This work documents a 'Self-painting', in which Brus covered his whole body in white paint, and then painted black lines over himself to suggest cracks. The collaged pins, razor blades and pen-knife take on the ritual significance of tools of torture, making Brus's body like that of a secular saint. By using his body in this way, Brus reintroduced raw human emotion into art. The collage is typical of the counter-culture which operated throughout Europe and the USA during the 1960s, but also refers to the tortured self-portraits of the Viennese Expressionists, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka.