Compose two styles

Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, it says so before you start.

How to divide the work

Composition
Follow Neo-Dada: No grid: a horizontal collage in which one three-dimensional object breaks the picture plane and pulls the eye off axis.
Type
Set in Neo-Dada's manner (Mixed sizes and mixed faces from whatever was to hand, some stencilled, some torn out of existing print.), and let Nouveau Réalisme's lettering (Fragments of existing typography, whatever survives the tear, never a face chosen for the job) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
Material
Ground in Neo-Dada's material (Silkscreened newsprint over smeared paint, registration deliberately out, erasures left visible.); bring in exactly one thing from Nouveau Réalisme (Mass identical real objects, or paste and tear paper so the lower printings show).
Colour
Build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.

Where they fight

These two are already listed as related, so the join should come easily.

Caution

  • Neo-Dada Pasting readymades alone never shows why they were chosen, and it becomes a shelf of knickknacks. Arranging it tidily strips the dirt and scale the work depends on, and leaves clean decoration.
  • Nouveau Réalisme Simulating the torn poster with a distress filter: the movement's entire claim is that the material was taken and not made, and a synthetic tear reverses it.

Image prompt

An original image that takes its structure from Neo-Dada (Style, 1953–1965) and its accent from Nouveau Réalisme (Style, 1960–1970). Structural cues: Ready-made objects brought onto the picture; Printed matter transferred by silkscreen; Forms halfway between painting and object; Traces of erasing, layering and soiling. Accent cues, used sparingly: Layers of posters torn back; Accumulations of identical objects; Compressed industrial products; Material chosen rather than worked. Composition: No grid: a horizontal collage in which one three-dimensional object breaks the picture plane and pulls the eye off axis.. Type and lettering: Mixed sizes and mixed faces from whatever was to hand, some stencilled, some torn out of existing print.. Let one material quality come from the second style: Mass identical real objects, or paste and tear paper so the lower printings show. Mood: Rebellion, Play, Technology, Exhilaration. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition in the general period languages described above.

Related entries

  • Neo-Dada 1953–1965 / Style / Postwar American Art

    A postwar current that answered the inwardness of Abstract Expressionism by bringing household objects, printed matter and taxidermy onto the picture, working in the gap between art and life. It inherited Dada's gestures while making the materials of consumer society into structural components. The branching point immediately before Pop art.

  • Nouveau Réalisme 1960–1970 / Style / Postwar Abstract Painting

    A group that declared, in Paris in 1960, the direct appropriation of reality. Layers of torn posters, compressed car bodies and accumulated refuse make the city itself into the work without passing through depiction. The stance of selecting material rather than working it laid the ground for all later assemblage.

Share this pairing:
https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=neo-dada+nouveau-realisme

Back to index position