He appropriated the term to signify an aesthetic philosophy, applied also to the creation of live performances, Vostell's working concept of décollage, was the Dé-coll/age and begun in 1954, is as a visual force that breaks down outworn values and replaces them with thinking as a function distanced from media.
[2][3][4] The most celebrated artists of the décollage technique in France, especially of the lacerated poster, are François Dufrene, Jacques Villeglé, Mimmo Rotella and Raymond Hains.
These four artists were part of a larger group in the 1960s called Nouveau Réalisme (New realism), Paris' answer to the American Pop Art movement.
Some early practitioners sought to extract the defaced poster from its original context and to take it into areas of poetry, photography, or painting.
A cinematic example of décollage are the works of Spanish experimental filmmaker Antoni Pinent, each involving celluloid film strips.