Nouveau Réalisme
ヌーヴォー・レアリスム / 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.
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At a glance
Visual cues
- Layers of posters torn back
- Accumulations of identical objects
- Compressed industrial products
- Material chosen rather than worked
Best used for
- Urban and cultural posters that take fly-posted, weathered layers as their actual language rather than as a filter
- Retail and exhibition display built from massed identical units, where the accumulation is the graphic device
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Dictionary entry
- Type
- Fragments of existing typography, whatever survives the tear, never a face chosen for the job
- Composition
- Let the torn edge draw the composition, splitting the field around one compressed or massed block
- Material
- Mass identical real objects, or paste and tear paper so the lower printings show
- Caution
- 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.
- Further study
- The 1960 manifesto and its signatories / The technique of décollage / Comparison with American Pop
Related entries
- Neo-Dada (ネオ・ダダ)Shared effects: Rebellion / Technique.Compare Nouveau Réalisme and Neo-Dada
- Arte Povera (アルテ・ポーヴェラ)Shared effects: Rebellion.Compare Nouveau Réalisme and Arte Povera
More from Postwar Abstract Painting
Continue through styles in the same Postwar Abstract Painting family, prioritised by shared effects.
- Neo-Expressionism (新表現主義)Shared effects: Exhilaration / Rebellion.
- Color Field Painting (カラーフィールド・ペインティング)Shared effects: Exhilaration.
- Art Informel (アンフォルメル)Shared effects: Technique.
Browse all Postwar Abstract Painting entries
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- https://indexstyle.org/styles/nouveau-realisme
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