PARIS - One artist of France's New Realism movement preserved his dirty dinner tables for eternity, complete with smeared plates and cigarette butts. Another smashed a piano and put it on show.

Nearly five decades ago, the artists behind New Realism, or Nouveau Realisme in French, shook up the Paris culture world by taking objects from ordinary life - trash, ripped posters, plastic bottles, kitchen utensils, baby dolls - and putting them on display in odd ways.

Their movement, a French counterpart to Pop Art, is getting its first major retrospective in 20 years - an upbeat, accessible exhibit that opens Friday at Paris' Grand Palais.

Much of the art on show brings a smile. For example, artist Christo's 1963 toy horse is wrapped and bound with twine like a child's birthday present, but the horse's tail peeks out of the wrapping.

Jean Tinguely's sculptures made out of scrap metal are equally touching. Press a red button, and one of them stirs to life and waves a feather in the air.

New Realism was launched in 1960 by artists including Yves Klein, Arman, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri and Tinguely. They were joined later by others, including sculptors Cesar, Niki de Saint Phalle and Christo.

"The New Realists consider the world as a tableau," wrote critic Pierre Restany for a 1961 exhibit. Restany, who invented the term New Realism, described its art as a "poetic recycling of reality - urban, industrial and advertising."

For many New Realists, the act of creation became a performance in itself. Arman smashed musical instruments on stage and then hung them on a wall. Spoerri, a talented cook, served dinner parties that he preserved by gluing the dirty dishes to the table.

Many of New Realism's themes have never really gone out of style, said Alfred Pacquement, director of France's National Museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Center.

"The half-century that has gone by was rich in all kinds of artistic tendencies," he said in an introduction to the collection. "The use of ordinary objects, of urban reality and the trash of postindustrial civilizations is widespread, constantly coming back."

"Le Nouveau Realisme" is on display at the Grand Palais through July 2. It then moves to the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany, where it will be on view from Sept. 9 to Jan. 27.