’s decision to name his movement Nouveau Réalisme was thusboth a means of paying tribute to an artist whom he admired and a wayof thumbing his nose at French Socialist Realism. In a letter to Restanyin , André Verdet makes little attempt to hide his scorn for theCommunist Party,writing,“As an interesting reference, I wish to draw yourattention to an article on my exhibition published in the CommunistParty magazine La Nouvelle Critique, which discusses the idea of ‘zeromomentum’.Appearing as it does in an orthodox Marxist literary jour-nal, its implications are perhaps worth pursuing.”

The reception of Nouveau Réalisme

While the ideological clash between communism and capitalism was cer-tainly a driving factor behind Restany’s creation of Nouveau Réalisme,it was equally relevant when the movement was first exposed to the pub-lic eye in the early s. In the United States, and then in Europe, themovement’s name evoked an ironic association with the Soviet aesthetic,despite the fact that it increasingly, and consistently, became allied with theidea of capitalist propaganda.As Restany himself acknowledged,Nouveau Réalisme did not truly gain

international recognition until after its exposure in the United States.Theexhibition held at the Sidney Janis Gallery in NewYork in was enti-tled The New Realists and juxtaposed work by Restany’s group ofNouveaux Réalistes with that of the emerging generation of Americanartists who would soon be known as Pop Artists. This juxtapositionstrongly influenced the reception of the Nouveaux Réalistes, both in theUnited States andWestern Europe, with the result that for several years

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Nouveau Réalisme became confused with Pop Art. First in the UnitedStates – a nation in the throes of the ColdWar and profoundly affectedby the Cuban missile crisis – the term “realism” was a shocking one,appearing to have its roots in the Soviet cultural discourse.When appliedto the Pop Art movement, which specifically drew on images from cap-italist consumer society, the term appeared to be paradoxical. Hence theart critic David Bourdon described AndyWarhol in as a “SocialRealist in reverse”.

This paradox was even more apparent to European commentatorswhen news of the critical response to the Nouveaux Réalistes reachedEurope in -, first in articles in art journals, then in exhibitions:Nouveau Réalisme was now associated with Pop Art and was viewed asa manifestation of the Atlanticist spirit, at times even as an Americanimport. In this way, David Bourdon’s concept of “Social Realism inreverse” resurfaced even more forcefully inWest Germany,where abstractart had long dominated the scene, having embodied the ideal of artisticfreedom in the face of continuing repression in Eastern Europe. Thiswas the theme of the legendary exhibition Living with Pop:A Demonstrationfor Capitalist Realism staged by Manfred Kuttner, Konrad Lueg, SigmarPolke and Gerhard Richter in Düsseldorf in October .These artists’“demonstration” consisted of taking over an entire multi-level furniturestore and its contents, to which they added their paintings and installationsof collections of utensils, newspapers, food and drinks, a papier mâchéstatue of President John F. Kennedy, as well as Lueg and Richter in per-son posing as part of the displays.TheseWest German artists effectivelyredefined their own interpretation of PopArt according to their experi-ence of it, which was based notably on an article published in ArtInternational in January about theNew Realists show at the Sidney JanisGallery, viewing it as indistinguishable from French Nouveau Réalisme.

They humorously presented the movement as the capitalist equivalentof the Socialist Realism that prevailed at the time in East Germany.AsRichter later explained, the term“Capitalist Realism”was “not intendedto be taken seriously.There was Socialist Realism, which was very wellknown, especially to me.This was just the opposite. […]This term some-how attacked both sides: it made Socialist Realism look ridiculous, anddid the same to the possibility of Capitalist Realism.”

In Belgium, the response to Nouveau Réalisme after its exposure in theUnited States was also highly political, particularly in Surrealist circles,which had ties with Communism but were staunchly opposed toAragon’s

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views on Socialist Realism. Édouard Jaguer thus warned against the“assault of waves of PopArt crossing theAtlantic Ocean […] now accom-panied,with help from Restany, by a tirade on the new social function ofart”. Here too, Restany’s Nouveau Réalisme was confused with PopArt, thereby paradoxically appearing to be imported from the UnitedStates, rather than France, and embodying capitalist ideology in all itsforms.The avant-garde Belgian magazine Le Daily Bul went even fur-ther, categorising Nouveau Réalisme as an incontestably right-wingmovement aligned with the defenders of capitalism, and ridiculed thealleged neutral and apolitical stance promoted in Restany’s logic of “soci-ological factuality”:“With Nouveau Réalisme, the Right had at last foundits art form.The fact that this movement’s theorists have taken great careto avoid any official association with a right-wing position in their writ-ings and events in itself arouses suspicion.”

It was also in that the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers discov-ered Nouveau Réalisme, a term that was, as noted earlier, used in Belgiummore or less interchangeably with Pop Art to describe European andAmerican artists. This former communist who was highly critical ofAragon for defending Socialist Realism made an instant connectionbetween the two terms.As part of Broodthaers’ exhibition in , heoffered visitors a “Lesson in National Pop Art” in the form of a happen-ing, during which he played the role of “teacher”,while his “students”hadto respond to everything he said with respectful replies of “Yes,Master”or “No,Master.” Nouveau Réalisme was thus parodied as a new formof official art, capitalist in content and national in form, considered byBroodthaers as a “sign of approval” and a “glorification” of modern civ-ilization.The artist explained his views in an interview in , in which,when asked about the possible link between PopArt and Socialist Realism– “official popular art” – he replied that there was a “reverse connec-tion”.“Let us just say [that Nouveau Réalisme] is the black humour ofSocialist Realism”, he stated.

Broodthaers strikes the right chord when he speaks of humour, particu-larly black humour. For was it not the height of irony for Restany toborrow the Communist Party’s Nouveau Réalisme as the name for his ownmovement, one that was rapidly seen as a glorification of capitalism? Inconclusion, let us note that in Restany changed the colour of his“black” humour with his Livre Rouge de la Révolution Picturale (Little RedBook of the Pictorial Revolution) published by the Galleria Apollinaire.This

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was an outright parody of MaoTse-Tung’s Little Red Book, in which hedirectly attacked activist artists whom he considered prisoners of the“shackles” of “obeying the dictates of propaganda” and “the painting oflofty socialist ideals”. The reaction to this “innocuous pleasantry”, asRestany described his book, almost degenerated into a full-scale assault.He recalls having to run away from“a contingent Marxist-Leninists,whowanted to press charges against my book, accusing me of exploiting theChinese Revolution for my own gains, which”, he notes,“added a cer-tain amount of spice to the situation.”

Translated from the French by Sarah TOOTH MICHELET

See, in particular,Michele Cone,“The EarlyFormativeYears of Pierre Restany”, in TheFlorence Gould Lectures at NewYork University,vol.VI, -, pp. -.

“Interview with P. Restany, Milan, February, ”, in Lucrezia De DomizioDurini,Pierre Restany,L’Eco del Futuro,Milan,Silvana Editoriale, , p. .

Henry Périer, Pierre Restany, L’alchimiste del’art, Paris, Éditions Cercle d’Art, , p. .

At the campaign offices supporting the right-wing political party RPF, Restany metHélène Copin, and later Henri Kamer,whogave him the opportunity to work at theKamer Gallery in . During a visit byCharles de Gaulle to the Côte d’Azur, hemet the artist Arman, who was acting as deGaulle’s bodyguard at the time (see ibid.,p. and p. ). Note that Restany madeno distinction between his ministerial activ-ities and his work as an art critic,“Rememberthat my job at that time specifically involvedstudying social, economic and productivityissues, and translating them into politicalterms. […] I recall being isolated from mycolleagues [art critics] because of my aware-ness of socio-economic subjects, whichinspired me to seek out with particular inter-est any art events that aimed to illustrate real-ity in a new way” [De Domizio Durini,(note ), p. ].

Périer, (note ), p. . Pierre Restany, Une vie dans l’art. Entretiensavec Jean-François Bory, Neuchâtel, ÉditionsIdes et Calendes,, p.. Pierre Restany’sarchives,which are kept in theArchives de laCritique d’Art in Rennes, France, bear wit-ness to the intensity of these connectionswith artists.

“La XXXème Biennale deVenise”, typescriptsigned by Pierre Restany, dated “August”, Archives of Pierre Restany,PREST.XSF, Identification no. , p. .

This view runs contrary to what historiog-raphy leads us to believe through the almostsystematic omission of any mention of thepresence of France in Socialist Realist move-ments (in France or abroad) in general his-tories of the period. See, for example, ErnestGoldschmidt,Depuis : L’Art de notre temps,Brussels, Éditions de la Connaissance, ;Paris-Paris :Créations en France -, exh.cat. Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris,Gallimard, .

Restany, (note ), p. .

Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, DuCubisme, Paris, Eugène Figuière Éditeurs,. Following their lead, avant-garde artistsfrequently strove for a form of “realism” intheir work, such as Malevitch, who in championed his own form of “New PictorialRealism”.

Christian Derouet,“Les réalismes en France,rupture ou rature”, in Les Réalismes, -, exh. cat. Paris, Centre GeorgesPompidou, ; Michel Seuphor, “PietMondrian et le nouveau réalisme”, in Vraiet Faux Réalisme dans l’art contemporain,XXe Siècle, no. , June , pp. -.

Dominique Viéville, “Vous avez ditgéométrique? Le Salon des RéalitésNouvelles, -”, in Paris, , Paris-Paris (note ), p. .

Michel Ragon, ans d’art vivant :Chroniquevécue de l’art contemporain, de l’abstraction aupop art, Paris, Éditions Galilée, , pp. -.Voices were also raised among Communistabstract artists against the Communist Party’smonopoly on “realism”.One of these artistswasAuguste Herbin,who defended the“real-ity” of abstract art in L’Art non figuratif, nonobjectif, Paris, Éditions Lydia Conti, .

Pierre Courthion,“Réalité du cubisme”, inVrai et Faux Réalisme dans l’art contemporain,XXe Siècle, (note ), pp. -.

“A chacun sa réalité”, a study by PierreVolboudt, in ibid., pp. -.

Jacques de la Villeglé, “Des réalités collec-tives”, in Grammes, no. ,May , pp. -;Yves Klein,“Le réalisme authentique d’au-jourd’hui”, typescript on paper, September,. x . cm,Div.s no.,Yves KleinArchives, Paris. See “Postface” by DenysRiout, in Pierre Restany, Manifeste desNouveaux Réalistes, Paris,Dilecta, , note, p. . See also Restany’s views on the sub-ject in “‘La prise en compte réaliste d’unesituation nouvelle’, un entretien avec PierreRestany”, in Les Nouveaux Réalistes, exh.cat.Paris,Musée d’Art Moderne de laVille deParis, , p. .

Typed document ():“Paris: une synthèsedes arts pour le troisième millénaire”(PREST.XSF), in Écrits:Tapuscrits de PierreRestany, France et , Archives of PierreRestany, p. .

See Fernand Léger,“Les réalisations picturalesactuelles” (), in Sylvie Forestier (ed.),Fonctions de la peinture, Paris,Gallimard, .

See, on this subject,Roger Garaudy,Pour un

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réalisme du XXe siècle – Étude sur Fernand Léger,Paris, Grasset, .

See Manuscript for the lecture by FernandLéger entitled “Léger, sa vie son œuvre sonrêve”, in Guido Le Noci, Fernand Léger, savie son œuvre son rêve, Milan, , n.p.

Fernand Léger quoted by Lawrence Saphirein “Paysages américains, filles américaines.Adieu NewYork et La Grande Julie”, in FernandLéger, exh. cat. Paris,Centre Pompidou,,p. .

This view is convincingly argued by HélèneLassale in “Art Criticism as Strategy:TheIdiom of ‘New Realism’ from Fernand Légerto the Pierre Restany Group” (trans. AnnCremin), in Malcolm Gee (ed.),Art CriticismSince , Manchester and New York,Manchester University Press, , pp. -. In his own writings, Restany discussedthe importance of Fernand Léger in thes, cf. Périer, (note ), p. .

See Archives of Pierre Restany, file no.PREST XT/ to .

“Les sources du XXe siècle”,Archives of PierreRestany, file no. /PREST.XE.

“L’âge mécanique: face à la machine, l’artistedemeure un apprenti-sorcier”, Archives ofPierre Restany, file no./PREST.XE, pp. -.

AndréVerdet,Fernand Léger, Le dynamisme pic-tural, Geneva, Éditions Pierre Cailler, ,p. .

Ibid., p. . AndréVerdet,Fernand Léger,, n.p., library

of Pierre Restany (LEGE.). Périer, (note ), p..Restany had pre-

viously visited Biot at least on one occasionto celebrate the laying of the museum’s foun-dation stone, as shown on the invitation list.I wish to thank Nelly Maillard from theMusée National Fernand Léger in Biot forproviding me with this information in anemail from March,.To mark this occa-sion,Restany wrote a report for the magazineCimaise entitled “Le Musée Fernand Légerà Biot (Alpes Maritimes)”,Archives of PierreRestany, file no. /PREST.XE.

Dominique Berthet, Le P.C.F., la culture etl’art (-), Paris, Éditions de la TableRonde, , p. and following pages.

Serge Fauchereau (ed.),La Querelle du réalisme,Paris, Cercle d’Art,“Diagonales”, .

Fernand Léger,“Discussion sur la peinture”,in La Nouvelle Critique, no. , March .

Letter fromAndréVerdet to Pierre Restany,

undated (postmarked //), Archivesof Pierre Restany,Dossier AndréVerdet, FRACA PREST ART ().

For Restany, this exhibition was “a veryimportant factor in accelerating the impact ofNouveau Réalisme” [Restany, (note ),p. ].

On the choice of the term“New Realists”, asopposed to“PopArt”, see the audio interviewwith Sidney Janis by Paul Cummings, July ,,Archives of American Art, SmithsonianInstitution,Washington D.C.The term “PopArt” was officially introduced in late thanks to the Symposium on PopArt organisedby Peter Selz at the Museum of Modern Artin NewYork on December, .

According to Max Kozloff, the exhibitionThe New Realists was interpreted, in the con-text of the Cold War, as taking a politicalstance in favour of one or other camp. SeeMax Kozloff, “American Painting Duringthe Cold War”, in Artforum, vol. XI, no. ,May , p. .

“Warhol interroge Bourdon” (-), inKenneth Goldsmith (ed.), Andy Warhol,Entretiens, - (trans.Alain Cueff), Paris,Grasset, , p. [original English publi-cation: “Warhol Interviews Bourdon”, inKenneth Goldsmith (ed.), I’ll BeYour Mirror:The SelectedAndyWarhol Interviews, -,NewYork, Carroll and Graff, ]. Notethat critics in the United States immediatelydrew a connection between the work ofFernand Léger and these European andAmerican“New Realists”, particularly in thecase of Roy Lichtenstein. See, for example,Carol Anne Mahsun, Pop Art and the Critics,AnnArbor,UMI Research Press,, p..Indeed, Sidney Janis had a particular inter-est in Léger, with his work regularly exhib-ited at his gallery during this period.

“The New Realism”, in Art inAmerica, vol.,no. , February , pp. -; NeueRealisten und PopArt, exh. cat.Berlin,Academyof Art, ; Pop-Art, Nouveau Réalisme, etc.,exh. cat.Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts,.On the subject of the reaction to AmericanPop Art in Germany, see Catherine Dossin,“Pop begeistert: American Pop Art and theGerman People”, in American Art, vol. ,no. , Fall , pp. -.

Antje Kramer, L’Aventure allemande duNouveau Réalisme: réalités et fantasmes d’unenéo-avant-garde européenne (-),Dijon,Les Presses du Réel, , p. .

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An initial exhibition had previously beenheld in May . See exhibition invitationin Ich nenne mich als Maler Konrad Lueg, ed.byThomas Kellein, exh. cat.Bielefeld,Kunst-halle, , p. .

The exhibition also featured a papier mâchéstatue of gallery owner Alfred Schméla,whoexhibitedYves Klein’s work. For a detaileddescription of the exhibition, see MartinHentschel, “Konrad Lueg and GerhardRichter, Living with Pop –A Demonstrationon Behalf of Capitalist Realism”, in Shopping:A Century of Art and Consumer Culture, exh.cat. Liverpool,Tate Liverpool, .

To publicise their show they used a photo-graph of the exhibition featuring works byBaj,Wesselmann,Hains, Baruchello,Olden-burg andThiebaud,which accompanied thearticle “Dada Then and Now”, in ArtInternational, vol. , no. , January ,pp. -. Note that the nd Festival ofNouveau Réalisme had previously been heldin Munich in February and attracted“wide media coverage” [see Kramer, (note ), p. ].

Quoted in Coosje van Bruggen, “GerhardRichter:Painting as a MoralAct”, in Artforum,vol. , no. , May , p. .

See, for example,Christian Dotremont’s pam-phlet entitled, Le “réalisme-socialiste” contre larévolution from , as well as the writings ofPaul Nougé.See also Marcel Mariën,L’Activitésurréaliste en Belgique (-),Brussels,Édi-tions Lebeer-Hossmann, , p. .

Édouard Jaguer, “Accent circonspect”, inPhases, no. , April , p. , quoted anddiscussed in Jacques Van Lennep, “DeMagritte à Broodthaers, Le surréalisme enBelgique quarante ans plus tard”, in Bulletindes Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique,vol. -, -, p. .

Karl Feurbach, “Nouveau-Réalisme etLumpen-Prolétariat”, in Le Daily Bul, no. ,, n.p., quoted and discussed in JillCarrick,Nouveau Réalisme, s France, and theNeo-avant-garde,Topographies of Chance andReturn, Surrey, Farnham, , note , p. .

In his article “Gare au défi ! Le pop art, JimDine et l’influence de René Magritte”,Marcel Broodthaers refers to “this ‘NouveauRéalisme’ or ‘PopArt’ that is currently beingdiscussed”, in Journal des Beaux-Arts, Brussels,no. , November, , p. .

The historian JacquesVan Lennep writes ofBroodthaers: “At a gala event at the Palaisdes Beaux-Arts dedicated to the poetry ofthe Resistance, he shouted from the galleries,‘Louis Aragon,when will you stop compro-mising French poetry?’” [Van Lennep, - (note ), p. ].

Michael Compton,“In Praise of the Subject”,inMarcel Broodthaers, ed.by Marge Goldwater,exh. cat. Minneapolis,Walker Art Centre,, p..The exhibition invitation is repro-duced inMarcel Broodthaers, ed. by CatherineDavid, exh. cat. Paris, Galerie Nationale duJeu de Paume, , pp. -. See alsoClaudia Schubert (ed.),Marcel Broodthaers,Texte et photos, Gottingen, Steidl, ,pp. -.

Jean-Michel Vlaeminckx, “Entretien avecMarcel Broodthaers” (), republished inMarcel Broodthaers,Marcel Broodthaers parlui-même, Gand/Amsterdam, Ludion/Flam-marion, , p. .

Ibid. Pierre Restany,Le Livre Rouge de la Révolution

Picturale, Milan, Edizioni Apollinaire, ,p. .

Restany, (note ), p. .

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