French word meaning literally to unstick. The term is generally associated with the Nouveau Réalisme (new realism) movement, although the first time it appeared in print was in the Dictionnaire Abrégé du Surréalisme in 1938. In the context of Nouveau Réalisme it meant making art works from posters ripped from walls, exhibiting them as aesthetic objects and social documents. The artists involved, such as Raymond Hains, often sought out sites with many layers of posters so that the process of décollage took on an archeological character and was seen as a means of uncovering historical information. From 1949 Hains made work from posters that he tore from the walls of Paris. In 1963 the German artist Wolf Vostell appropriated the term, staging a series of Happenings under the title Nein-9 Decollagen which involved television images which he had decollé —unstuck from the screen—and re-presented. In 1962 Vostell had founded Décollage: Bulletin Aktueller Ideen, a magazine devoted to the theoretical writings of artists involved in Happenings, Fluxus, Nouveau Réalisme and Pop art.