Situationism. A radical political and cultural movement, centred in France but international in scope, that flourished from 1957 to 1972. It is sometimes considered a kind of post-war version of
Surrealism, but the Situationists were more concerned with politics and more theoretical in outlook than the Surrealists, and they had a comparatively negligible impact on art. What the two movements shared was a desire to disrupt conventional bourgeois life, and Situationism had its moment of glory in 1968 when its ideas were for a short time put into practice, playing a part in the student revolts in Paris and France's general strike.
The Situationist International (Internationale Situationniste) was formed in 1957 by the amalgamation of two cultural groups: the Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (descended from
Cobra) and the Lettrist International (Lettrism, which has some kinship with Concrete poetry, is defined in the
New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a movement in French art and literature characterized by a repudiation of meaning and the use of letters (sometimes invented) as isolated units'). The chief spokesman of the Situationists was Guy Debord (1931–94), editor of the journal
Internationale situationniste (12 issues, 1958–69). The other main Situationist periodical was
Spur (7 issues, 1960–1), produced by a group of the same name in Munich. In addition to journals such as these, the Situationists created posters and films, and Debord promoted street events that he hoped would jolt passers-by out of their normal ways of looking and thinking. Among the visual artists associated with the movement, the best known was Asger
Jorn, who exhibited pictures that were painted over partially obliterated reproductions of works of art, intending thereby to call into question the value of originality. In the
Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (ed. Alan Bullock and Oliver Stallybrass, 2nd edn., 1988), Krishan Kumar writes of the Situationists: ‘Instead of the take-over of the state and economy that was the aim of most revolutionaries, they demanded a “revolution of everyday life” that would transform personal relationships and cultural outlooks. Through changes in attitude to sex, family life, work, and the urban environment, there would take place a thoroughgoing cultural politicization that would substitute itself for the conventional institutions of politics. The Situationists were the inspiration of many of the best-known graffiti that covered the walls of Paris in May '68: “demand the impossible”; “do not adjust your mind, there is a fault with reality”; “Je suis Marxiste, style Groucho.”'
The Situationists disbanded in 1972. A large exhibition on the movement was held at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1989.
