What is Situationism?

However to go back in history,the founder of the Situationist International,was Guy Debord and Asger Jorn. Debord was a Paris-based poet and filmmaker,a cornerstone of the Paris uprising in 1968.

Jorn was from Vejrum in Denmark,and distinguished himself as a painter and an essayist.

In fact,the artist has worked with famous architect Le Corbusier who designed the city of Chandigarh. Jorn moved to Paris after educating in Silkeborg. The two artists met and together they formulated the ideologies behind the group,which also included Pinot Gallizio and Constant Nieuwenhuys. Their intention was to wake up the spectator who has been drugged by spectacular images.

The group was made significant when Jorn wrote and later published The Critique of Economic Policy,in 57-61,which was published by their journal International Situationniste. In this he critiqued Marx’s Das Kapital and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Debord’s major work come in the shape of a thesis titled The Society of The Spectacle. Besides writing his thesis and a few plays,Debord made films and later some of them were not necessarily related to Situationism. The movement continued to take a stand that was different from the Left,since it challenged Stalin as well as Max.

While the group formally disbanded in 1971,the ideology and activity continued in the form of the Antinational Situationist group. Jorn continued to help finance the group’s activities with the sale of his abstract paintings.

It may be asked,what was artistic about the Situationist movement,since much of its seminal work exited as writings. However,it may be noted that this group provided ideology for art practitioners like the Surrealists,Dadaists and the Bauhaus,all of which has been covered in the series of Google Art.

(Demystify art,e-mail georgina.maddox@gmail.com)