Coq et pommes 1964

Martial Raysse made "Coq et pommes" with a stencil and oil paint, where roosters, apples, pears, and other bits are repeated in neat rows across a sunny yellow ground. I imagine Raysse laying down his cut-out shapes, maybe using a sponge to dab the paint, slowly building up the surface like a wallpaper. How does the process of making a painting construct a site of inquiry for the artist and the viewer? These flattened shapes in simple, happy colors are like a field of information; I can almost see Henri Matisse smiling somewhere. The stenciled, stylized figures make me think of a child's first printing set, playfully exploring color, pattern, and rhythm. We can think of artists as being in an ongoing conversation across time. Each generation looks at the work of those who came before and reinterprets it with a contemporary eye. For Raysse, perhaps the question was: how can painting be a form of embodied expression, embracing both the random and the intentional?