UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
Date:____10/18/06__________
I, Ashley D. Rogers___________________________________________,
hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of:
Master of Arts
in:
Art History
It is entitled:
The Influence of Guy Debord and the Situationist International on
Punk Rock Art of the 1970s
This work and its defense approved by:
Chair: Kim_Paice___________________________
Diane Mankin________________________
Mark_Harris_________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
“The Influence of Guy Debord and the Situationist International on Punk Rock Art of the 1970s”
A thesis submitted to
The Department of Art History of the School of Art/College of DAAP
University of Cincinnati
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
In the Department of Art History of the School of Art
2006
by
Ashley D. Rogers
Committee Chair: Dr. Kimberly Paice
ABSTRACT
This study addresses the influence of Guy Debord (1931-1994) and the
Situationist International (hereafter SI) on some punk rock art of the 1970s, particularly
that of Jamie Reid (b. 1947). It examines the early work of Debord and the Lettrist
International, the SI, and the latter groups’ concepts of urbanisme unitaire (integrated
city creation), dèrive (a method of moving through urban space), and détournement (a
kind of agitprop intervention in posters and in historical icons of art). Dètournement in
particular was a key influence on poster art created during the 1968 student/worker
protests in France, but the SI imprint is also evident in the graffiti and slogans created
during this time of unrest. I further trace how, by way of the events of 1968, the SI went
on to influence Reid’s punk rock art in 1970s England.
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………………...iv
LIST OF POSTER/GRAFFITI TRANSLATIONS…………………………………….....vi
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….1
Chapter
1. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL………….5
2. SOUS LES PAVES, LA PLAGE………………………………………………15
3. EVER GET THE FEELING YOU’VE BEEN CHEATED? JAMIE REID’S
PUNK ART…………………………………………………………………….35
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………...46
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………...49
ILLUSTRATIONS……………………………………………………………………….52
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure
Page
1. Guy Debord, The Naked City, 1957……………………………………………….......52
2. Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, Fin de Copenhague, 1957………………………….......53
3. Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, Mémoires, 1959………………………………………..54
4. Guiseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Pittura industriale, n.d……………………………………..55
5. Asger Jorn, Paris by Night, 1959……………………………………………………...56
6. Asger Jorn, L’avant-garde se rend pas, 1962…………………………………………57
7. Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919………………………………………………….58
8. André Bertrand, The Return of the Durutti Column, 1966……………………………59
9. Guy Debord, ne travaillez jamais, 1953………………………………………………60
10. Anonymous, sous les pavés, la plage, 1968…………………………………………61
11. Atelier populaire, MOINS DE 21 ANS voici votre bulletin de VOTE, 1968…………62
12. Comité Enragés-Internationale Situationnist, statement, 1968………………………63
13. Anonymous, Atelier populaire, 1968………………………………………………...64
14. Anonymous, We Shall Win!, n.d……………………………………………………..65
15. Atelier populaire, LE MEME PROBLEME LA MEME LUTTE, 1968………………66
16. Atelier populaire, RENAULT FLINS, 1968………………………………………….67
17. Atelier populaire, TRAVAILLEURS UNIS, 1968…………………………………….68
18. Atelier populaire, RETOUR A LA NORMALE, 1968………………………………..69
19. Atelier populaire, une jeunesse que l’avenir inquiète trop souvent, 1968…………..70
20. Atelier populaire, CRS=SS, 1968……………………………………………………71
21. Atelier populaire, LA POLICE VOUS PARLE tous les soirs à 20 h, 1968………….72
22. Bruno Barbey, Student Riots, 1968………………………………………………….73
23. Atelier populaire, LA POLICE S’AFFICHE AUX BEAUX ARTS, 1968……………74
24. Atelier populaire, SOIS JEUNE ET TAIS TOI, 1968………………………………..75
25. Atelier populaire, LA CHiENLiT C’EST LUi!, 1968………………………………...76
26. Atelier populaire, QUAND LES PARENTS VOTENT, LES ENFANTS
TRINQUENT, 1968……………………………………………………………………...77
27. Atelier populaire, NOUS SOMMES TOUS JUIFS ET DES ALLEMANDS, 1968…..78
28. Atelier populaire, NOUS SOMMES TOUS INDESIRABLES, 1968…………………79
29. Anonymous, prenez vos desires pour la realité, 1968………………………………80
30. Jamie Reid, This Week Only This Store Welcomes Shoplifters, 1972-1974…………81
31. Jamie Reid, KEEP WARM THIS WINTER MAKE TROUBLE, 1973-1974…………82
32. Jamie Reid, LAST DAYS, 1973-1974…………………………………………….…..83
33. Jamie Reid and Ray Stevenson, Anarchy Flag, 1976………………………………..84
34. Jamie Reid, “God Save the Queen” single cover, 1977……………………………...85
35. Jamie Reid, Alternative “God Save the Queen” artwork, 1977…………………...…86
36. Jamie Reid, “God Save the Queen” art with swastikas, 1977……………………….87
37. Jamie Reid, “Pretty Vacant” single front, 1977……………………………………...88
38. Jamie Reid, “Pretty Vacant” single back, 1977……………………………………...89
39. Jamie Reid, “Holidays in the Sun” single cover, 1977………………………………90
40. Artist unknown, Entertainment! album cover, 1979………………………………...91
POSTER/GRAFFITI TRANSLATIONS
Sous les paves, la plage: Beneath the cobblestones, the beach
Je t’aime! Oh! Dites-le avec des paves!: I love you! Oh! Say it with cobblestones!
MOINS DE 21 ANS voici votre bulletin de VOTE: Under 21 years old here is your vote
LE MEME PROBLEME LA MEME LUTTE: The same problems the same struggles
TRAVAILLEURS UNIS: Workers unite
Une jeunesse que l’avenir inquiète trop souvent: A youth disturbed too often by the
future
LA POLICE VOUS PARLE tous les soirs à 20 h.: The police speak every evening at 8:00
LA POLICE S’AFFICHE AUX BEAUX ARTS. LES BEAUX ARTS AFFICHENT dans la
RUE: The police show up at Beaux Arts. Beaux Arts shows in the streets.
SOIS JEUNE ET TAIS TOI: Be young and shut up
LA CHiENliT C’EST LUi!: The chienlit is he!
Quand les parents boivent, les enfants frequent: When the parents drink, the children
toast
Quand les parents votent, les enfants frequent: When the parents vote, the children toast
NOUS SOMMES TOUS DES JUIFS ET DES ALLEMANDS: We are all Jews and
Germans
NOUS SOMMES TOUS INDESIRABLES: We are all undesirables
Prenez vos desires pour la realité: Take your desires for reality
La Culture est perversion de la Vie: Culture is a perversion of life
INTRODUCTION
My study addresses the influence of Guy Debord (1931-1994) and the Situationist
International (hereafter SI) on punk rock art of the 1970s. I will trace the development of
Debord’s thought and practice and his philosophical art/anti-art group the Situationist
International from its inception to the period of its overwhelming influence on the May 1968
protests in Paris via the worker and student protesters known as the enragés, and finally through
to its influence on a limited body of British punk art in the mid-to-late 1970s. Although many
intellectuals have written about the influence of the SI on punk rock ideas and artists, no one
seems to have analyzed the effect of these influences on art of the period. My methodology is
primarily a socio-political approach to the topic. This method is vital to any study of this period,
since the social climate had such a profound impact on contemporary art. I also take into account
cultural studies. I include formal analysis of the works, both thematic and iconographic.
In the first chapter of the study I examine the intellectual roots of the SI. Its leader, Guy
Debord, is considered one of the leading intellectuals of the second half of the 20th Century.
Along with artists and others, he formed the SI in 1957, only to dissolve it 15 years later.
Strongly influenced by Dada and Surrealism, the SI rose from the ashes of the Lettrist
International, the London Psychogeographical Association, and Asger Jorn’s (1914-1973)
Imaginist Bauhaus and CoBrA. Jorn formed the Imaginist Bauhaus in response to efforts to
reform the original Bauhaus, and he was also a member of CoBrA (an acronym for a short-lived
artists’ group that was disenchanted with Surrealism and whose members came from
Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam).
These groups had established some of the concepts so important to the SI, which I discuss
extensively. The concepts included urbanisme unitaire (integrated city-creation) and
2
psychogeography, or the study of the effects of the geographical environment on individual
behavior. The two key techniques of the SI include the dérive (drifting), a method of moving
through urban space which Debord considered “a technique of transient passage through varied
ambiances,” and détournement (diversion, semantic shift), which was a kind of agitprop
intervention in posters and in historical icons of art. An example of détournement is the alteration
of text in a found cartoon to infuse new meaning in the image. This practice was taken up by
both the LI and SI, and it was later prominent in the work of the punk artist Jamie Reid (b. 1947).
Although Debord is generally considered primarily a philosopher/filmmaker, there are
examples of collage work by him, including a collaborative book that he made with Jorn entitled
Mémoires, first published in 1959, and he made numerous pamphlets throughout his career. To
act as a disharmonious wedge in intellectual thought, Mémoires was bound with a sandpaper
cover, to ensure that it would damage any books that were placed beside it on a shelf. The SI also
published a journal, Internationale Situationniste, which was a vehicle for their antiestablishment ruminations and détournées. Jorn’s Modifications series, over-paintings by Jorn of
second-hand canvases by unknown artists, are also detournées. This series includes Lockung
(1960) and L’avant-garde se rend pas, (1962), the latter owing a debt to Marcel Duchamp’s
dadaist L.H.O.O.Q. (1919).
The second chapter of this study will address the graffiti, poster art and slogans of the
May 1968 Paris protests. They began with university students and spread to workers, eventually
including approximately 10 million people. The protest art and slogans were derived mainly
from Situationist ideas, such as “Une Jeunesse que l’avenir inquiete trop souvent” (“A youth
disturbed too often by the future”) accompanying an image of a head wrapped in bandages with a
3
safety pin through the lips, from the art-student collective Atelier populaire. This group occupied
the Sorbonne during the protests, producing posters and flyers.
A third chapter will address punk art of the 1970s, specifically that of the painter/graphic
designer Jamie Reid. The political and social climate in England in the 1970s was ripe for
exploration of SI ideas. Extraordinarily high unemployment and the reverberations of the 1968
protests led to profound disillusionment of youth culture throughout Europe. Reid was heavily
influenced by the SI, and published many Situationist-inspired pieces in his journal, Suburban
Press, in the early 1970s. He also designed and published Leaving the 20th Century (1974) 1 ,
Christopher Gray’s translation of SI texts into the English language.
In this chapter I extensively discuss and analyze the art that Reid created for Suburban
Press and for the band the Sex Pistols. Mostly graphic and collage-like in nature, many of Reid’s
works directly reflect the influence of the SI, specifically in regards to détournement. A germinal
piece, the God Save the Queen flyer of 1977, was inspired by the aforementioned Atelier
Populaire poster.
I rely on Debord’s book The Society of the Spectacle (1967) 2 , which argues that society
has reduced us to mere spectators in our own lives. Many consider this tract to be his finest work
of philosophy. I also rely on translations of SI texts in Ken Knabb’s groundbreaking book, The
Situationist International Anthology (1981) 3 . Thus far there has been only one published
biography of Debord, Len Bracken’s Guy Debord: Revolutionary (1997) 4 , which offers useful
information regarding Debord.
1
Christopher Gray, ed. and trans. Leaving the 20th Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist
International (reissued, London: Rebel Press , 1998).
2
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (reissued, New York, NY:
Zone Books, 1994).
3
Ken Knabb, ed. The Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981).
4
Len Bracken, Guy Debord: Revolutionary (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1997).
4
Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), is the first
scholarly attempt to connect the SI and punk rock. This book is the springboard for my
explorations of this topic, but Marcus is a cultural studies scholar and rock critic, and his study
does not contain any substantive analysis of the art of the period. However, Marcus’s study has
provided me with the inspiration to research this topic and is an invaluable resource regarding
the cultural climate in England. There are now many serious and well-researched analyses of the
punk movement which also prove to be excellent resources, including Punk Rock: So What? The
Cultural Legacy of Punk (1999), edited by Roger Sabin, and Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming:
Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock and Beyond (1991). Finally, there are numerous essays
regarding the SI, Debord’s philosophies, and punk rock. Scholarly and yet unconventional
websites include Ken Knabb’s Bureau of Public Secrets, www.bopsecrets.org and Bill Brown’s
www.notbored.org, which are both devoted to the SI.
This study will assess the connection between the SI, anti-consumerism, and punk art,
which has remained unexplored from an art historical perspective to date. My contribution to this
field will be an intensive analysis of the art in light of the movements which influenced it. It is
my objective to offer a serious discussion of this rebellious art and its intellectual roots.
5
CHAPTER 1
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL
In this chapter I will outline the beginnings and early years of the Situationist
International (SI) and the role played by its leader, Guy Debord (1931-1994), who was a
compelling yet also divisive figure. After years of relative obscurity, many scholars now
consider Debord the leading intellectual of the second half of the 20th Century, and his influence
on subsequent political and artistic movements is substantial, as discussed in the following
chapters. It is my aim to show the connections between early SI-affiliated art work, agitprop art
of the May 1968 riots in Paris, and British punk rock art of the 1970s. The precursor to the SI,
the Lettrist International, began in 1950, when Debord first encountered a charismatic Romanian,
Isidore Isou (b. 1925), and the SI itself disbanded in 1972. In this time frame, the conceptual
aims of the groups were established.
Isou was the founding member of a short-lived, Paris-based group of writers, intellectuals
and artists called the Lettrists, which existed from 1948-51. The Lettrists were interested in a
kind of anti-poetry, which involved manipulation of the alphabet and the creation of new letters,
not unlike Dada. In writings of 1946, Isou surmised that there were two phases in the arts: “a
period of amplitude when formal experimentation was taken to the limit, followed by a period of
auto-destruction.” 5 He was all too convinced of his own brilliance, and he is often described as
“megalomaniacal.” 6 According to Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, based on Isou’s theory that “through
the act of creation man became God,” 7 Isou believed he was the new messiah.
5
Len Bracken, Guy Debord: Revolutionary (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1997), 9.
Ibid., and Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, “The Situationist International, Surrealism, and the Difficult Fusion of
Art and Politics,” Oxford Art Journal v. 27, no. 3 (2004), 369.
7
Rasmussen, 369.
6
6
Debord was raised in Cannes, where he saw a screening of Isou’s collage film Traite de
Bave et D’éternitié, 1950, in May of the same year. This film had a profound impact on Debord,
who began corresponding with the Lettrists, and moved to Paris to join them in 1951. In 1952, he
made his first film, Hurlements en faveur de Sade, which, like Traite de Bave at D’éternitié, was
clearly inspired by Dada and Surrealism. The film contains no narrative, only five different
voices interspersed with howls at the beginning followed by long periods of silence. Most
shockingly, though, there are no images in this film. According to Situ Bill Brown, Hurlements
en faveur de Sade may be the only film of this kind in the history of cinema. 8 Describing
Hurlements, Bracken writes, “The twenty minutes of dialogue and white light are dispersed in
fragments across the sixty minutes of silence and darkness on the screen and in the cinema.” 9
Evidently the film was considered scandalous even amongst the Lettrists, many of whom
disapproved of the negative “excesses of the film.” 10
Debord eventually broke ranks with Isou and the Lettrists in 1952, because of a curious
incident involving Charlie Chaplin. Throughout the 1940s, Chaplin had expressed his admiration
for the Soviet Union and communism, but by the early 1950s he distanced himself from previous
statements to that effect because on their basis he had been refused a visa to enter the United
States. In October 1952, Chaplin was treated to an audience with Princess Margaret of England
and greeted enthusiastically upon his subsequent arrival in France. On October 29, Chaplin held
a press conference in Paris following the well-received screening of his film Limelight, 1952.
Four Lettrists, including Serge Berna, Jean-L. Brau, Gil Wolman, and Debord, disrupted the
press conference, shouting and tossing copies of a flyer titled “NO MORE FLAT FEET.” 11 This
8
Bill Brown, lecture at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 21 November, 2005.
Bracken, 19.
10
Ibid., 20.
11
French translation not available.
9
7
flyer contained many insults directed at Chaplin, because, according to Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen,
“The Lettrists argued that Chaplin and his film practiced a kind of emotional blackmail, merely
compensating for a boring life and not creating the possibility of a new one filled with
excitement and adventure.” 12 Isou later denounced their actions at the press conference. As a
result, Debord formally broke with Isou, considering him a pawn, or an irrelevant relic, a
position that he detailed in a tract entitled “DEATH OF A FELLOW TRAVELLER,” 1952, “It’s
really as if Jean-Isidore Isou was nothing to us, as if he never had his lie and his denial.” 13 He
never spoke publicly of Isou again.
Debord and several others then formed the Lettrist International (LI), and began to
publish the journal International Lettriste and a newsletter, Potlatch. The LI existed until 1957,
when eight people convened in Cosio d’Arroscia, Italy to facilitate the merger of the LI with the
London Psychogeographical Association and Asger Jorn’s (1914-1973) International Movement
for an Imaginist Bauhaus (MIBI), which was associated with CoBrA. The latter was an acronym
for group of artists who were disenchanted with Surrealism, and who came from Copenhagen,
Brussels, and Amsterdam. Collectively, these groups were declared the Situationist International.
The members met periodically for conferences in assorted cities. Famously, at the 1961
conference in Göteborg, Sweden, the members of the SI voted to refer to any artistic output of
the group as “antisituationist.” Although the SI met regularly, membership was in constant flux.
Many attribute this to Debord’s banishment of many and the resignation of others, but Bill
Brown disagrees, citing documentation indicating the SI worked through votes. 14
With the creation of the SI, further development and expansion of theories that had first
been advanced by the LI ensued. Major practices of this kind include 1) détournement, 2) dérive,
12
Rasmussen, 368.
Bracken, 24.
14
Bill Brown, lecture at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 21 November, 2005.
13
8
3) psychogeography, 4) unitary urbanism, and 5) the creation of situations. Unitary urbanism, a
utopian ideal of city dwelling, “envisages a terrain of experience for the social space of the cities
of the future.” 15 The Situs engaged in these practices because they were seeking an alternative to
the accepted way of life. Détournement is a plagiarism of sorts, the appropriation of others’
work, especially art or advertising, that is placed in an entirely new context. A détourned work
may be physically altered by, for example, changing the text in a cartoon to give it new meaning,
or altered simply by placing an image in a different environment. When Elizabeth Sussman held
the groundbreaking exhibition of Situationist material at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art
in 1989, she defined détournement by emphasizing the rebellious tendencies of the activity:
“Détournement proposes a violent excision of elements--painting, architecture, literature, film,
urban sites, sounds, gestures, words, signs--from their original contexts, and a consequent
destabilization and recontextualization through rupture and realignment.” 16
The dérive and psychogeography go hand in hand. Psychogeography relates to an
examination of one’s environment on an emotional and behavioral level, and dérive, or drift, is a
somewhat chance-driven kind of wandering that should have specific guidelines that may range
from very playful role-playing to more serious contemplation. According to Debord’s “Theory of
the Dérive,” first published in Internationale Situationniste #2, a dérive should ideally take place
over an entire day, and although “one can dérive alone, …all indications are that the most fruitful
numerical arrangement consists of several small groups of two or three people who have reached
the same awakening of consciousness.” 17 This activity is classified by American Situ translator
15
Unattributed, “Unitary Urbanism at the end of the 1950s,” in Internationale Situationniste #2, December
1959, http://www.notbored.org/UU.html, accessed 29 November, 2005.
16
Elizabeth Sussman, ed., on the Passage of a few people through a rather brief moment in time: THE
SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL 1957-1972. (Cambridge, MA and Boston, MA: The MIT Press and The Institute
of Contemporary Art, 1989), 8.
17
Ibid., 51.
9
Ken Knabb as “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a
technique of transient passage through varied ambiances.” 18 Ultimately, a dérive is a walk
through a select environment during which the walker(s) pay close attention to their heightened
senses and reactions to the environment. The dérive was intended to be a wedge conveying the
boredom resulting from work, or the everyday life. The LI/SI rejected work in the Marxist sense,
but also decried leisure as a false premise which encouraged consumerism and the acquisition of
useless objects.
In the dérive, one sees elements of Surrealism, in the idea of chance and of wandering
flea markets, and Marxism, since the primary interest in psychogeography and the dérive centers
around the creation and discernment of urban space. The key to the dérive is the opposition to
rational, purely utilitarian everyday inhabiting of the city. This notion is impossible without
industrialization, and relates directly to unitary urbanism, which Christopher Phillips
characterizes as
an effort to combat the attempts, from Baron Haussmann to Le Corbusier, to
throw a rational grid over urban spaces and thus destroy…the fragile psychic
resonances that make the city truly habitable. 19
The Naked City (fig. 1), Debord’s psychogeographical map of Paris from 1957, functions
as a work of art and an illustration of dérive and détournement. It consists of nineteen sections
of a found map Plan de Paris, which was well-known to both tourists and Parisians, which
Debord cut and rearranged in a pattern that was noticeably inconsistent with the actual
geographic locales. The map is printed in black ink, with red arrows that indicate movement
between the sections. Debord’s map is completely nonsensical with regard to actual distances
18
Ken Knabb, trans. and ed., Situationist International Anthology (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public
Secrets, 1981), 45.
19
Christopher Phillips, “Homage to a Phantom Avant-Garde: The Situationist International” in Art in
America v. 77 (October 1989), 184.
10
between locations. With this radical revision, the work subverts the very idea of a map as a
logical way to read space. The Naked City thus serves as Debord’s critique of Haussmannized
Paris, which, thanks to modernization, resulted in class segregation since the working class was
pushed out of the city. The Naked City forces the viewer to consider space as a part of social
practice, or moving from one psychogeographical hub to another.
Jorn and Debord also collaborated on two artists’ books, which according to Phillips are
most provocative for combining “rawly spontaneous abstract imagery with recycled snippets of
commercial drawings.” 20 The first of these books is Fin de Copenhague (fig. 2), 1957, which
exemplifies the technique of détournement, is the predecessor of the haunting Mémoires (fig. 3)
of 1959. According to Phillips, the objective of Jorn and Debord with Fin de Copenhague was
“bringing to the surface the unfulfilled utopian promises that haunt mass-media
communication.” 21 Both books incorporate found text and images in conjunction with abstract
splashes of paint. Although Fin de Copenhague can be viewed as a prototype for Mémoires, the
latter chronicles an earlier period of time than the former work. Mémoires consists of
approximately fifty pages of decidedly Dadaist collage that were assembled by Debord, and
which included Rorschach-like painting contributions by Jorn, who published the first edition
run of this book at his own expense. The cover was made of sandpaper, making Mémoires an
aggressively obdurate and confrontational anti-book that would “attack” any other books with
which it came into contact by scratching or ruining their covers. The narrative tells the story,
without mentioning the group by name, of the LI from 1952 to 1953, but it also conveys the
more personal intense longing and melancholy of Debord, with regard to young women and
drink. Mémoires is a secret history in the sense that the viewer must understand détournement
20
21
Phillips, 191.
Ibid., 191.
11
and dérive in order to “read” the book, yet it also hints at Debord’s brilliance and alcoholism. As
Bracken notes, “To experience Mémoires is to feel the spark that suddenly zapped Debord in his
youth and burned his entire life.” 22
Jorn and others, including Constant Niewenhuys (1920-2005), best known as Constant,
and Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio (1902-1964), were also producing SI art independently of Debord at
this time. Constant, a Dutch architect, was a proponent of unitary urbanism, as exemplified in his
models for a utopian city called New Babylon, begun in 1956. According to Peter Wollen, “New
Babylon was devised on the assumption of a technologically advanced society in which, through
the development of automation, alienated labor had been totally abolished and humanity could
devote itself entirely to play.” 23 Pinot-Gallizio was a member of MIBI, and a former chemist
who turned to industrial painting in the 1950s. His works, such as Pittura industriale (fig. 4),
n.d., consist of huge rolls of painted canvas that were intended to be cut and sold by the meter.
Pinot-Gallizio displayed these paintings alongside mirrors, lights, perfumes, and music in a show
entitled Caverna dell‘antimateria at the Galerie René Drouin in 1959. Wollen writes, “PinotGallizio’s aim, encouraged by Debord, was to create in one ambiance a premonitory fragment of
his totalizing futurist vision.” 24
Some of the best known art from this period of the SI is Jorn’s work, particularly works
in the series Modifications, which was shown in 1959 at the Rive Gauche Galerie in Paris. These
works of art began with kitschy paintings that Jorn purchased at flea markets and then détourned.
He modified them by adding his own abstractions and text, not in an attempt to improve upon the
paintings, but to highlight so-called “bad” art. His aesthetic philosophy is succinctly summarized
22
23
Bracken, 39.
Peter Wollen, “BITTER VICTORY: The Art and Politics of the Situationist International,” in Sussman,
55.
24
Ibid., 50.
12
in his introduction to an exhibition of his paintings in 1959: “Painting is over. You might as well
finish it off. Détourn. Long live painting.” 25
Paris by Night, 1959 (fig. 5), is another work by Jorn that depends on the radical shifting
that détournement facilitates. Jorn has added Pollock-like drips to the upper left and bottom right
corners of the original painting, whose subject is the silhouette of a solitary figure on a balcony
at night. The original figure seems uninterrupted by the manic splashes of color that surround
him. This effect may be read as an intentional failure to penetrate the space of the man, or a
critique of Romanticism. Perhaps this signals the SI’s perceptions regarding what they saw as the
impotence of painting and the inability to disrupt the original.
Jorn continued to make these détourned paintings into the 1960s. His L’avant-garde se
rend pas, 1962, (fig. 6), is a painting of a young girl in formal dress clutching a jump rope, with
Jorn’s additions of splotchy paint and Art Brut-inspired figures of an animal and a human in the
style of Dubuffet. He painted a moustache and goatee on the girl, in an obvious reference to
Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q., 1919 (fig. 7). However, rather than serving as an homage to Duchamp,
it seems Jorn’s intention may have been to launch a critique of Dada’s shortcomings. Although
of all the historic avant-gardes, Debord was most sympathetic with Dada, he complained that
“Since the negation of the bourgeois conception of art and artistic genius has become pretty
much old hat, [Duchamp’s] drawing of a mustache on the Mona Lisa is no more interesting than
the original version of that painting.” 26 L.H.O.O.Q. was scandalous in its time, but by
appropriating Duchamp’s gesture Jorn seemed to underscore how the deflated strategies of Dada
lost shock value. Although the SI was originally inspired at least in part by Dada and Surrealism,
they did come to reject those movements as part of the establishment.
25
Asger Jorn, “Detourned Painting,” in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003), 78.
26
Claire Gilman, “Asger Jorn’s Avant-Garde Archives,” October v. 79 (Winter 1997), 33.
13
Despite the fact that works by these artists are amongst the most known art of the SI, by
1961 all three men were no longer members. Pinot-Gallizio was banished in 1960 because of his
association with two people who had been commissioned to build a church. This was
unacceptable in the eyes of the SI members, who were becoming progressively more anti-art and
anti-architecture, viewing these fields as tools of the bourgeoisie. Constant resigned shortly
thereafter in protest of Pinot-Gallizio’s exile, and by 1961 Jorn had resigned as well, displeased
with the increasingly hostile climate within the SI towards artists. However, he continued to
secretly support the group through 1962. According to Wollen, this schism led to “a total
elimination of art except in propagandist and agitational forms” 27 within the SI. However, this
should not come as a surprise, since there were rumblings from Debord as early as 1959
concerning the ejection of painters from the group. Debord believed that there should be no
divisions within the SI regarding roles, so no one should be regarded as exclusively a painter, an
architect, or a sociologist. For example, Debord did not classify himself as a filmmaker, although
many consider his films his primary artistic output. In particular, Debord seemed to take issue
with painters, writing to Constant in March 1959, “The most urgent problem, tactically, is to at
first balance, then as soon as possible surpass the number of painters in the SI with the largest
possible number of architects, urbanists, sociologists and others.” 28
By the early 1960s, the group was preparing to enter its most politically militant phase. In
1967, Debord published his masterpiece, The Society of the Spectacle. 29 In this book, Debord
eerily seemed to anticipate the events of May 1968, predicting an uprising of the proletariat.
27
Wollen, 55.
Guy Debord, first published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 1, 1957-1960. Translated from
the French by NOT BORED! October 2005. http://www.notbored.org/debord-3March1959.html, accessed 29
November, 2005.
29
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York, NY: Zone Books,
1994).
28
14
Indeed, one third to one half of France went on strike, paralyzing the country and bringing the
government to its knees for nearly a month. During these riots, SI slogans played a prominent
role in the agitprop art and graffiti of the protestors. The following chapter covers this
tumultuous period.
15
CHAPTER TWO
SOUS LES PAVES, LA PLAGE
Although revolutionary protests occurred in many countries, including Poland, Mexico,
the United States, and Czechoslovakia in 1968, what took place that spring in France was
particularly significant because students and workers united, albeit briefly, to bring Charles de
Gaulle’s government to the brink of ruin. Astoundingly, this rebellion which began with a small
group of students eventually grew to include 10 million striking workers. It is notable that
without widespread recognition, and with their organization seemingly in tatters, Guy Debord
and the remaining Situationists appeared to predict these events in their writings, particularly in
texts such as Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of
Everyday Life (both of which were published in 1967). Their imprint is so obvious that cultural
studies lecturers Keith A. Reader and Kursheed Wadia assert, “May 68, with its original slogans,
its outbursts of spontaneity and its extremist demands, is indeed the ‘revolutionary fête’ of the
situationists.” 30
A variety of factors led to the eruptions of 1968. Originally, the complaints were
exclusive to the students, regarding contentious issues such as university overcrowding and the
subsequent Fouchet education reforms, named for Christian Fouchet, the Minister of Education
from 1964-1967. The French education system was under pressure. Students were guaranteed a
spot at university if they passed the national, standardized baccalauréat, the test administered at
the end of the lycée. Although only 50% of these students qualified to go on to university, the
student ranks had swelled to nearly 600,000 by the 1967-1968 school year, and universities felt
the strain of overcrowding. Furthermore, they faced abysmal retention rates. Of all those who
30
Keith A. Reader and Kursheed Wadia, The May 1968 Events in France (New York, NY: St. Martin’s
Press, Inc., 1993), 53.
16
registered at university, 90% failed to graduate. The Fouchet reforms aimed to remedy these
troubles. Philosophy professor Andrew Feenberg and Anthroplogy professor Jim Freedman
describe the reforms as “a timid Americanization of the French system—a little more
competition, a little less leisure time for exploring what lay beyond the pedagogic mysteries.” 31
The students feared these reforms aimed to create graduates suitable for middle-management
careers and nothing else. Protests ensued immediately upon implementation. In the aftermath of
1968, a member of the faculty at The University of Paris, Nanterre, noted sociologist Alain
Touraine observed, “France, both liberal and rigid, centralized and disorganized, modernist and
archaic, grandiose and mean, exacerbated tensions within a university world that was in rapid
expansion and absolute crisis.” 32
Prior to the implementation of the Fouchet reforms, an incident occurred at the University
of Strasbourg which laid the groundwork for insurrections that followed. In the spring of 1966,
five student radicals ran for election to run the student union there and, Greil Marcus writes,
“amidst the overwhelming apathy of their peers found themselves voted in to run the show.” 33
Armed with a large budget and plans to “liquidate the institutions of the student world,” 34 the
students, who were pro-situs, or admirers of the SI, contacted that group through its post office
box in the summer of 1966 seeking a meeting. Their actions led to the reinvigoration of the SI, a
group that, as Marcus asserts, “had all but left the public space; the scandals it made took place
only in its journal.” 35 Although encouraging, the SI responded that the Strasbourg students
31
Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman, When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), 5.
32
Alain Touraine, “The French Student Movement of May 1968” in Political Sociology, ed. Alessandro
Pizzorno (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1971), 311.
33
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1990): 413.
34
Alain Schnapp and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The French Student Uprising: November1967-June1968, trans.
Maria Jolas (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), 3.
35
Marcus, 414.
17
should formulate a plan on their own. While the students were struggling to create a written
statement, they settled on a physical one, in the form of tomatoes. The cybernetician Abraham
Moles experienced this firsthand in his first lecture at the University of Strasbourg in October
when pro-situ students, writes Michael Seidman, “bombarded him with tomatoes to protest
against what they considered his support of the technocratic university.” 36
Shortly after the Moles incident, Strasbourg student André Bertrand created a détourned
piece called The Return of the Durutti Column (fig. 8), which was enlarged and plastered around
the city of Strasbourg alongside so-called “legitimate” advertising. Indeed, as Michael Seidman
states, “Significantly, one of the first major documents of the student revolt was a comic strip.” 37
This was no mere comic strip, however. In every respect, it was a direct homage to the SI—
rapidly produced and sloppy, yet clearly subversive and thoughtful. The Return of the Durutti
Column was culled primarily from found images, but there were a few original frames. The strip
depicts the SI as the occult international and contains frames in which children referenced LI/SI
theories. According to Marcus, “by stealing goods simply to give them away, says a toddler,
delinquents transcend the modern society of abundance and rediscover the first social order, ‘the
practice of the gift.’” 38 This was a blatant mockery of capitalism, or what Seidman refers to as
“arguing that pilfering was a positive act in consumer society.” 39
In honor of the SI, Bertrand named his détourned work after the Catalan revolutionary
Buenaventura Durruti, though he misspelled his name. Durruti led anarchist troops on a path of
destruction of the civil order during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and Raoul Vaneigem had
36
Michael Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968 (New York, NY
and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004), 65.
37
Ibid., 28.
38
Marcus, 421.
39
Seidman, 29.
18
suggested the SI use Durruti’s advance as their “guiding image.” 40 In addition to referring to the
new Durutti column, Bertrand also cribbed from Hurlements en faveur de Sade and La Nuit, a
work of fiction written by Michèle Bernstein, who was then Debord’s wife. In fact, the dialogue
between two cowboys in The Return of the Durutti Column is nearly identical to dialogue which
occurs in La Nuit.
Although Bertrand’s work was provocative, it soon became apparent that the student
union members who so longed to be renegades were unable to devise a cohesive written critique
of student issues on their own. The Paris-based Tunisian Situationist Mustapha Khayati stepped
in to pen “On the Poverty of Student Life: Considered in its Economic, Political, Psychological,
Sexual and Especially Intellectual Aspects, with a Modest Proposal for its Remedy,” which was
credited to the Association fédérative générale des étudiants de France. Echoing Debord’s
assertion that “The spectacle’s function in society is the concrete manufacture of alienation,” 41
Khayati’s pamphlet’s opening line was “It is pretty safe to say that the student is the most
universally despised creature in France, apart from the policeman and the priest.” 42 In twenty
eight pages, this lucid document skewered, amongst others, university professors, the church, the
government, the economy, the family, and the “celebrities of Unintelligence,” including JeanPaul Sartre, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes. Khayati obviously trumpeted the SI’s ideas, in
examples such as the following comment on the student: “Although he is close to the production
point, access to the real Sanctuary of Culture is denied him; so he discovers ‘modern culture’ as
40
41
Marcus, 416.
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York, NY: Zone Books,
1994), 23.
42
Mustapha Khayati, “On the Poverty of Student Life: Considered in its Economic, Political,
Psychological, Sexual and Especially Intellectual Aspects, with a Modest Proposal for its Remedy” in Situationist
International Anthology, ed. and trans. Ken Knabb (Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), 319.
19
an admiring spectator.” 43 Poverty was incendiary, to say the least. According to Marcus, “The
reaction could not have been more extreme if the student union had spent its money on guns.” 44
Six weeks into office the fall term, the courts intervened, closed the student union, and
removed the Strasbourg Five from power. However, the far-reaching damage was already done.
By 1969, 250,000 to 300,000 copies of Poverty had been printed in numerous languages and
circulated throughout the Western world. This work became a rallying cry for disaffected
students.
The next scene of discontent, the one that would really set the revolt in motion, occurred
on the University of Paris branch campus at Nanterre, just west of Paris. The aforementioned
Fouchet reforms and the dissatisfaction resulting from their implementation contributed to the
general state of malaise on campus, in conjunction with the ugliness and hopelessness of the
suburb itself. Daniel Singer writes, “With hindsight, everybody proclaims that it was folly to
park thirteen thousand students in a semislum suburb with no life of its own and no
attractions.” 45 Nanterre was built in the early 1960s and modeled after American campuses, but
the planners failed to take into account the drabness of the surrounding area.
Although in general the faculty was younger and more liberal at Nanterre compared to
other French university campuses, the professors’ youth and political leanings did not spare them
from the wrath of the students. In the spring of 1967, anarchists distributed free copies of On the
Poverty of Student Life in Marxist philosopher/sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s classroom. Seidman
writes, “This was a particularly provocative act since the Situationists had accused [Lefebvre] of
43
Ibid., 323.
Marcus, 418.
45
Daniel Singer, Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968 (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002),
44
60.
20
plagiarizing their ideas.” 46 In reality, the relationship between Lefebvre and the SI was more
complicated. According to Lefebvre, he and the SI had collaborated on some writings during
their five-year friendship, to which the group later decided Lefebvre had no right to claim
authorship. In a 1983 interview, he recounted the dissolution of their relationship, characterizing
it as “a love story that ended badly, very badly.” 47
The man who emerged for many as the symbol of the student movement was an anarchist
University of Paris, Nanterre student named Daniel Cohn-Bendit. In March 1967, he was already
on the radar of police, who “informed the Nanterre administration that the redheaded young man
was out to destroy the university.” 48 The following March, he came fairly close to doing just
that. What probably saved the provocateur Cohn-Bendit from expulsion was his alien status,
although his passport later proved to be detrimental. Although born in Germany, he was raised
primarily in France. After attending high school in Germany, he adopted German citizenship to
avoid military service in France. Cohn-Bendit was studying at Nanterre on a German
government scholarship, which made him untouchable by the University.
At Nanterre, there was a small group of students who aligned themselves with the SI.
They called themselves the Enragés after a Jacques Roux-led group that had influenced the sansculottes during the French Revolution in 1793. The latter-day Enragés had already held a
demonstration on January 26, protesting the expulsion of one of their members for housing a
squatter in his dormitory room. On March 20, several of their fellow students, Vietnam War
protesters, broke windows at the Paris branch of American Express and were promptly arrested.
Many students, including the Enragés and Cohn-Bendit, were emboldened, and in protest over
46
Seidman, 27.
Henri Lefebvre, “Lefebvre on the Situationists: An Interview,” interview by Kristin Ross, October, v. 79
(Winter 1997): 69.
48
Ibid., 27.
47
21
the arrests, they occupied the ninth floor of the administration building at Nanterre. They chose
this towering structure because they viewed it as a symbol of oppression. However, the
assembled students had many different agendas, and did not agree on a battle plan. They
dispersed at 1:30 a.m. and no one was arrested. During the occupation, according to Seidman,
they painted Situationist-inspired graffiti on the walls: “‘Take your desires for reality’, ‘Boredom
is counter-revolutionary’ and the in/famous ‘Never Work.’” 49 The first appearance of ‘Never
Work’ (ne travaillez jamais) graffiti (fig. 9) can be traced to early 1953 at Saint-Germain-desPrés in Paris. It can be dated with near certainty because of date-sensitive graffiti nearby, and has
been attributed to a young Guy Debord.
All through the next week, Enragés and other radicals disrupted classes and refused to
take exams. Seidman writes,
Nanterre was a particularly fitting target for Situationists. They were revolted by both its
physical appearance and its mission as the flagship of modernity in French higher
education. Futhermore, two of their favorite targets—Henri Lefebvre and Alain
Tourraine—taught sociology there. 50
Although many professors endured classroom disruptions, Tourraine was once so agitated he
was prompted to say mid-lecture, “I’m fed up with anarchists and even more with Situationists.
I’m the boss here. If you were, I’d leave for a place where people know the meaning of work.” 51
On March 29, the Nanterre faculty voted overwhelming to suspend classes. The campus
reopened on April 1, but closed the next day due to persistent riots. Just two days later, Martin
Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in the U.S., and this tragic event seemed to inflame students
further. Seidman notes, “The Situationists had praised the Watts riots of 1965 as a revolutionary
49
Ibid., 73.
Ibid., 61.
51
Ibid., 65.
50
22
anticipation of the end of commodity fetishism, and the looting of the April 1968 rioters in the
urban ghettos revived their analysis.” 52 The university would remain closed until fall 1968.
At the suggestion of the March 22 movement, on Friday, May 3 students met in the Latin
Quarter at the courtyard of the Sorbonne to protest the impending disciplinary action against
Nanterre students. Across the Boulevard St. Michel, there were counter-demonstrating rightwing students, members of the fascist/nationalist group Occident, who had a reputation for
physically attacking leftists and blacks. In total, 574 people were arrested, including 300 who
were taken into custody in the Sorbonne courtyard. Some of these students had prior arrests for
political activities, many of them for hanging posters for the Union national des étudiants de
France (UNEF). As a result of the ensuing uproar, the Sorbonne was closed for the first time in
its 700-year history.
Following the arrests, the National Union of Professors of Higher Education (SNESup)
encouraged its members to join the student protesters. The crowd grew to three thousand to four
thousand, and had three demands: the reopening of the Sorbonne, amnesty for the arrested
students, and police evacuation of the Latin Quarter. The protesters were irate, and one primary
target was the Comité Républicaine de Securité (CRS). The students attacked, according to Mark
Kurlansky, “some digging up cobblestones, others passing them bucket-brigade style to the front
of the line, where others ran into clouds of tear gas and threw stones at the CRS.” 53 As one
officer declared, “For the first time in my career, police were forced to retreat because of the
volley of cobblestones.” 54 The cobblestone became an extremely important tool, both
figuratively and literally, in the weeks that followed. It was described in memorable graffiti:
‘sous les pavés, la plage’ (fig. 10) and ‘Je t’aime! Oh! dites-le avec des paves!’ and a poster
52
Ibid., 77.
Mark Kurlansky, 1968 (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 2004), 225.
54
Seidman, 95.
53
23
which featured a cobblestone with the caption “MOINS DE 21 ANS voici votre bulletin de
VOTE.” (fig. 11). However, as Seidman writes, “What the posters ignored revealed as much as
they depicted. They sanitized movement violence by neglecting arson and other attacks against
property. Only cobblestones reminded viewers of youth violence.” 55
In fact, this was not the first time cobblestones were had been employed in protest by the
disenfranchised in France. There were at least four other instances when cobblestones had been
used as weapons, dating back to 1185, when they were launched against royalists. 1968 proved
to be the last time, however—De Gaulle ordered most cobblestone streets of the Latin Quarter
paved over that August.
According to Feenberg and Freedman, “The scene was set for Monday morning when the
dawn came up on a massive troop of riot police, the [CRS], heavily armed with helmets, tear gas,
clubs, and rifles.” 56 The CRS gear was in marked contrast to that of the students described by
Singer, whose “typical armor was a motorcyclist’s crash helmet, tennis shoes for mobility, any
stick or iron they could lay their hands on, and in some cases, slingshots.” 57 This David versus
Goliath showdown was the sight that greeted the eight Nanterre students, including Cohn-Bendit
and a pro-Situ named René Riesel, when they were called before a disciplinary board on at the
Sorbonne that day to answer for their disruptive actions at Nanterre. According to Seidman,
Riesel showed little respect for his judges. Nor was he impressed by the magnificent
chamber of the Sorbonne where the disciplinary council met. To display his disdain, he
took off his leather jacket and used it as a pillow as he reclined on the floor. 58
By this time the protesters had swelled to 20,000, “including some blousons noirs that
Situationists imagined as a potential revolutionary force.” 59 Cowering from the demonstrators
55
Ibid., 142.
Feenberg and Freedman, 15.
57
Singer, 64.
58
Seidman, 100.
56
24
outside, the judges postponed disciplinary action. Later that afternoon, demonstrators set a
construction trailer on fire and hid from the police behind the fire trucks sent to quell the blaze.
Fighting continued through dawn the next morning, resulting in the injury of 600 demonstrators
and 345 policemen. By Tuesday, the protesters numbered 40,000.
By Friday, May 10, Rector Jean Roche of the Sorbonne was finally willing to meet with
representatives of the demonstrators. However, after receiving a phone call during the meeting
from Minister of Education Alain Peyrefitte (who soon resigned as a result of the events of
May), Roche announced to the delegates that there would be no negotiations. The group tried to
convince him to come to see the demonstrations for himself, but he refused. Feenberg and
Freedman note, “The delegation returned to the streets alone, where there were now sixty
barricades, red flags flying, and crowds celebrating their fortresses with joyous fever.” 60 Starting
at nine p.m., protesters had begun erecting the barricades. Reader and Wadia describe their
contents as “branches and metal grilles from trees, cars…, paving-stones were piled up in a
movement that spread like wildfire, yet in practical paramilitary terms was worthless.” 61
Many residents who had been mere spectators until this point began aiding the students.
From the windows of their homes came a steady stream of food and blankets. As unbelievable as
it seems, Feenberg and Freedman assert that “Many residents watched their cars being turned
over and set sideways for barricades without objection.” 62 Residents’ emotions may have been
stirred by the brutality they witnessed at the hands of the police, who indiscriminately attacked
protesters as well as members of the Red Cross. One medical aide reported assisting three injured
policemen, and after tending to them, assisting a wounded student. According to Feenberg and
59
Ibid., 103. The blousons noirs were juvenile delinquents.
Feenberg and Freedman, 23.
61
Reader and Wadia, 11.
62
Feenberg and Freedman, 24.
60
25
Freedman, the aide said “When I subsequently went to him, I was violently beaten, kicked to the
ground, and taken to a paddy wagon and to the station where once again I was beaten.” 63
The public was now firmly on the side of the students, and citizens verbally accosted
police on the streets for their terror tactics. President de Gaulle had rather conveniently taken
leave of France, so May 11 Prime Minister Georges Pompidou appeared on television to make
concessions to the students. This offering was perceived as too little, too late. According to
Seidman, Pompidou said, “Right now it is not the government that is being attacked, nor
institutions nor even France. It is our own civilization.” 64
On Monday, May 13, a general strike occurred, and protests in which students and
unionist jostled for position at the front of the march. This is notable because of the obviously
disparate desires of the students and the communist union leaders, which foreshadowed the
eventual dissolution of the movement. The following day, younger workers at the Sud-Aviation
plant, without the approval of union leaders, occupied the factory and locked their manager in his
office. However, the biggest coup occurred on May 16 when Renault’s major factory at
Boulogne-Billancourt “hoisted a red flag above its gates” 65 Once again, disenchanted youth were
the instigators. Singer writes, Renault “employed a high proportion of young people, many of
them doing jobs inferior to their qualifications.” 66 By the end of the week, more than fifty
factories were on strike. The gates were locked, ostensibly to outsiders in general, but
particularly to students, whom members of the CGT, the general confederation of labor which
was heavily dominated by communists, did not want mingling with the workers.
63
Ibid., 25.
Pompidou quoted in Seidman, 2.
65
Feenberg and Freedman, 33.
66
Singer, 157.
64
26
The same week, the Sorbonne was reopened and promptly occupied by student protesters.
Two days after that occupation, students took over the beloved Théâtre de l’Odéon to, in the
words of Feenberg and Freedman, “purge it of its elite culture and declare it open to the people,
in the service of the revolution.” 67 In solidarity with the protesters, Jean-Luc Godard forced
closure of the Cannes Film Festival.
Debord was present at the Sorbonne occupation, unlike the conspicuously absent Raoul
Vaneigem, who went on holiday at this time. In his absence, Vaneigem’s The Revolution of
Everyday Life lent itself well to slogans. Perhaps the most oft-cited is the following passage:
“Those who speak of revolution and class struggle without changing everyday life and without
understanding what is subversive about love and beneficial about the refusal of constraints have
a corpse in their mouth.” 68 This was reproduced in a hand-written statement by the Comité
Enragés-Internationale Situationnist (fig. 12).
In dispatches from the Sorbonne, Debord and fellow Situationists issued several
statements in conjunction with the Enragés under the name of the Council for Maintaining the
Occupations. 69 In one, written in his typically confrontational style, Debord notes, “Many
students, professors, journalists and imbeciles of other occupations have come as spectators.” 70
Until June 15, the Council managed, as Marcus notes, to “spread hundreds of thousands of
copies of its posters, manifestos, and comic strips across the country and…around the globe.” 71
As for other reactions to the Situationists,
67
Feenberg and Freedman, 29.
Seidman, 28.
69
Evidently, Jean-Paul Sartre was also present at the Sorbonne, yet no information seems to exist
confirming whether or not he and Debord, who openly disdained him, crossed paths.
70
Council for Maintaining the Occupations, “Report on the Occupation of the Sorbonne”, in Knabb, 346.
71
Marcus, 429.
68
27
They were poorly received in the occupied Sorbonne, where their distaste for Leninist
organizational methods and insistence that the bourgeois university needed to be
destroyed rather than reformed antagonized [many students]. 72
Although the Situationists’ stamp can be seen all over the actions, graffiti, and art of the
movement, they did remain a polarizing force for some protesters. Not only were they more
radical than many of the students, they were also very vocal. Bracken writes,
Debord and his cohorts set up shop in the Jules Bonnot room of the Sorbonne (renamed
after the notorious anarchist bank robber) openly expressing support for Makhno (the
notorious anarchist general) over [Vladimir] Lenin and [Leon] Trotsky to let people know
where they stood. 73
A pivotal moment occurred on May 14 when the first of some 750 posters was
produced by students in the lithography workshop of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The original
poster was an endorsement of unity between workers and students, a theme which resurfaced in
many of the works produced at the time. As Seidman notes, “The symbols of the student
revolutionaries—red flag, black flag, the Internationale, and the clenched fist—were all taken
from the working-class movement.” 74 These posters were a direct nod to the Situationist critique
of art, the amalgamation of art and revolution.
Two days later, students occupied the painting studio at the Beaux-Arts and wrote
“Atelier populaire: Oui. Atelier bourgeois: Non.” over its entrance. They called themselves the
Salon de la jeune peinture in an ironic reference to the revered French Salon, although they were
also known as the Atelier populaire. In conjunction with the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs, they
produced nearly all of the posters of the movement (fig.13). Silkscreen printing, previously
considered a lowbrow technique for artists, enabled them to produce two to three thousand
72
Reader and Wadia, 53.
Bracken, 156.
74
Seidman, 17.
73
28
posters a day, which were plastered around the city. Art students were able to harness the
technology they had at hand for near-instant results.
Prominent artists, including Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, and Max Ernst voiced their
support for the student artists. Thanks to the closure of national and municipal museums, the
walls of Paris became the only galleries in town. In fact, Seidman notes, “Twenty-four dealers,
whose profession depended upon the commodification of art…promised to distribute the posters
without profit for themselves.” 75 Some unscrupulous poster hangers kept copies in order to sell
them, while other posters were peeled off the walls not just by the police, but also by collectors
who produced unauthorized copies. Naturally, this angered the student artists, one of whom was
Jean-Claude Leveque, who said “The revolution is not for sale.” 76
The posters produced by the Atelier populaire were unsigned. In an attempt to challenge
commonly held bourgeois beliefs regarding the uniqueness of artists, the students employed
anonymity as an integral part of the artistic rebellion. Thus, we are unable to ascertain who
designed any of the posters comprising this prodigious output. In this same spirit, the students
voted on which of their own posters passed muster and sometimes elected to alter their
colleagues work However, any submissions from workers were accepted unquestioningly, which
may reflect the student artists’ perceptions of the workers’ art as somehow more raw and real
than their own. The admittance of posters designed by non-artists reflected the democratization
of the artistic process, and yet another way in which Situationist values informed the overall
production.
The design of the posters reflects their swift production. They were hand-lettered, often
in a peculiar, inexplicable combination of upper- and lowercase letters, with simple graphic,
75
76
Ibid., 133.
Kurlansky, p. 229.
29
cartoon-like images. They were generally produced in some combination of white and black or
red, the colors of the revolution symbolizing anarchy and communism. The slogans were direct
and succinct. The influence of Latin American revolutionary posters is evident, as seen in a
poster from the Mexican student movement featuring the Che Guevara slogan, “Venceremos!”
(fig. 14). The posters are not particularly notable for their artistic merit in a traditional fine art
sense, but rather for their power in conveying the frustrations of protesters in an immediate,
straightforward manner. They encapsulate the struggles of the movement so well that viewers
grasp the motives for the backlash simply by examining the visual remains.
As previously mentioned, many of these posters proclaim the solidarity of students and
workers. One features two figures, the one on the left in overalls representing the workers, the
one on the right in a turtleneck representing the students. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder
beneath the slogan, “LE MEME PROBLEME LA MEME LUTTE” 77 (fig. 15). Another poster
depicts the strike at the Renault Flins factory by showing the head of a figure with a wrench in
his teeth (fig. 16). The wrench is emblazoned with the words “RENAULT FLINS” and lists a
meeting time for strikers.
One poster reflects the fact that the immigrant population was rising amongst factory
workers. It depicts three faceless figures. On the left is a white figure labeled “FRANCAIS” and
on the right is a black figure labeled “IMMIGRES,” both with their fists raised. Between them a
smaller figure in a bourgeois hat, presumably symbolizing a factory boss, pushes the figures
apart. This poster is labeled “TRAVAILLEURS UNIS” (fig. 17). Yet another, with the slogan
“RETOUR A LA NORMALE” shows sheep moving from right to left. This represents the herdlike mentality of workers returning to work after the failed revolution (fig. 18).
77
All referenced posters and graffiti are reproduced here in their original mixture of capital and lowercase
letters. See list of English translations.
30
The most striking images were often ominous, depicting either the repression of students
by de Gaulle or the police, or the general state of frustration. A particularly famous example of
the latter is a poster which was later appropriated by pro-Situ artist Jamie Reid (b. 1947). Black
and white, it depicts the head of a female figure wrapped in surgical tape with a safety pin
through the area of the mouth. The figure’s eyes consist of spirals, similar to cartoon
representations of one who has been hypnotized. The bleak caption reads “une jeunesse que
l’avenir inquiète trop souvent” (fig. 19). This figure is not quite as two-dimensional as most
produced by the students, since it contains some elementary shading along the brows, nose,
cheeks, and neck.
Unfairly or not, the depictions of the police were sinister and showed the officers in the
riot gear so many had come to recognize. One poster compares them to Nazis, showing a figure
in helmet and goggles with a baton in one hand raised over his head as if to strike, and a shield
emblazoned “SS” in the other. Beside the figure are the words “CRS=SS” (fig. 20). Seidman
writes, “Of course, the CRS were identified with the SS and seen as the epitome of the forces of
darkness.” 78
Yet another depiction of the police was actually a criticism of the state-run news outlet,
Office de radio et television française (ORTF). Beneath the caption “LA POLICE VOUS PARLE
tous les soirs à 20 h.”, the ever-ubiquitous officer is shown with a rifle slung over his shoulder,
speaking into a microphone labeled ORTF (fig. 21). Evidently, the employees of ORTF agreed
with the students, because on May 16 they called for a general assembly to protest censorship of
footage of the demonstrations. Still photographers were able to capture these moments, as
evidenced in the iconic image of students brandishing makeshift weapons, taken by Bruno
Barbey (fig. 22).
78
Seidman, 139.
31
At least one work depicts the police somewhat humorously, showing a riot officer
wielding a paintbrush in his teeth. Above his head the poster declares, “LA POLICE S’AFFICHE
AUX BEAUX ARTS” and below, “LES BEAUX ARTS AFFICHENT dans la RUE” (fig. 23).
Indeed, the poster had become the combat weapon of choice for the student artists.
For the most part, the posters portray anonymous figures, but some are very obviously
likenesses of de Gaulle. He was both militarized and easily recognizable in his kepi, or general’s
peaked cap. This representation ensured that even the simplest graphic conveyed de Gaulle’s
identity. One foreboding image depicts de Gaulle as a large, entirely black figure who seems to
be emerging from the shadows to silence a small, young boy, who looks at the viewer with large
eyes and complete submission as de Gaulle places his enormous hand over his mouth. The
caption is “SOIS JEUNE ET TAIS TOI” (fig. 24). This poster contains some pointillistic shading
and is slightly less graphic than the majority of the output from the Beaux-Arts.
Another illustration of de Gaulle is entirely comical, mocking “his description of the
demonstrators as chienlit, an archaic term that made the general seem out of touch and totally
unhip.” 79 In fact, what de Gaulle’s full statement at a May 18 cabinet meeting was, “Les
reformes, oui, la chienlit, non.” Chienlit has no direct translation in English, but the closest
interpretation may be “one who shits in his bed.” Although de Gaulle was ridiculed for this
statement, in reality he was not the first to apply it to the protesters. According to Singer, “the
same rare term had been used at the beginning of the crisis to describe the student disorder by the
extreme right-wing paper Minute.” 80 In the poster, an exceedingly crudely drawn de Gaulle is
shown at half length, throwing his arms in the air. The caption declares, “LA CHiENLiT C’EST
LUi !” (fig. 25).
79
80
Seidman, 139.
Singer, 173.
32
The students were hostile toward the government, and by extension they were openly
suspicious about the voting process. In addition to the cobblestone poster, the students produced
another ridiculing the voting process. The latter is also an example of détournement. The poster
shows a baton-wielding member of the CRS in a trench coat, stomping on a smaller figure below
(fig. 26). According to Seidman,
They changed the late 1950s anti-alcoholism advertising campaign slogan from “Quand
les parents boivent, les enfants trinquent” to “Quand les parents votent, les enfants
trinquent.” Détournement of advertising was another example of hostility to the
commodity and the marketplace. 81
On May 22, a televised Motion of Censure against de Gaulle in the General Assembly
failed by eleven votes. The following day, de Gaulle’s Council of Ministers received news that
Cohn-Bendit had temporarily left France. Newly confident, the Council immediately made a
public declaration barring his reentry, which was permitted by law because Cohn-Bendit was not
a French citizen. This news could not have come at a better time, since the protesters at the
Sorbonne were beginning to lose steam until news of his exile reached them. The everindustrious Beaux-Arts students quickly produced a poster in support of Cohn-Bendit. It featured
his maniacally grinning visage and was emblazoned with the slogan “NOUS SOMMES TOUS
DES JUIFS ET DES ALLEMANDS” (fig. 27). Massive crowds began chanting, “We are all
German Jews!” 82 A second, nearly identical version of this poster exists, with the more universal
caption “NOUS SOMMES TOUS INDESIRABLES” (fig. 28). Feenberg and Freedman note, “In
its very attempt to dismantle the bomb of the student movement, the government had unwittingly
81
Seidman, 142.
Singer was present at this protest, noting: “Incidentally, I stood next to the great black poet from
Martinique, Aimé Césaire, who made the unforgettable comment: ‘I am willing to shout, but nobody is going to
believe me.’” Singer, xxiv.
82
33
done the opposite; it had provided the remedy for the stagnation of the Sorbonne by once again
lighting the fuse.” 83
At the same time posters were being pasted on nearly every conceivable surface, graffiti
artists were hard at work, also acting within decidedly Situationist parameters. Prevented from
airing their grievances through the standard media, Enragés, Situationists, anarchists, and others
spray-painted more than two thousand slogans around the city. This deluge of street art was
created impulsively and without regard for the law which had rendered such expression illegal
since 1881. Indeed, the delinquency of this act enhanced its appeal for the graffiti artists. For a
short time, as Seidman writes, “They had temporarily triumphed over police in the war of the
walls.” 84 Graffiti slogans included ‘prenez vos desirs pour la realité’ (fig. 29) and ‘la Culture est
perversion de la Vie.’ One piece of graffiti illustrates the Situationist ideas concerning work,
boredom, and the need for worker’s councils:
Depuis 1936 j'ai lutté pour les augmentations de salaire. Mon père avant moi a lutté pour
les augmentations de salaire. Maintenant j'ai une télé, un frigo, une VW. Et cependant
j'ai vécu toujours la vie d'un con. Ne négociez pas avec les patrons. Abolissez-les.
Since 1936 I have fought for wage increases. My father before me fought for wage
increases. Now I have a TV, a fridge, a Volkswagen. Yet my whole life has been a drag.
Don't negotiate with the bosses. Abolish them.
The day after the “We are all German Jews!” protest, 200,000 farmers came to Paris and
blocked highways with their tractors. The workers on strike now numbered ten million. 400,000
workers came to protest with the students, and de Gaulle addressed the nation that night on
television, making dubious allusions to reform and calling for a referendum. Rioting ensued
immediately following the broadcast.
83
84
Feenberg and Freedman, 51-52.
Seidman, 144.
34
Instead of a referendum, however, in de Gaulle’s next announcement to the country, this
one broadcast by radio on May 30, he dissolved the National Assembly and called for elections
on June 23. De Gaulle forced workers to accept concessions and return to work by threatening to
declare a state of emergency. The Sorbonne and the Théâtre de l’Odéon were re-seized by the
police in mid-June, and the student protests were called off.
Remarkably, after the entire country seemed to be behind the students and workers, de
Gaulle’s deputies were overwhelmingly returned to power, winning 358 of the 485 seats in the
National Assembly. It was almost as if the uprising had never occurred. Feenberg and Freedman
write, “Like a comet, it had disappeared; except for some raises in salaries, minor changes in de
Gaulle’s cabinet, and specks of unwashed graffiti on the walls of the Sorbonne, there was hardly
a visible trace of its passing.” 85 Although the SI dissolved in 1972, the legacy lives on in the art
of the time, when anything seemed possible, and, as we shall see, in British punk rock art and
politics of the 1970s.
85
Feenberg and Freedman, 3.
35
CHAPTER THREE
EVER GET THE FEELING YOU’VE BEEN CHEATED? JAMIE REID’S PUNK ART
Although the SI’s biggest cultural impact was felt in France in the late 1960s, pro-Situs
were active elsewhere prior to the 1968 riots. As early as 1965, there were English Situs,
including Christopher Gray and the head of the art department at Leeds University, T.J. Clark.
They published a magazine, Heatwave, featuring a wide variety of material, including texts from
Rebel Worker, an American anarchist publication. However, the English faction, comprised of
relatively youthful members, clashed with Guy Debord, which led to their exclusion from the SI
in late 1967. According to Nils Stevenson, who was later active in the punk and postpunk
movement, the English branch of the SI was “condemned by the French for their incorrect
attitude towards certain elements of American counterculture which reinforced the Society of the
Spectacle.” 86
In response to their expulsion from the SI, several of the English members went on to
form the agit-prop group King Mob. The group’s name was derived from Christopher Hibbert’s
1958 book King Mob, named after graffiti signed “His Majesty King Mob” that had been painted
on the walls of Newgate Prison in London in 1780 during the antipapist Gordon Riots. The
weeklong riots culminated in the release of prison inmates against the will of the authorities, and
were a precursor to the French Revolution. The new King Mob lauded the Gordon Riots as an
early example of direct action.
In addition to scrawling pro-Situ graffiti around London, King Mob attacked businesses
which exemplified modern consumerism, such as the fast-food hamburger chain, Wimpy Bar.
However, their most well-known act of agitation took place in December 1968, when a group of
86
Nils Stevenson and Ray Stevenson, Vacant: A Diary of the Punk Years 1976-79 (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1999), 9.
36
25 King Mob members went to the London department store Selfridge’s. Dressed as Santa and
his little helpers, they thrust toys, which were pilfered from the store’s shelves, into the hands of
unsuspecting parents and children who were shopping there. The children were subjected to the
trauma of having the toys seized by members of store security, then witnessing the arrest of
Santa and his cohorts. Malcolm McLaren (b. 1946) who was later instrumental as a Svengali-like
figure in British pop culture in collaboration with the Sex Pistols, took part in this action.
McLaren evaded arrest that day by grabbing the arm of an unsuspecting elderly lady and
pretending to be her escort, swiftly guiding her out of Selfridge’s under the watchful eye of the
police. Evidently McLaren’s plans for provocation did not include arrest.
In June 1968, McLaren and nearly 300 fellow students at Croydon Art College, including
the school’s star painter, Jamie Reid, were inspired by the events in France and staged an
occupation of the school’s annex. They issued statements, staged teach-ins, and knocked down
partitions between administrators’ offices and students’ studios. According to Reid, “Suddenly,
what had been the head of fine art’s little room, with fitted carpets, secretaries and sherry glasses,
was now part of the life class studio, previously next door, naked and exposed.” 87 After six days
the protests dissolved, mainly due to a lack of commitment on the part of the students--they
wanted to leave for summer break. Reid was the only student punished for his actions at
Croydon. He writes, “I was due to leave Croydon that summer to do another year at St. Martin’s,
but I lost my grant. It was actually brought up in Parliament…that I was being victimized.” 88
Although many have suggested that McLaren and Reid were present during the protests
that year in Paris, in truth, neither was in attendance. McLaren actually had tried repeatedly to
get to France, but was unable to take the English Channel ferry because of the strikes. Without a
87
Jamie Reid and Jon Savage, Up They Rise! The Incomplete Works of Jamie Reid (London: Faber and
Faber, 1987), 15.
88
Ibid., 15.
37
doubt, the events in France had a profound influence on their Croydon sit-in, however. In an
interview with Jon Savage, Reid describes his impression of the French riots: “Very positive.
They were about people taking control of their own situations and it had a tremendous sense of
excitement, and a tremendous humour.” 89
As students in the 1960s, McLaren and Reid’s initial understanding of SI concepts was
rather rudimentary. Savage notes, “SI material came into the country in dribs and drabs. Within
its own context, there was much that was pop about the Situationists, and this was how it was
understood in Britain.” 90 Indeed, many Britons were introduced to the SI through the graffiti and
posters it inspired in 1968, rather than through the SI writings. As McLaren recalls, his
introduction to SI material in its original format was rather superficial:
You got these beautiful magazines with reflecting covers in various colours: gold, green,
mauve. The text was in French: you tried to read it, but it was so difficult. Just when you
were getting bored, there were always these wonderful pictures and they broke the whole
thing up. They were what I bought them for: not the theory. 91
Others were attracted to SI publications because of their perceived air of exclusivity. Paul
Sieveking, who was a University of Cambridge student when he completed the first English
translation of Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life, states,
Ten Days That Shook the University [a compendium of SI texts] was widely distributed
among students interested in contemporary radical activity…It was a discovery: you felt
it gave you a certain edge over people who didn’t know about it. 92
In 1970, Reid and McLaren collaborated on a film. The film, which was never completed,
was a piece of pro-Situ psychogeography about Oxford Street, which had been redesigned after
89
Jamie Reid, “A Jamie Reid Interview,” interview by Jon Savage first published in The Face, October
1983. www.rocksbackpages.com/features/8310_reid_savage.html accessed 6 March, 2006.
90
Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond (New York: St.
Martin’s Griffin, 2001), 32.
91
Ibid., 30.
92
Ibid., 32-33.
38
the Gordon Riots in what Craig Bromberg describes as “a last bastion against the mob storming
the gates of the City” 93 and which later became a mecca of consumerism. The film-making
stalled, in part because merchants in the area would not allow the group to film inside their
stores. Paradoxically, the only one that granted permission was Selfridge’s.
That same year, Reid and a few friends began the Suburban Press, both a business and a
local agit-prop magazine of the same name. The press published material for the Black Panthers,
along with women’s and prisoners’ rights groups, and they were among the first community
presses to unionize. Suburban Press, which eventually had a circulation of 5,000, published a
total of six issues which contained exposés on local political corruption interspersed with Reid’s
graphics and some Situationist texts.
Reid’s objective with SI texts was to simplify and visualize them. He writes,
I was never involved with the Situationists to the fullest extent because I couldn’t
understand half of what they’d written…I was trying to put over the waffle in a visual
form; trying, say, to summarize a whole chapter of a book in one image. 94
The SI influence is evident in a series of stickers printed by the Suburban Press in 1972-1974.
One proclaiming “THIS WEEK ONLY THIS STORE WELCOMES SHOPLIFTERS” (fig. 30)
was plastered on the windows of stores on Oxford Street late on a Sunday night. The ensuing
mischief was observed the following day. According to Reid, “Friends of ours went and
shoplifted quite openly and then, when stopped, pointed out the stickers to the store detectives in
the poshest tones possible. They got away with it.” 95
During the miner’s strike which erupted in December 1973 and concluded in January
1974, the group produced “KEEP WARM THIS WINTER MAKE TROUBLE” (fig. 31) and
93
Craig Bromberg, The Wicked Ways of Malcolm McLaren (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1989), 38.
Reid and Savage, 38.
95
Ibid., 43.
94
39
“SAVE PETROL BURN CARS” stickers. In response to the three-day work week imposed
during the strike, they printed the “LAST DAYS” sticker (fig. 32), which encouraged shoppers
to “BUY NOW WHILE STOCKS LAST! This store will be closing soon owing to the pending
collapse of monopoly capitalism and the world wide exhaustion of raw materials.” 96 Referring to
Reid’s stickers, Robert Garnett notes,
While this situational strategy of intervening in specific contexts might appear in
retrospect to amount to little more than harmless mischief-making, they do evince the fact
that Reid had a sophisticated and prescient understanding of the limitations of
conventional alternative/radical activism. 97
While operating the Suburban Press from 1970-75, Reid was involved in every aspect of
the production, from design to execution and even repair of the machinery, and this hands-on
approach helped him develop a keen eye for what looked good in print—namely, that the
simplest graphics and briefest messages allowed for maximum impact. As Savage notes, “The
printing press also weaned Jamie from his painterly training at Croydon and taught him
techniques [which were later] vital to the immediacy of the Sex Pistols.” 98
In 1974, Christopher Gray published the anthology Leaving the 20th Century: The
Incomplete Work of the Situationist International, 99 with illustrations and layouts by Reid. The
two had first come into contact in 1966, when Reid designed a cover for Heatwave. Although
Leaving the 20th Century was later roundly denounced by SI scholars as a poor translation with
which Gray took many liberties, it remains significant because it contains many images which
Reid later resurrected for the Sex Pistols, and it was also the first exposure many English
speakers had to the SI’s writings. According to music journalist Simon Reynolds, Leaving the
96
Unfortunately, we cannot grasp the full impact of how convincing the Suburban Press stickers looked
because available reproductions are so poor. The originals were produced in lurid fluorescent colors.
97
Robert Garnett, “Too Low to Be Low: Art Pop and the Sex Pistols” in Punk Rock: So What? The
Cultural Legacy of Punk, ed. Roger Sabin (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1999), 24.
98
Savage, “A Jamie Reid Interview.”
99
Christopher Gray, Leaving the Twentieth Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist International
(London: Rebel Press, 1998).
40
20th Century was “the radical-chic fetish object of its era.” 100 The book, with an acid green
cover, was printed in a limited run of 4,000 copies, which only added to its allure.
By 1975, England was in the midst of a recession, experiencing the highest
unemployment figures since World War II. According to Savage, “This didn’t seem like a
temporary crisis but the acutest angle of a long, slow decline.” 101 Those most at risk for
unemployment were the unskilled youth, and McLaren seized on this disaffected segment of the
population as an instrument for change, in the form of a pop group, the Sex Pistols. He recruited
Reid, who was living in Scotland at the time, to return to London and begin work on the Sex
Pistols propaganda machine. The idea immediately appealed to Reid, who was “thunderstruck
with the idea of using a rock ‘n’ roll band to score political points…[He] wanted The Sex Pistols
to make a stand, not pop music.” 102 Although Reid’s chief duty was executing graphics for
Glitterbest, the Sex Pistols’ production company, he also had a hand in shaping the image and
actions of the band. He encouraged the Sex Pistols to engage in pro-Situ activities such as failing
to show up for scheduled gigs as an act of détournement, and he pushed the lead singer Johnny
Rotten (née John Lydon, the birth name to which he has since reverted) to write some genuinely
anarchist songs.
Reid’s earliest images for the Sex Pistols were fliers, but once the record label EMI
agreed to release their first single in November 1976, he began work on a poster. The “Anarchy
In the U.K.” single itself was sold in anonymous black bag, but the promotional poster was
considerably more controversial. Reid ripped and burnt a 8”x 4” souvenir Union Flag, then
reassembled it, with safety pins and clips affixing the torn ransom note-style Sex Pistols and
100
Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 (New York, NY: Penguin Books,
2006), 55.
101
102
Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, 108.
Bromberg, 103.
41
Anarchy in the U.K. logos to the flag (fig. 33). The reassembled ensign was subsequently
photographed by au courant punk photographer Ray Stevenson. Viewing Reid’s “Anarchy” flag,
the spectator was given “an almost perfect visual counterpart to the Pistols’ music.” 103 This
defiant misuse of this well-known symbol of the U.K., clearly expressing pent-up rage and
frustration with the status quo, was a mere hint of what was to come.
Reid’s visual style was also reflected in punk rock fashion of the time, which used
elements of bricolage, the process by which objects were shredded and rejoined seemingly
haphazardly. Bondage gear, Mohawks, and swastikas were appropriated for use outside of their
original contexts, arguably as examples of détournement. The effect of Reid’s graphics and the
punks’ fashions was startling, frightening, and fascinating all at once to the general public.
Taking full advantage of the public reaction, the Sex Pistols (mis)behaved accordingly. Their
notoriety in the press led to their dismissal from A&M Records, which was to release their next
single in March 1977, to coincide with the Silver Jubilee of the Queen of England, Elizabeth II.
The Silver Jubilee was planned to enable the Queen’s loyal subjects to express their presumed
gratitude for her 25 years of service. In a comic example of understatement, art critic John A.
Walker notes, “There were some dissenters.” 104 Although A&M had already pressed 25,000
copies of “God Save the Queen,” they paid Glitterbest off in order to extricate themselves from
the deal, which they feared would lead to serious repercussions since the target, after all, of the
single and its artwork was the Queen. The band was promptly signed by Virgin Records, and the
single was released May 25, 1977, in the midst of the Silver Jubilee celebration. Remarkably,
although it was banned from radio, “God Save the Queen” immediately went to number one on
103
Garnett, 18.
John A. Walker, Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain (London and New York, NY: I.B. Taurus
Publishers, 2002), 187.
104
42
the singles chart. For the first time in the history of tracking record sales, the spots which would
normally list the band’s name and song title were filled with black bars instead.
This feeble denial of the Sex Pistols’ existence was clearly unmatched by the hoards
purchasing the single. Virgin planned a visual assault, plastering Reid’s posters everywhere,
including the famed double decker buses. The posters were several variations on an official Cecil
Beaton portrait of the smiling Queen, in which she displayed her finery, including a tiara and
jewels. The cover of the actual single featured the queen with the now-familiar, torn ransom-note
lettering, her eyes and mouth emblazoned with the name of the band and the song, over a
background consisting of a rendering of the Union Flag (fig. 34). According to Reid, “The flag
poster was another adaptation of the idea already used in the ‘Anarchy’ campaign: that there was
another England not mentioned in the worldwide media coverage of the Jubilee jamboree.” 105
Other versions of “God Save the Queen” depicted Her Royal Highness with a safety pin
through her lips, accompanied by an excerpt of the song’s lyrics crudely written in what appears
to be marker, “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN SHE AIN’T NO HUMAN BEING” (fig. 35). This
image is an homage to both Duchamp’s “L.H.O.O.Q.” and the Atelier populaire’s “une jeunesse
que l’avenir inquiète trop souvent” poster. In yet another modification, the Queen’s eyes were
replaced with swastikas (fig. 36).
Was Reid being savvy or was he putting the Sex Pistols in danger of becoming just
another commodity thanks to these immediately recognizable graphics? Regarding the image for
the “God Save the Queen” single, David Huxley writes,
It implies an anonymous, criminal message, with a hint of threatened violence. Yet for all
the apparent ‘amateurishness’ of the lettering the layout is very carefully designed…It is,
in effect, a highly recognizable corporate logo. 106
105
Reid and Savage, 65.
David Huxley “‘Ever Get the Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?’ Anarchy and Control in The Great Rock
‘n’ Roll Swindle” in Sabin, 87.
106
43
Although Reid was instrumental in developing the “signature look” of punk, it seems more
probable that his objective was to harness the power of the media and its ravenous appetite for
the spectacle, rather than turn the Sex Pistols into the establishment. As Andrew Ross writes,
punks “rode the back of the media hype monster to its limits, feeding off the surplus value
generated by its publicity machine, while transforming themselves and their works into a new
and potent iconography of cultural rebellion.”107
Music journalist Pat Gilbert writes, “Mentioning Situationists in the context of punk often
elicits theatrical groans and accusations of punk being intellectualised thirty years after the
event.” 108 Although this supposed intellectualization of punk may apply to most bands of that
era, this is not the case with the Sex Pistols, in large part because of Reid’s control of the group’s
visual output. However, despite Lydon’s vehement denials in recent years of any connection
between the SI and the Sex Pistols, the comparisons of Reid’s artwork and SI concepts are apt
and inescapable. There is evidence the band was aware of the SI, if not consciously absorbing SI
philosophies. Consider lyrics such as “A cheap holiday in other people’s misery!” from the
single “Holidays in the Sun.” This is nearly a verbatim quote of 1968 pro-Situ graffiti which read
“Club Med—A Holiday in Other People’s Misery.” Additionally, Rotten’s rejection of work and
its accompanying values in the lyrics to the single “Pretty Vacant” echo the punk rock ethos that
played “with situationist notions of boredom as social control, leisure as work, work as a
swindle, architecture as repression, revolution as festival.” 109
Like Rotten’s lyrics, Reid’s artwork for “Holidays in the Sun” and “Pretty Vacant” (both
from 1977) are probably the most overtly SI-influenced of his oeuvre for the Sex Pistols. The
107
Andrew Ross, “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Ghost” October 50 (Fall 1989), 110.
Gilbert, 108.
109
Marcus, 440.
108
44
front cover for the “Pretty Vacant” single featured a gilt frame with shattered glass, with the title
of the song and the band. The back cover included artwork from Reid’s Suburban Press days:
two buses, with final destinations listed as “NOWHERE” and “BOREDOM” (figs. 37 and 38).
Reid referred to them as the Situationist buses. 110 According to Garnett, this piece “stands out
because of the ways in which it references almost everything that made Reid and the Pistols’
work so potent.” 111 Indeed, the front cover implicitly suggests violence, while the back cover
conveys frustration and hopelessness—the reigning emotions that made punk so powerful.
The “Holidays in the Sun” (fig. 39) cover harkened back to the earliest détourned
cartoons of the LI and SI. Reid used a pre-existing Belgian Travel Service brochure, which
depicted tourists playing on a beach, sight-seeing, dining, dancing and eating, and participating
in other assorted activities associated with holiday leisure time. Reid replaced the speech
balloons with lyrics from the song, which made reference to the Nazi concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen, the Berlin wall, and communism, ending with “A CHEAP HOLIDAY IN
OTHER PEOPLE’S MISERY.” Needless to say, the Belgian Travel Service was not pleased,
and they immediately issued a cease-and-desist order, and insisted on the destruction of all
unsold copies of the single. This may have been the first time a détourned work caught the
attention of its original creators, since the single was distributed on such a large scale and with
much publicity. In addition to its obvious détournement, “Holidays in the Sun” also proclaimed a
“recurrent situationist theme: the idea of “the vacation” as a sort of loop of alienation and
domination, a symbol of the false promises of modern life.” 112
Although détournement as a concept has been attributed to many works since the 1970s,
most attempts at this Situ strategy are not worthy of the label. Détournement was very
110
Reid and Savage, 69.
Garnett, 25.
112
Marcus, 21.
111
45
convincing in the collaboration of Reid and the Sex Pistols, because they realized they could use
it for their own aims to create a “negation of pop” 113 on a grand scale. They covertly made
political art by cloaking it in the guise of pop music, a technique which was far more
sophisticated than anyone may have realized at the time. In effect, they propagated a scam which
resulted in a permanent cultural change. At the last Sex Pistols’ show in 1978, Johnny Rotten
asked the audience, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
113
Garnett, 21.
46
CONCLUSION
Although the most obvious parallels between the SI and punk rock art are manifest in the
art of Jamie Reid, other punk and postpunk bands in the 1970s besides the Sex Pistols were
influenced by the Situationists, most notably Gang of Four and The Clash, who were amongst
the most overtly political acts of the day. 114 The most prominent influence of the Situationists on
Gang of Four is present in their lyrics, primarily written by vocalist Jon King, and in the fashions
of The Clash. In fact, these bands had considerably higher intellectual aims than the Sex Pistols,
but the influence of the Situationists on their album covers failed to deliver the same anarchist
message of Reid’s graphics.
Gang of Four was comprised of fine arts students from Leeds University. The fine arts
department head happened to be T.J. Clark, former member of the English branch of the SI.
Under his tutelage, the Gang of Four became acquainted with the work of the SI. The group’s
name alone was a political provocation. They were named after China’s so-called Gang of Four,
the group of Communist party leaders that was removed from office following leader Mao
Zedong’s death in 1976. The Gang of Four’s expulsion from office signaled the end of China’s
Cultural Revolution.
The band was versed in Marxism and the writings of Walter Benjamin and the SI, and in
songs such as “Damaged Goods” (1978) they explored topics such as commodity fetishism and
reification in the guise of sex as a business transaction. In lyrics from “Natural’s Not in It”
(1979) the band refers to the Situationist-identified problems of everyday life, boredom and
leisure:
The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
Ideal love a new purchase
114
Members of The Clash were highly visible in the Rock Against Racism movement.
47
A market of the senses
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
A compilation of Gang of Four songs entitled A Brief History of the Twentieth Century (1990)
seems to have been inspired by both Christopher Gray’s Leaving the 20th Century and Greil
Marcus’s Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, the latter of which was
published the year prior to the release of Gang of Four’s album. 115
The cover of Entertainment! (fig. 40) 116 , first released in 1979, may be interpreted as a
visual reference to the Lettrist International’s newsletter Potlatch. The word potlatch was used
by North American Indians to describe a gift-exchange. However, a potlatch was not just a
reciprocal exchange of goods, but a way for the host of such an event to demonstrate wealth and
power over those on the receiving end of the gifts and festivities. The potlatch implied a debt on
the part of the recipient, a debt which presumably, might never be repaid. Thus, Entertainment!
contains a song called “Return the Gift.” The cover features the image of a cowboy and Indian
shaking hands. Each of the figures is featureless, with faces only represented by the colors red
for the Indian and white for the cowboy. This still is shown three times, progressively magnified
to make the handshake the focal point of the cover. Each frame is encircled by a sentence, and
when taken together, they read as follows: “The Indian smiles, he thinks that the cowboy is his
friend. The cowboy smiles, he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him.” 117
Thanks to their manager, Bernie Rhodes, The Clash were, at the least, peripherally aware
of the SI as well, but the band opted to display this influence via their militant look. The
influence of the Lettrists is evident in the stream-of-consciousness-style slogans that they painted
115
In an essay by music journalist Michael Azerrad, published in the liner notes of the 2005 reissue of the
record Entertainment!, Gang of Four’s debt to the Situationists is acknowledged in the opening paragraph.
116
Designed by Gang of Four members Jon King and Andy Gill.
117
Gang of Four, Entertainment!, album cover, reissued 2005, Rhino/Wea ASIN #B0007Z9R8Y.
48
on their clothes, including phrases such as “Heavy Manners,” “Creative Violence,” and “Passion
is a Fashion.” 118 One of the most seminal images in punk rock history is Pennie Smith’s
impromptu photograph which became the cover of The Clash’s 1979 record London Calling.
This image features bassist Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar onstage at the end of a
performance at the New York Palladium in 1979. I suspect Guy Debord would have approved of
the artist obliterating the tools of his trade.
Situationist ideas were ripe for appropriation in mid-1970s England because of the fiscal
crisis gripping the nation and the resultant unrest, but it is doubtful that without the influence of
Malcolm McLaren and Reid, who genuinely believed in SI ideals, the general state of malaise
would have been so precisely defined for the new generation. Others may have paid lip service to
the SI, but Reid translated the movement’s ideas into a signature kind of art—appropriation,
homage, the ultimate détournement. Countless youth culture radicals have been inspired by SI
concepts through punk rock, which has propagated the ideas of Guy Debord to several
generations. Reid’s art still feels dangerous and provocative today. Situationist critique remains
relevant, and the SI legacy lives on.
118
Because of Clash bassist Paul Simonon’s admiration of Jackson Pollock, the band also paid homage to
Pollock with the splatter-paint they employed to further customize their clothing.
49
WORKS CITED
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52
1. Guy Debord, The Naked City, collage, 1957.
53
2. Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, Fin de Copenhague, collage, 1957.
54
3. Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, Mémoires, collage, 1959.
55
4. Guiseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Pittura industriale, paint on canvas, n.d.
56
5. Asger Jorn, Paris by Night, paint on canvas, 1959.
57
6. Asger Jorn, L’avant-garde se rend pas, paint on canvas, 1962.
58
7. Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., Drawing on postcard, 1919.
59
8. André Bertrand, The Return of the Durutti Column, collage, 1966.
60
9. Guy Debord, ne travaillez jamais, graffiti, 1953.
61
10. Anonymous, sous les paves, la plage, graffiti, 1968.
62
11. Atelier populaire, MOINS DE 21 ANS voici votre bulletin de VOTE, poster, 1968.
63
12. Comité Enragés-Internationale Situationnist, statement, 1968.
64
13. Anonymous, Ecole des Beaux-Arts studio photograph, 1968.
65
14. Anonymous, Mexican student movement poster, n.d.
66
15. Atelier populaire, LE MEME PROBLEME, LA MEME LUTTE, poster, 1968.
67
16. Atelier populaire, RENAULT FLINS, poster, 1968.
68
17. Atelier populaire, TRAVAILLEURS UNIS, poster, 1968.
69
18. Atelier populaire, RETOUR A LA NORMALE, poster, 1968.
70
19. Atelier populaire, une jeunesse que l’avenir inquiète trop souvent, poster, 1968.
71
20. Atelier populaire, CRS=SS, poster, 1968.
72
21. Atelier populaire, LA POLICE VOUS PARLE tous les soirs à 20 h, poster, 1968.
73
22. Bruno Barbey, Student Riots, photograph, 1968.
74
23. Atelier populaire, LA POLICE S’AFFICHE AUX BEAUX ARTS, poster, 1968.
75
24. Atelier populaire, SOIS JEUNE ET TAIS TOI, poster, 1968.
76
25. Atelier populaire, LA CHiENLiT C’EST LUi!, poster, 1968.
77
26. Atelier populaire, QUAND LES PARENTS VOTENT, LES ENFANTS
TRINQUENT, poster, 1968.
78
27. Atelier populaire, NOUS SOMMES TOUS JUIFS ET DES ALLEMANDS, poster,
1968.
79
28. Atelier populaire, NOUS SOMMES TOUS INDESIRABLES, poster, 1968.
80
29. Anonymous, prenez vos desires pour la realité, graffiti, 1968.
81
30. Jamie Reid, THIS WEEK ONLY THIS STORE WELCOMES SHOPLIFTERS,
sticker, 1972-1974.
82
31. Jamie Reid, KEEP WARM THIS WINTER MAKE TROUBLE, sticker, 1973-1974.
83
32. Jamie Reid, LAST DAYS, sticker, 1973-1974.
84
33. Jamie Reid and Ray Stevenson, Anarchy Flag, mixed media, 1976.
85
34. Jamie Reid, “God Save the Queen” single cover, mixed media, 1977.
86
35. Jamie Reid, Alternative “God Save the Queen” artwork, mixed media, 1977.
87
36. Jamie Reid, “God Save the Queen” art with swastikas, mixed media, 1977.
88
37. Jamie Reid, “Pretty Vacant” single front, mixed media, 1977.
89
38. Jamie Reid, “Pretty Vacant” single back, mixed media, 1977.
90
39. Jamie Reid, “Holidays in the Sun” single cover, mixed media, 1977, and original
brochure.
91
40. Gang of Four, Entertainment! Album cover, 1979.