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Les Happenings de Jean-Jacques Lebel

Androula Michaël

Man-snails slowly «swallowing» their partner covered with cabbage leaves or hidden under soft spaghettis, maniacs destroying a 4CV with an axe, a motorcycle backfiring with a naked girl in the back seat while someone reads an excerpt from the Larousse medical dictionary… In the public, we note Pierre Restany, Jacques Lacan, philosopher Jean Wahl and detectives from the Police Security who ran the risk of finding themselves sprayed with chicken blood by the end of the evening. The event called «Déchirex», took place on 25 May 1965 and delighted the foreign press. It led to the dismissal of the director of the American Centre of Paris, who had hosted him, but also to the fame of «Happener-in-Chief», Jean-Jacques Lebel. This was not the first attempt by the latter: this book looks closely at all the happenings he contributed to create in the decade of the ‘60s and which represented a significant side of the wave of protests that would culminate in May 68.


Les Happenings de Jean-Jacques Lebel by Androula Michaël, Hazan, 2009, 256 p., 45 €. ISBN : 978-2-7541-0351-0

Les Happenings de Jean-Jacques Lebel - Androula Michaël


Review published in the newsletter #161 - from 11 February 2010 to 17 February 2010

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