Ordre de Boycott [1956]

INTERNATIONALE LETTRISTE. Ordre de Boycott. Paris: Internationale Lettriste, 31 Juillet 1956. 1 p. (single-sided leaflet); ill.; 15 x 29 cm.; black ink on white stock

Rare leaflet by the Internationale Lettriste (signed by Debord, Asger Jorn, and Gil J. Wolman) issued on the occasion of the opening of Le Festival de la Cite Radieuse in Marseille on August 4, 1956. The avant-garde festival, to be held within Le Corbusier’s namesake building is the subject of a scathing attack from the Lettristes

La Cite Radieuse (Radiant City), a high-density residential development in Marseille built between 1947 and 1952, is seen as one one Le Corbusier’s most influential architectural works. It is thought by many to have been the main inspiration behind the Brutalist movement. The Lettristes, who harshly criticized Le Corbusier and functionalist architecture in general, took offense with this realization. Of note: Maurice Lemaitre, who had been excluded from the Internationale Lettriste, participated in the festival.

“Le 4 août dernier devait s’ouvrir à Marseille un Festival de l’Art d’Avant-Garde, monté avec l’appui de divers organismes officiels du tourisme, ainsi que du ministère de la Reconstruction et de l’Urbanisme. Par le décor choisi – l’immeuble du Corbusier appelé « Cité Radieuse » – et par l’éventail des personnalités pressenties, cette manifestation se présentait comme l’apothéose des tendances confusionnistes et rétrogrades qui ont constamment dominé l’expression moderne depuis dix ans. La consécration publique d’un tel rassemblement intervenait, comme il est d’usage, précisément au moment où la faillite de ces tendances en vient à apparaître à des secteurs toujours plus larges de l’opinion intellectuelle ; au moment où un tournant irréversible s’amorce vers une libération bouleversante dans tous les domaines. Quatre jours avant le début du Festival de l’Art d’Avant-Garde, l’Internationale lettriste lançait un ordre de boycott, expliquant que la position prise à l’égard de la réunion de Marseille contribuerait grandement dans l’avenir à marquer le partage de deux camps, entre lesquels tout dialogue sera inutile”. (Potlatch no. 27)

The text of the leafet is reproduced in full in Les Levres Nues no.9 (November 9, 1956) as part of “Histoire Marseillaise”. The article “Echec des manifestations de Marseille” in Potlatch no. 27 (November 2, 1956), provides details on the “happening” (see above) while sharing large excerpts from the leaflet For more details also see letters between Guy Debord and Marcel Marien in Correspondance Vol.0, pp.113-117

BnF p. 85. Gonzalvez p. 103. Oeuvres p. 239. Scheppe & Ohrt 143

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Kill John Bull with art! : what went wrong? by Ralph Rumney [1969]

RUMNEY, Ralph. Kill John Bull with art! : what went wrong?. In Studio International Vol. 178, no. 917 (pp. 216-221). London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1969. ca. 80 p. (i-xvi + 64 p. [numbered 201-264]); ill.; 25 x 31 cm.; ill. wrappers.

Rare piece by Ralph Rumney, published in the British arts magazine Studio International: Journal of Modern Art. Technically, the article is a review of the show Abstract Art in England 1913-1915, the first broad survey of the Vorticist movement. It was held at the d’Offay Couper Gallery in London from November 11 to December 5, 1969. But, as often with Rumney, it is so much more than that.

The British artist and former member of the Situationist International praises the exhibition, “likely to be the only occasion we shall have to see a considerable selection of important work from this period [1913-1915]” (pp. 216). He goes on to express his admiration for Vorticism, an avant-garde movement founded by (Percy) Windham Lewis and whose other members included the likes of Laurence Atkinson, William Roberts, David Bomberg, Edward Wadsworth, and others. Vorticists rejected landscapes and nudes in favor of bold, abstract geometric shapes. Its members – “all except one who were under thirty” (ibid) – were contemporaries of Mondrian, Malevitch, Arp, and others — but these artists were not yet known in England. In their only contemporary show in the UK at the Dore Gallery, Vorticists positioned their movement against Naturalism, Cubism, and Futurism all at once: “By Vorticism we mean (a) Activity as opposed to the tasteful passivity of Picasso. (b) Signifiance as opposed to the dull and anecdotal character to which the Naturalist is condemned. (c) Essential Movement and Activity (such as the energy of a mind) as opposed to the imitative cinematography , the fuss and the hysterics of the Futurists” (ibid). Vorticism is perhaps best remembered through the short-lived magazine Blast.

It’s easy to see what Rumney admires in the Vorticists: just like him (and the Situationists), they were young, bold, and not afraid to launch a frontal assault against artistic currents that gained notoriety in the public sphere.

In the second part of the article, however, Rumney goes to lament the aftermath of the movement. Specifically, he wonders how World War 1 effectively put an end to the great Vorticist experiment: “What happened during the war to change radically the attitudes of a group of rebel artists into near conformity? What was it only in Engand that the mainstream of art was interrupted and diverted” (pp. 221). He then hypothesizes that the eradication of cafes and meeting places leads to an atomization of the artistic sphere: “The art scene is broken into smaller groups who have only occasional and suspicious contacts with each other…in this sense of the the disappearance of an efficient working environment the war was indeed ‘bad for art’, and that the change from rebellion to a sort of conformity which eventually led us to the insipidity of Unit One was the product, akin to brainwashing, of an unfamiliar world on men suffering from acute mental strain” (ibid). Rumney then goes on to cite an article entitled Combat Neurosis Development of Combat Exhaustion, published in a journal of neurology and psychiatry, as evidence. He concludes: “we are left with the tantalising prospect of what might have been if these artists had recovered from their wartime experiences and gone on producing abstract art through the ‘twenties and thirties to compare the dim reality of art in England from 1915 to 1955” (ibid)

It’s hard not to see parallels between the Vorticists and the intense burst of artistic activity that characterized Rumney’s own years in the Situationist International.

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