Wolf Vostell (Leverkusen, 1932 – Berlin, 1998) has become well-known as one of the most important representatives of the happening movement. He was also a publisher and a very good designer.
In 1962 he started Dé-coll/age, a magazine to which contributions were supplied by several artists allied to or involved with the Fluxus movement. Vostell found the term in Le Figaro of September 6, 1954. (”Peu après son décollage … un super-constellation tombe et s’engloutit dans la rivière Shannon.”)
Vostell: ”That a plane should take off and at the same time it should crash was for me a dialectic contradiction: I did not know the word. I found the explanation in a dictionary: ‘décollage’ also means to tear glued things and to die.” (Flash Art, March/April, 1977, pg. 34.)
In his works, in which destruction (and political engagement) is always of important account, Vostell has been working out this idea in a consistent way.
He considered himself as a representative of the happening movement as well as Fluxus. In his opinion a happening was a collection of (Fluxus) events.
In 1962 he started Dé-coll/age, a magazine to which contributions were supplied by several artists allied to or involved with the Fluxus movement. Vostell found the term in Le Figaro of September 6, 1954. (”Peu après son décollage … un super-constellation tombe et s’engloutit dans la rivière Shannon.”)
Vostell: ”That a plane should take off and at the same time it should crash was for me a dialectic contradiction: I did not know the word. I found the explanation in a dictionary: ‘décollage’ also means to tear glued things and to die.” (Flash Art, March/April, 1977, pg. 34.)
In his works, in which destruction (and political engagement) is always of important account, Vostell has been working out this idea in a consistent way.
He considered himself as a representative of the happening movement as well as Fluxus. In his opinion a happening was a collection of (Fluxus) events.
