| RAYMOND HAINS | you can also see the exhibition and the works on ARTSY | |
| works from the 70’s | ||
| 4 september – 16 october 2020 |
As in the best surrealist tradition, Hains was a flâneur, and the urban drift was an essential method of work for him. The streets were his workshop, and they gave rise to the affiches déchirées (torn posters) that he began working on in 1949 with Jacques Villeglé. Both artists collected fragments of old, ripped posters, and transformed them into large-scale abstract compositions. With these works, Hains produced a sui generis version of Informalism, and offered an ironic take on Abstract Expressionism, calling himself an “inaction painter”. Catherine Bonplus, Raymond Hains, MACBA, 1999. | ||
Raymond Hains |
Hains’ greatest contribution to the theory of Noveau Réalisme lies in the notion of “Décollage”, his prime invention. Décollage is a pure, immediate gesture of appropriation which consists of removing various fragments from their natural setting without the slightest intention of making additions or compositions. Hence, it is the exact opposite of “collage”. Closely corresponding to the deformation of vision is the deformation of thought. Raymond Hains’ mental process is naturally alogical: it progresses in leaps and bounds and with sudden changes stemming from formal associations, genuine plays on words that are the spirit’s foundation. Pierre Restany, Nuovo Realismo, Prearo Editore, Milan, 1973 | ||
SEITA & SAFFA, copyright by Raymond Hains, show at Iris Clert gallery, Paris, 1965 |
In Hains the myth of the invention of the palissade symbolizes this cosmic vision. The whole world is a picture and the palisade (boarding fence) is not a type of painting, but painting that is within arm’s reach. There is a clear distance separating Hains from Marcel Duchamp, for whom the urinal was a sculpture and not sculpture itself. It is in this spirit that Hains exhibited La Palissade des emplacements réservés in the first Paris biennial in 1959, one of the greatest sensations of the event. The palisade, with its shreds of ripped paper, represents a step forward in his affichiste oeuvre, since the torn image is presented on its original base. Pierre Restany, Nuovo Realismo, Prearo Ed. Milan 1973 | ||
A Palissade |
In 1964, at the start of his period in Italy, he created two fictive artistic identities: the Italian SAFFA and the French SEITA, from the names of two matchstick manufacturers. As their agent, Hains organized the first exhibition at the Galleria del Leone in Venice, L’Âne vêtu de la peau du Lion. “I had imagined two artists, each having a monopoly on matchboxes. These gimmicks would help illustrate what I think of New Realism, which also could have been named personified Abstractions”; from the interview with Marc Bormand on 16 February 1999. The following year, the “Seita and Saffa: copyright by Raymond Hains” exhibition was organized at the Iris Clert gallery in Paris, displaying two immense matchboxes bearing the trademarks of the two “imaginary and incendiary” artists. Two firefighters were also present at the exhibition to underline the metaphor with which Hains “burns down” the image used by critics to pin him under the labels of Affichisme, Palissade and Nouveau Réalisme. | ||
Raymond Hains and Peppino Palazzoli at Galleria Blu, Milan, 1970 |
AVAILABLE WORKS
Raymond Hains. Works from the 70’s was last modified: September 4th, 2020 by