The Myth of Nouveau Realisme: Art and the Performative in Postwar France

This beautifully illustrated examination of the so-called Nouveaux Realistes revisits the organizing claims of contemporaneous critic Pierre Restany, holding that Restany's manifesto of Nouveau Realisme obscures or occludes many aspects of a thorny and complex group of art makers in an effort to capture a coherent set of practitioners within his movement. Cabanas, a lecturer at Columbia University, makes a case for reinterpreting this group (which includes Yves Klein, Raymond Hains and Jacques Villegle, Daniel Spoerri, and Jean Tinguely) according to their quiet, disparate praxis. She asserts that their most salient connection is the way in which each employs and manipulates performance as a tool of meaning-making, thereby troubling any simple relationship between conventional perception and reality. The political and social context shared by these artists is woven among the critical analysis, but by and large theory and analysis trump history. The study is engaging but dense and resolutely academic. Cabanas is not shy of intricate theoretical terminology and plants few guideposts for the casual reader. Picking through the resultant thickets is rewarding, but the book is not a Sunday stroll. (Apr.)