Jean Tinguel: Nouveau Realism

“Nouveau realism”, an art movement founded in the 1960s by Pierre Restany and Yves Klein, focused on decreasing the gap between art and reality by incorporating daily materials into their artwork.  Jean Tinguely was one of nine artists that greatly influenced the nouveau realism art movement. Tinguely was a Swiss born artist who studied in painting and sculpture; however he became more involved in mechanics and the 4^th dimension of time and space in the 1940s. Although Tinguely has been identified with the nouveau realism movement, I consider him a performance artist and the father of kinetic art. Performance art appeared during the same time period as nouveau realism, and stood apart from other movements because the art interacted with the audience in what was called a “Happenings”; for instance, Tinguely created a series of “metamatic” motorized machines, that required audience interaction in order to produce instant abstract art.

  Tinguely’s most famous artwork, Homage to New York, also used machinery and kinetic energy.  Homage to New York was created to perform (and then destroy itself) and thus illustrate the connection between creation and destruction. Tinguely thought this represented New York City, a city whose energy has the ability to build and then destroy its self. With the help of engineer Billy Kluver, he and Tinguely   Homage to New York premiered on March 17, 1960 in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern

Art in New York. The construction destroyed itself within 30 minutes of beginning its performance in front of an audience of elite art critics and several news stations. Pieces of the destroyed art piece remain at the Museum of Modern Art.

 http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=81174

http://www.thttp://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/performance-art-an-introduction.htmlinguely-jean.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Tinguely

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Realism