nieuw realisme en pop art uit de jaren 60 - Borzo

Soft machine, sculpture-assemblage 1962
signed, dated 62 Gentilly verso, 50 x 60 x 40 cm
Brusse moves to Paris in the sixties where he makes
assemblages of scrap and worked wood, parts of
which can move.
“I came on my own, my studio was the attic where
I lived: the storage area for the Montparnasse
churchyard. It was full to the brim with wood. All about
one metre eighty by forty centimetres. That is what I
used, together with whatever I got off the streets. Rope,
iron, wood. I made assemblages that I called Clôtures.
It wasn’t long before I got an exhibition and that drew
lots of attention. The young art critics named me the
artist of 1961 and I was selected for the Paris Biennale.
This brought me into contact with the nouveaux réalistes,
a group of young artists who congregated around the
art critic Pierre Restany. These were people like Yves
Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Martial Raysse and Daniel
Spoerri.
“I moved into a very small hotel room on the Place de
la Contrescarpe. It was a really nice neighbourhood,
a sort of village within Paris. All artists without a penny
to their name. We went to the same restaurants, where
you could eat for almost nothing and we were always
lending money to each other. It was a really close
bunch. Nouveau Réalisme actually means ordinary:
elevating day-to-day reality to art.
I was no nouveau réalist, but I did fi nd it very interesting.
I learned that it is possible to be different.
You do not necessarily have to carve in marble. It was
a totally different vision of art that naturally suited the
era. I also used material that you found on the street,
I did not go to the art supplies shop”.
modern & contemporary art
In 1965 Mark Brusse leaves for New York where he
meets artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein
and Larry Rivers.
“That was something entirely different. I arrived right
in the middle of Pop Art. And there were the hippies,
the happenings, Fluxus and Minimal Art. For a while I
felt like a bit of a greenhorn. But the good thing was
that people were very open again. I had with me a
catalogue with an introduction by Pierre Restany. And
the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam,
Edy de Wilde, had sent a letter of recommendation to
the great gallery owner Leo Castelli. I go to his gallery,
where the screen prints of Andy Warhol’s huge cow
heads hang like wallpaper. Castelli leafs through my
catalogue, hands it back and says: ‘You may be a bit
disappointed, but I am working with eight artists, very
intensively. And I am paying them well. Go and do
some work and I would like to see how you are doing
every now and again’. I was about to walk away
dejectedly, when he called me back and invited me
to go with him that evening to a party of Claes
Oldenburg’s. So I walked in that evening on the arm of
the great Leo Castelli and all those people were
wondering: who is that? I was introduced to Lichtenstein,
to Warhol, Larry Rivers. Castelli occasionally slipping
me a sly wink.
I quickly got to know all sorts of people; there was a
party or a happening every night. I even briefl y had
a girlfriend, one of Andy Warhol’s Superstars: Susan
Superstar. At Andy’s in The Factory you could smoke
joints all day and sprawl on the divan. With God knows
who. Everyone was always kind and friendly. For Andy
everything was fi ne and wonderful. People were also
working but lots of times it was hard to distinguish
whether this was a performance or not. The normal
everyday things and the performances all got mixed
up together.
The fellowship was the same as in Paris, and in Arnhem.
Nice people also came to my studio. Barnet Newman
for example, and people from The Netherlands too:
Wim Beeren, Bert Schierbeek and Rik van Bentum of
course. Money did not yet play any great part. And
those huge parties at Claes Oldenburg’s: not a problem.
The thought of pinching anything never entered
anyone’s head”.
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