Ecole de Nice, 1956--1971.
Item
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Title
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Ecole de Nice, 1956--1971.
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Identifier
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AAI3103151
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identifier
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3103151
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Creator
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O'Neill, Rosemary.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Rose-Carol Washton-Long
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Date
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2003
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | History, Modern | History, European
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Abstract
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The Ecole de Nice of the 1960s has been broadly defined to include artists associated with three distinct artistic tendencies---Nouveau Realisme, Fluxus, and Supports/Surfaces. The focus of this study is the five most significant artists of the Ecole de Nice---Yves Klein, Arman, Martial Raysse, Ben Vautier, and Claude Viallat. Despite their stylistic diversity and affiliations, the conceptual affinities shared by these artists and their sense of cultural autonomy have not been examined. Consequently, the Ecole de Nice, though given some credibility as the result of museum exhibitions, has largely remained ill-defined and historically neglected.;This dissertation will demonstrate that the Ecole de Nice is an important historical phenomenon inseparable from the Riviera, but also a gauge of the broader changes impacting France in the 1960s. Even more so than Paris, the Ecole de Nice called attention to the implications of Americanization (consumerism, mass culture, and tourism), and they epitomized the national emphasis on rejuvenation associated with a younger demographic, and the Mediterranean region. Beyond direct or metaphoric reference to the locale, all five artists created a visual language meant to engage the public with the experience of their new reality by predicating their work on direct perception and sensations, and rejecting intellectualization and introverted subjectivity. All five artists devised theatrical modes of presentation based on the strategy of appropriation and the use of readymade objects and spaces to counter the dominance of painting as a vehicle of formalist innovation, the basis of the Ecole de Paris.;The Ecole de Nice promoted artistic pluralism. These artists drew from the array of modernist trends, but this study will emphasize the clear links these artists made to the classical and modern traditions associated with the Riviera, and the new reality of consumerism and tourism, which characterized the region's postwar development. I suggest that the emergence of the Ecole de Nice internally eroded the dominance of Parisian culture as the national standard, and provided a new model of French pluralism that remains distinct yet comparable to international trends of the 1960s.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
