From Cabinet Magazine, Issue 27:

Pinoncelli had definitively dedicated himself to “happenings.” Combatting the society of the spectacle required that he advance on numerous fronts. In 1967, he had squirted the Minister of Culture and national icon André Malraux with red paint. Changing weapons, in 1975 he held up a bank in Nice with a sawed-off shotgun, asking for, and escaping with, ten francs (he said he was going to just ask for one franc, but the inflation of the period was so high that he changed his mind at the last minute). Inspired not only by Guy Debord but also the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, Pinoncelli continued his activities. It is said that for a time Diogenes lived naked in a barrel. In Lyons, Pinoncelli took up and then let fall the toga of the Greek philosopher. He soon grew tired of the barrel and stood next to it until he was arrested for exhibitionism. He continued to plan new happenings in his studio in Saint-Remy (his neighbor complained to the local authorities after he painted a mural on his wall, clearly visible from her garden, of Mickey Mouse giving her the finger). When Christmas time came, he stood outside an elegant department store in Nice dressed as Santa Claus. As happy children massed round him, he opened his sack of toys, emptied them on the sidewalk, and began to smash them to bits, declaiming a lesson all the while to the spectacle-loving children about the commercialization of affection. (Moments later, the tide of public opinion turned, and Pinoncelli, still dressed as Santa, was chased down Nice’s streets by a group of irate capitalist parents, a spectacle if French society ever saw one). Most radically, in Cali, Colombia, in 2002 Pinoncelli chopped off the end of his left pinky finger with an axe to protest the violence tearing the country apart (his finger tip is in the Cali Museum of Art).

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