The Menil Collection

Leaps into the Void:

Documents of Nouveau Réalist Performance

March, 19 - August, 8 2010

" Leaps into the Void : Documents of Nouveau Réalist Performance" is a unique exhibition that draws heavily on The Menil Collection's outstanding collection of twentieth-century French art.

Nouveau Réalisme, translated as “New Realism,” was an artistic movement centered in Paris that took place in the early 1960s. With pyrotechnics, exploding pigment, blowtorches, lacerated décollage, and found materials, it is characterized by a paradoxical emphasis on notions of deconstruction and accumulation. Founded by art critic Pierre Restany, and led by Yves Klein along with artists Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Martial Raysse, Christo, Daniel Spoerri, and Arman, among others, members believed direct and aggressive physical explorations and the use of discarded materials from everyday life (in the tradition of Dada) achieved a more truthful understanding of modern society. As the group proclaimed in the First Manifesto of Nouveau  Réalisme, “If one succeeds at reintegrating oneself with the real, one achieves transcendence, which is emotion, sentiment, and finally, poetry.”

 Yves Klein, Feux de Bengale - Tableau de feu bleu d'une minute, 1957.

© 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

 “Leaps into the Void” draws from the Menil’s strong holdings of work and material from the archives and collection that document the movement’s ephemeral aspects, perhaps most famously epitomized by Yves Klein’s “Leap into the Void.” The photograph by Harry Shunk, capturing the artist hurling him

self from a Parisian rooftop, will be exhibited alongside other documents of the jump, including Klein’s publication emulating the Journal du Dimanche, which he inserted as a guerrilla intervention into newspaper stands on the streets of Paris. Archival photo documentation of Jean Tinguely’s self-destructing sculpture that went up in flames in a square in Milan, to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the founding of Nouveau Réalisme, will also be on display, alongside a 1966 film by Francois de Menil of the construction and deconstruction of HON, a monumental sculpture installed at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm by Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, and Per Olof Ultvedt. 

 Niki de Saint-Phalle, Reims, 1962

Yves Klein : La Révolution Bleue

Outdoor sceening

Menil Collection 1515 Sul Ross Street Houston, TX 77006

Sunday March, 21, 7:30 PM

(France, 2006) Directed by François Lévy-Kuentz Category : Documentary. France/2006/Betacam/colour, b&w/52 min/French

Lévy-Kuentz’ “documentary fiction” is a remarkable introduction to abstract art through one of its most influential personalities.  Yves Klein’s career lasted only eight years, from 1954 to 1962, but he managed to shake the foundations of modern art. This portrait, featuring unreleased archival material (including Klein's own films), examines the artist's meteoric career and the mysterious correlations running through his work. 

Co-sponsored by