The French artist Jean-Pierre Raynaud turned to the systematic use of white tiles and covered his own house in La Celle-Saint-Cloud with them. The house was open to the public from 1971 to 1988 and it became a kind of monument.
The hygienic and purist connotations of the material were enriched by Raynaud's realisation of stained glass.
In 1993 the artist had his house demolished...
and presented the debris in 976 surgical containers.
He related the decision to destroy his
gesamtkunstwerk to his fear of degradation, his lack of confidence in society for taking care of it after his death, and his feeling that it had reached a state of perfection beyond which every gesture would represent a profanation.
He replied to a question from the architect Jean Nouvel that one had the right to destroy a work of art if it resulted in creating another one.
