Pierre Restany (1930–2003)

James Wines and his firm SITE are best known for their designs for BEST Product Showrooms, most of which are gone or have altered beyond belief (though one has been converted into a church with its initial concept still intact). The buildings – each of which played around with notions of architecture, facade and other physical traits of building or nature – remain influential, both in elevating Wines as a figure of relevance and in the history of architecture. Most are collected here and show more there in books of postmodern architecture as well as architectural art. The title of this book then, which rounds up primarily the BEST showrooms, is apt, as it gets at the explorations and commentary that Wines infused into those projects. Or as he puts it in an essay in this book (rather, as SITE puts it, since Wines is not mentioned by name in this book): "For SITE, architecture is the subject matter or raw material of art, and not the objective of a design process." If anything, this book is great for its documentation of some of the most interesting architecture built in the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s. show less

Vingt-cinq ans d'activité passionnée et souvent polémique ont fait de Pierre Restany un personnage hors série de la scène artistique. Sa rencontre avec Yves Klein en 1955 est capitale. Elle lui offre l'occasion d'une totale remise en question des valeurs de langage. Pressentant les ouvertures et les limites de l'expressionnisme abstrait américain et de l'abstraction lyrique européenne, il en tirera un livre, Lyrisme et Abstraction et une théorie, le Nouveau Réalisme : découverte show more d'un sens moderne de la nature et retour à un humanisme de l'objet industriel. 1968 lui offre l'occasion d'une réflexion critique et prospective sur les structures sociologiques de l'art contemporain. Le Petit Livre Rouge de la Révolution Picturale et le Livre Blanc de l'Art Total. Dix ans plus tard, L'Autre Face de l'Art, un essai paru en feuilleton mensuel dans Domus en 1978, retrace l'histoire de la fonction déviante dans l'art contemporain. En juillet et août 1978, en compagnie de Sepp Baendereck et de Frans Krajcberg, il remonte en bateau le Rio Negro, principal affluent nord de l'Amazone de Manaus à la frontière du Venezuela. Le Manifeste du Rio Negro, rédigé en pleine forêt, se réfère à un naturalisme intégral, discipline fondamentale de la pensée et méthode de recharge affective de la sensibilité : une réponse objective, synthétique, planétaire aux questions que l'art d'aujourd'hui se pose sur son existence et sa fonction. show less

Galleria Apollinaire Milano = Catalogo della mostra antologica di 11 opere di Yves Klein le monochrome presenta da Pierre Restany

15 reproductions of works in b/w throughout, texts by Guido Le Noci and Pierre Restany. Additionally there is an one page full sheet reproduction of the “Relief Planetaire La Terre” from 1961 and a facsimile of Klein’s handwritten text “Le Globe Terestre Bleu”. Biography and chronology of works. A near mint example of this scarce exhibition catalogue from show more Klein’s last year of life before his third (and, by definition, final as it was fatal) heart attack which sent him to the immaterial. show less

Published concurrently with the exhibition at Gagosian,March 4–April 17, 1993.