Jean Tinguely in the context of Dada

Iris Clert (Greek: Ίρις Αθανασιάδη; Iris Athanasiadi; 1917 – 1986) was a Greek-born art gallery owner and curator. She owned the Iris Clert Gallery in Paris from 1955 to 1971. During its tenure, her gallery became an avant-garde hotspot in the international art scene, particularly to Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and Arman.

Originally of Greek nationality, Clert moved to Paris in the 1930s. She became active in the French Resistance during the Second World War.

The Museum Tinguely is an art museum in Basel, Switzerland, dedicated to the work of Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely (1925–1991). Designed by architect Mario Botta, it opened in 1996 on the banks of the Rhine. The museum holds the world’s largest collection of Tinguely’s works, ranging from early reliefs to large-scale kinetic sculptures.

The museum’s permanent display includes Tinguely’s kinetic sculptures, together with illustrations, photographs, and archival materials related to his life and work. Shortly after the museum opened, Niki de Saint Phalle donated more than 50 works from Tinguely’s estate. The museum also organizes temporary exhibitions that engage with other artists, including Tinguely’s contemporaries and modern practitioners.

The Iris Clert Gallery (Galerie Iris Clert in French) was a single-room art gallery named after its Greek owner and curator, Iris Clert. It was located on 3 rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. It was open from 1955 to 1976 and during that time housed artworks from many successful and influential artists of the time, including Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Takis and René Laubies.

Kinetic art is art from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or that depends on motion for its effects. Canvas paintings that extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporate multidimensional movement are the earliest examples of kinetic art. More pertinently speaking, kinetic art is a term that today most often refers to three-dimensional sculptures and figures such as mobiles that move naturally or are machine operated (see e.g. videos on this page of works of George Rickey and Uli Aschenborn). The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer. Kinetic art encompasses a wide variety of overlapping techniques and styles.

There is also a portion of kinetic art that includes virtual movement, or rather movement perceived from only certain angles or sections of the work. This term also clashes frequently with the term "apparent movement", which many people use when referring to an artwork whose movement is created by motors, machines, or electrically powered systems. Both apparent and virtual movement are styles of kinetic art that only recently have been argued as styles of op art. The amount of overlap between kinetic and op art is not significant enough for artists and art historians to consider merging the two styles under one umbrella term, but there are distinctions that have yet to be made.

Nouveau réalisme (French for "new realism") is an art movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan. Restany wrote the original manifesto for the group, titled the "Constitutive Declaration of New Realism," in April 1960, proclaiming, "Nouveau Réalisme—new ways of perceiving the real." This joint declaration was signed on 27 October 1960, in Yves Klein's workshop, by nine people: Yves Klein, Arman, Martial Raysse, Pierre Restany, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely and the Ultra-Lettrists, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, and Jacques de la Villeglé. In 1961 the aforementioned nine were joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle and Gérard Deschamps. The artist Christo showed with the group. It was dissolved in 1970.

Contemporary with American pop art, and often conceived as its transposition in France, new realism was, along with Fluxus and other groups, one of the numerous tendencies of the avant-garde in the 1960s. The group initially chose Nice, on the French Riviera, as its home base since Klein and Arman both originated there; new realism is thus often retrospectively considered by historians to be an early representative of the École de Nice movement.

In the mid-1950s Jean Tinguely began production of a series of generative works titled Métamatics: machines that produced art works. With this series of works, Tinguely not only problematised the introduction of the robotic machine as interface in our society, but also questioned the role of the artist, the art work and the viewer. Metamechanics (French méta-mécanique), in relation to art history, describes the kinetic sculpture machines of Jean Tinguely. It is also applied to, and may have its origins in, earlier work of the Dada art movement.

Jean Tinguely created his Métamatic sculptures between 1955 and 1959. These sculptures are modelled in a way that resembles the aesthetics of the Industrial Revolution. The drawings they produce resemble, but also mimic mid-century gestural abstraction. The abstract drawings are produced by means of a motor-driven arm that holds drawing implements of the viewer’s choosing against a piece of paper. The result is a random composition of lines and dots in colours chosen by the user.