Coup de Pied, 1960

About the Work

In what is a brutal attack on the panel painting, Raymond Hains mounted a torn-off poster surface onto a piece of canvas. It is not known for certain whether he intervened in his find in any way. As a member of the Nouveaux Réalistes, he handled reality in a provocative manner. In this décollage, the surface of the present breaks open to reveal shreds of the past; word and image fragments unite anew – a book, and a leg lifted to perform a ‘coup de pied’, a kick, are discernible. The result is a pictorially powerful visualisation of memory and history.