Dé-coll/age happenings

Wolf Vostell (German, 1932-1998), is best known for his contributions to video art and co-founding the Fluxus movement in the early 1960s. Additionally, he was a leading proponent of Happenings and De-coll/age in Germany, 'Décollage' in German meaning to 'untie, loose the glued, separate'. An expansion of collage, décollage was about doing the opposite of cutting things out and bringing them together on a collage, but about tearing parts of images off. This became intertwined with another of Vostell's interests, Happenings, performances and events first explored by artists in the 1950s that later paved the way for performance art.

3D multiple, 1966, published by The Something Else Press, New York, a wooden box with plexiglass slipcover, containing one book with 94 pages, 'Performances Notations 1959/66' 15 folded posters (some in colour), 1 screen print portrait stuck to the bottom of the box, 1 Bromo Seltzer sachet mounted on a strip of mylar, 1 wrapped Matzo cracker, 1 photo-serigraphy on white cardboard, signed and dated '67' in pencil by the artist, numbered 231 from an edition of 500, the box: 23 × 16 × 6.5 cm (9.06 x 6.3 x 2.6 in.), in very good condition, commensurate with age of the work, the Matzo cracker snapped in two.

Wolf Vostell Impresiones. La Colección de obra gráfica del Archivio Happening Vostell', exhibition catalogue, Malpartida 2008, p.100 ; "An annotated bibliography by P. Frank", catalogue, 1983.