Isidore Isou ( French: [izu] ; 29 January 1925 – 28 July 2007), born Isidor Goldstein , was a Romanian-born French poet, dramaturge, novelist, film director, economist, and visual artist. He was the founder of Lettrism , an art and literary movement which owed inspiration to Dada and Surrealism .
68-707: An important figure in the mid-20th Century avant-garde , he is remembered in the cinema world chiefly for his revolutionary 1951 film Traité de Bave et d'Eternité , while his political writings are seen as foreshadowing the May 1968 movements. Isidor Goldstein was born in 1925 to a prominent Jewish family in Botoşani . Despite his wealthy upbringing (his father was a successful entrepreneur and serial restaurateur ), he left school at age 15, reading extensively at home and doing odd jobs. In 1944 he began his literary career as an avant-garde art journalist during World War II, shortly after
136-460: A dialectical approach to such political stances by avant-garde artists and the avant-garde genre of art. Sociologically, as a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists, writers, architects, et al. produce artefacts — works of art, books, buildings — that intellectually and ideologically oppose the conformist value system of mainstream society. In the essay " Avant-Garde and Kitsch " (1939), Clement Greenberg said that
204-470: A schism from Isidore Isou 's Lettrist group. The group went on to join others in forming the Situationist International , taking some key techniques and ideas with it. 'Letterist' ( lettriste ) was the form the group themselves used, as in their 1955 sticker: 'If you believe you have genius, or if you think you have only a brilliant intelligence, write the letterist internationale.' Though
272-781: A book on the Situationists in 1968, Le situationnisme ou la nouvelle internationale . Jean-Louis Brau, Gil Wolman and François Dufrêne founded a Second Letterist International ( D.I.L. , Deuxième Internationale Lettriste ) in 1964. The New Lettrist International was founded more recently and is independent of (though inspired by) the earlier group. The LI published four issues of the Internationale Lettriste bulletin between 1952 and 1954, followed by twenty eight issues of Potlatch from 1954 to 1957. A further two issues of Potlatch appeared in November 1957 and July 1959, now with
340-454: A few glasses were drunk, one could feel certain that we would never do any better." Several others also passed through the LI during its five years of existence, including André-Frank Conord, Jacques Fillon, Abdelhafid Khatib, Henry de Béarn and Gaëtan M. Langlais. In addition, the central members (almost all of them men), would sometimes include their girlfriends' names (usually first names only) among
408-485: A movement, becoming less dependent on the work of Isou himself. Maurice Lemaître , Jean-Louis Brau, Gil J. Wolman and Serge Berna joined the group in 1950, with Guy Debord joining in early 1951, after meeting the Lettrists at the 4th Cannes Film Festival . Debord quickly became an important figure in the so-called left wing of the Lettrists, which were more politically active and overtly "dedicated to Marxist teachings and
476-541: A post-modern time when the modernist ways of thought and action and the production of art have become redundant in a capitalist economy. Parting from the claims of Greenberg in the late 1930s and the insights of Poggioli in the early 1960s, in The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks (1983), the critic Harold Rosenberg said that since the middle of the 1960s the politically progressive avant-garde ceased being adversaries to artistic commercialism and
544-450: A remark which would later inspire the name of the famous Manchester night-club . In "Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography" ( Les Lèvres Nues , no. 6, September 1955), Debord described a colleague's drift through the Harz region of Germany , blindly following a map of London . This is still a favourite methodology amongst psychogeographers . They produced a broad range of proposals:
612-498: A suitcase full of early manuscripts. He initially traveled to Italy, where fellow experimental poet Giuseppe Ungaretti gave him a letter of introduction and recommendation under the pseudonym "Isidore Isou" to French writer Jean Paulhan , which made his entry into the literary world of the newly liberated Paris much easier. Intending a total artistic renewal starting from the most basic elements of writing and visual communication, Isidore Isou, assisted by Gabriel Pommerand , organized
680-525: Is another definition of "Avant-gardism" that distinguishes it from "modernism": Peter Bürger, for example, says avant-gardism rejects the "institution of art" and challenges social and artistic values, and so necessarily involves political, social, and cultural factors. According to the composer and musicologist Larry Sitsky , modernist composers from the early 20th century who do not qualify as avant-gardists include Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky; later modernist composers who do not fall into
748-633: Is facilitated by mechanically produced art-products of mediocre quality displacing art of quality workmanship; thus, the profitability of art-as-commodity determines its artistic value. In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord said that the financial, commercial, and economic co-optation of the avant-garde into a commodity produced by neoliberal capitalism makes doubtful that avant-garde artists will remain culturally and intellectually relevant to their societies for preferring profit to cultural change and political progress. In The Theory-Death of
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#1732858550548816-546: Is not reducible to a kitsch style or reactionary orientation, but can instead be used to refer to artists who engage with the legacy of the avant-garde while maintaining an awareness that doing so is in some sense anachronistic. The critic Charles Altieri argues that avant-garde and arrière-garde are interdependent: "where there is an avant-garde, there must be an arrière-garde ." Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term
884-480: Is the destruction of idols, especially when they present themselves in the name of freedom", claimed that the "leaflet was an attack against a unanimous, servile enthusiasm" and that Chaplin was an "emotional blackmailer, master-singer of misfortune". Isou was an admirer of Chaplin's films and he considered the cinema legend to be undeserving of this attack. The conflict that arose within the Lettrists because of this notorious incident led to Debord and his group becoming
952-615: Is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether. By this definition, some avant-garde composers of the 20th century include Arnold Schoenberg , Richard Strauss (in his earliest work), Charles Ives , Igor Stravinsky , Anton Webern , Edgard Varèse , Alban Berg , George Antheil (in his earliest works only), Henry Cowell (in his earliest works), Harry Partch , John Cage , Iannis Xenakis , Morton Feldman , Karlheinz Stockhausen , Pauline Oliveros , Philip Glass , Meredith Monk , Laurie Anderson , and Diamanda Galás . There
1020-651: The 23 August coup that saw Romania joining the Allies . With the future social psychologist Serge Moscovici , he founded the magazine Da , which was soon after closed down by the authorities. Soon after he became interested in the Zionist cause and collaborated with A.L. Zissu on the Zionist publication "Mântuirea". After several attempts to obtain a French visa earlier during the war, he left Romania clandestinely in August 1945, carrying
1088-612: The Lettrist International . It later merged with the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus , and the London Psychogeographical Association to form the Situationist International , a dissident revolutionary group. In this new form, using means acquired over the course of a decade prior, Lettrist art exerted a profound influence upon the posters, barricades , even designs for clothing in
1156-428: The artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus,
1224-583: The attempted revolution of 1968 . Isou would go on to claim that his 1950 manifesto Youth Uprising: First Manifesto was a catalyst for the events of the 1968. Members of his Lettrist group are still active, among them cineast and writer Roland Sabatier and film director Frédérique Devaux. Many of Isou's works, and those of the other Lettrists, have recently been reprinted in new editions, together with much hitherto unpublished material, most notably Isou's extensive (1,390 pages) La Créatique ou la Novatique (1941-1976) . In July 2007, Kino International released
1292-458: The moral obligation of artists to "serve as [the] avant-garde" of the people, because "the power of the arts is, indeed, the most immediate and fastest way" to realise social, political, and economic reforms. In the realm of culture, the artistic experiments of the avant-garde push the aesthetic boundaries of societal norms , such as the disruptions of modernism in poetry, fiction, and drama, painting, music, and architecture, that occurred in
1360-514: The noise music qualities of sound, meaning and nonsense . Visual conceptual artists Raymond Hains , Jacques Villeglé and Mimmo Rotella also participated in the Ultra-Lettrist movement. In the 1960s Lettrist, Lettrist-influenced works and Isidore Isou gained a certain amount of respect in France. Former co-agitators of Isou, writer Guy Debord and artist Gil J. Wolman broke away in 1952 to form
1428-442: The 1950s, Francois Dufrene created a phonetic poetry movement which breaks the structures of language that he called Ultra-Lettrist . The Ultra-Lettrist movement was an art form developed by Dufrene along with Jean-Louis Brau and Gil J Wolman when they split from Isou's Lettrism. The Ultra-Lettrists explored the vocal possibilities of concrete music , a form of expression based on spontaneity directly recorded to tape, exploiting
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#17328585505481496-438: The 1956 "A User's Guide to Détournement", by Debord and Wolman, from Les Lèvres Nues no. 8. They argued: "In truth, it is necessary to do away with the whole notion of personal property in this area. The emergence of new demands renders earlier 'great works' obsolete. They become obstacles, bad habits. It is not a question of whether we like them or not. We must pass them by." These techniques were subsequently used extensively by
1564-527: The Avant-Garde ( Theorie der Avantgarde , 1974), the literary critic Peter Bürger looks at The Establishment 's embrace of socially critical works of art as capitalist co-optation of the artists and the genre of avant-garde art, because "art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work [of art]". In Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (2000), Benjamin H. D. Buchloh argues for
1632-673: The Avant-Garde (1991), Paul Mann said that the avant-garde are economically integral to the contemporary institutions of the Establishment, specifically as part of the culture industry . Noting the conceptual shift, theoreticians, such as Matei Calinescu , in Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987), and Hans Bertens in The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (1995), said that Western culture entered
1700-531: The DVD collection Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Films 1928-1954 , which included Isou's film Traité de Bave et d'Èternité ( Venom and Eternity ) (1951). In 2021, Andrew Hussey 's book The Strange and Enchanted Life of Isidore Isou was published by Reaktion Books . Avant-garde In the arts and literature , the term avant-garde (from French meaning ' advance guard ' or ' vanguard ' ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art , and
1768-675: The Dérive" (published in the Belgian surrealist magazine Les Lèvres Nues , no. 9, November 1956), and Ivan Chtcheglov 's "Formulary for a New Urbanism" (written October 1953, but not published until June 1958 in the first issue of the journal Internationale Situationniste ). In the latter, Chtcheglov advocated a new city where, as he wrote, "each person will live in his own personal 'cathedral'. There will be rooms that produce dreams better than drugs, and houses where it will be impossible to do anything but love." He declared, "The Hacienda must be built",
1836-666: The Situationists. In addition, such characteristically situationist concepts as the construction of situations and the supersession of art were first developed by the LI. In addition to the central Parisian group, an Algerian section of the LI was established in April 1953 by Hadj Mohamed Dahou, Cheik Ben Dhine and Ait Diafer. Based at Orléansville ('the most letterist city in the world' according to Potlatch no. 12), they were hit hard by an earthquake there on 9 September 1954, although initial reports that most of them had been killed turned out to be unfounded ( Potlatch no. 13). A Swiss section
1904-462: The Summer of 1953, an "illiterate Kabyle " suggested to them the term " Psychogeography ", to designate what they saw as a pattern of emotive force-fields that would permeate a city. The dérive would enable them to map out these forces, and these results could then be used as a basis upon which to build a system of unitary urbanism . Among their most important texts on these matters were Debord's "Theory of
1972-537: The Summer of 1953, their average age was a mere twenty years, rising to twenty nine and a half in 1957. In their blend of intellectualism, protest and hedonism—though differing in other ways, for instance in their total rejection of spirituality—they might be viewed as French counterparts of the American Beat Generation , particularly in the form it took during exactly the same period, i.e. before anyone from either group achieved notoriety, and were still having
2040-449: The abolition of museums and the placing of art in bars, keeping the Metro open all night, opening the roofs of Paris like pavements with escalators to help gain access. Another important notion developed by the LI, was that of détournement , a technique of reutilising plagiarised material (literary, artistic, cinematic, etc.) for a new and usually radical purpose. The defining LI text here was
2108-562: The address of a bar, Tonneau d'Or, and indeed most of their time was spent either drinking in a number of bars in Saint-Germain-des-Prés , principally at Chez Moineau on the Rue du Four, or else simply walking the streets. There was a serious purpose behind their ambulation. They developed the dérive , or drift, where they would wander like clouds through the urban environment for hours or sometimes even days on end. During their wanderings in
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2176-485: The administrators of the festival until they agreed to grant him a small, peripheral exhibition. The film consisted of "four and a half hours [...] of 'discordant' images, enhanced with scratches, shaky footage running upside down or in reverse, blank frames, stock shots and a soundtrack consisting of monologues and onomatopoeic poetry". In addition, the celluloid on which the film was recorded was attacked with destructive techniques such as scratches and bleaching. In one of
2244-694: The adventures that would inform their later works and ideas. The LI was the first breakaway faction from Isidore Isou 's Letterists . (They would be followed in turn by the Ultra-Letterists ). The schism developed when the 'left-wing' of the Letterist group disrupted a Charlie Chaplin press conference for Limelight at the Hôtel Ritz Paris in October 1952. They distributed a polemic entitled "No More Flat Feet", which concluded: "The footlights have melted
2312-459: The army. In 19th-century French politics, the term avant-garde (vanguard) identified Left-wing political reformists who agitated for radical political change in French society. In the mid-19th century, as a cultural term, avant-garde identified a genre of art that advocated art-as-politics, art as an aesthetic and political means for realising social change in a society. Since the 20th century,
2380-477: The art term avant-garde identifies a stratum of the Intelligentsia that comprises novelists and writers, artists and architects et al. whose creative perspectives, ideas, and experimental artworks challenge the cultural values of contemporary bourgeois society . In the U.S. of the 1960s, the post–WWII changes to American culture and society allowed avant-garde artists to produce works of art that addressed
2448-458: The artistic vanguard oppose high culture and reject the artifice of mass culture , because the avant-garde functionally oppose the dumbing down of society — be it with low culture or with high culture . That in a capitalist society each medium of mass communication is a factory producing artworks, and is not a legitimate artistic medium; therefore, the products of mass culture are kitsch , simulations and simulacra of Art. Walter Benjamin in
2516-573: The artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times. As a stratum of the intelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists promote progressive and radical politics and advocate for societal reform with and through works of art. In the essay "The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist" (1825), Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues 's political usage of vanguard identified
2584-453: The attention of Gaston Gallimard , who then accepted his memoire "L'Agrégation d'un Nom et d'un Messie" for publication. In 1949, the young Isou published the novel Isou ou la mécanique des femmes ( Isou, or the Mechanics of Women) , inspired by his obsessions with the 16-year-old muse and later conceptual artist Rhea Sue Sanders. This book was banned by the authorities on 9 May 1950 and Isou
2652-528: The avant-garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are Fluxus , Happenings , and Neo-Dada . Brutalist architecture was greatly influenced by an avant-garde movement. Letterist International The Letterist International ( LI ) was a Paris -based collective of radical artists and cultural theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman rejoined by Jean-Louis Brau and Serge Berna as
2720-416: The category of avant-gardists include Elliott Carter , Milton Babbitt , György Ligeti , Witold Lutosławski , and Luciano Berio , since "their modernism was not conceived for the purpose of goading an audience." The 1960s saw a wave of free and avant-garde music in jazz genre, embodied by artists such as Ornette Coleman , Sun Ra , Albert Ayler , Archie Shepp , John Coltrane and Miles Davis . In
2788-455: The critique of capitalist societies". In October 1952, while Charlie Chaplin was on an extensive publicity tour for his film Limelight , the Lettrist left wing, led by Debord, disrupted a press conference at the Hôtel Ritz Paris and distributed a pamphlet called "Finis les pieds plats" ("No More Flat Feet!") through which they espoused their belief that "the most urgent expression of freedom
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2856-486: The entire festival" and handed Isou a hastily concocted "Prix de spectateurs d'avant-garde". Including a reflexive discourse on the making of a new cinema, Isou's film became a virtual Lettriste manifesto. Following the scandal after the film's showing at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival, it was later imported into the United States, where it influenced avant-garde film makers such as Stan Brakhage , who corresponded with Isou directly afterward and let it change his approach to
2924-506: The essay " The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction " (1939) and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) said that the artifice of mass culture voids the artistic value (the aura ) of a work of art. That the capitalist culture industry (publishing and music, radio and cinema, etc.) continually produces artificial culture for mass consumption, which
2992-468: The experimental film Traité de bave et d'éternité ( Treatise on Venom And Eternity ), whose premiere took place at the Cannes Film Festival . Although the film was not officially entered in the festival, it was widely publicized in the press and its screening constituted one of the festival's fringe events. While threatening to form his own jury to judge the film, Isou went door to door, harassing
3060-520: The film's voiceovers, Isou states his opinion on the medium: "I believe firstly that the cinema is too rich. It is obese. It has reached its limits, its maximum. With the first movement of widening which it will outline, the cinema will burst! Under the blow of a congestion, this greased pig will tear into a thousand pieces. I announce the destruction of the cinema, the first apocalyptic sign of disjunction, of rupture, of this corpulent and bloated organization which calls itself film." Following its screening,
3128-577: The first Lettriste manifestation in Paris, on 8 January 1946. During the premiere of dadaist and fellow Romanian Tristan Tzara 's play La Fuit at the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier , Isou shouted "Dada is dead! Lettrism has taken its place!" Through this and other similar stunts – as well as with the help of Jean Paulhan and Raymond Queneau , who placed his work in La Nouvelle Revue in April, 1947 – he came to
3196-464: The first splinter group that separated from the Lettrists, forming the Letterist International . Five years later, they would join others to form the Situationist International , an artistic and political organization that would go on to become more famous and influential than any of its predecessors by playing a major role in the events of May 1968 . In 1951, Isou released his first movie,
3264-504: The formation of the LI (but directly involving Serge Berna, and inspiring the others), one might also mention: An extract from a letter of Gil Wolman to Jean-Louis Brau, of 20 July 1953, gives a clear impression of what the group and their associates tended to get up to from day to day: I am back! ... Where were things when you left? Joël [Berlé] has been out for a long time, on probation. Jean-Michel [Mension] and Fred [Auguste Hommel] are now free, too (for stealing from parked cars—and under
3332-503: The importance of Chaplin's work in its own time , but we know that today novelty lies elsewhere, and 'truths which no longer entertain become lies' (Isou)." As they proceeded to explain, "the most urgent exercise of liberty is the destruction of idols". Although the LI had in fact already been covertly formed by Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman in June 1952, even before the Chaplin intervention and
3400-534: The influence, naturally). Little Eliane [Papaï] got out of police custody last week after a dramatic arrest in a maid's room somewhere in Vincennes with Joël and Jean-Michel; they were drunk, needless to say, and refused to open up to the police, who left and came back with reinforcements. In the confusion they lost the seal of the Letterist International. Linda [Fried] not sentenced yet. Sarah [Abouaf] still in
3468-472: The late 19th and in the early 20th centuries. In art history the socio-cultural functions of avant-garde art trace from Dada (1915–1920s) through the Situationist International (1957–1972) to the postmodernism of the American Language poets (1960s–1970s). The French military term avant-garde (advanced guard) identified a reconnaissance unit who scouted the terrain ahead of the main force of
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#17328585505483536-422: The make-up of the supposedly brilliant mime. All we can see now is a lugubrious and mercenary old man. Go home Mister Chaplin." Isou was keen to distance himself from his younger acolytes' tract. His own attitude was that Chaplin deserved respect as one of the great creators of the cinematic art. The breakaway group felt that he was no longer relevant, and they turned Isou's own words back against him: "We appreciated
3604-646: The matters of the day, usually in political and sociologic opposition to the cultural conformity inherent to popular culture and to consumerism as a way of life and as a worldview . In The Theory of the Avant-Garde ( Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia , 1962), the academic Renato Poggioli provides an early analysis of the avant-garde as art and as artistic movement. Surveying the historical and social, psychological and philosophical aspects of artistic vanguardism, Poggioli's examples of avant-garde art, poetry, and music, show that avant-garde artists share some values and ideals as contemporary bohemians . In Theory of
3672-535: The mediocrity of mass culture , which political disconnection transformed being an artist into "a profession, one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing [the profession of being an artist]." Avant-garde is frequently defined in contrast to arrière-garde , which in its original military sense refers to a rearguard force that protects the advance-guard. The term was less frequently used than "avant-garde" in 20th-century art criticism. The art historians Natalie Adamson and Toby Norris argue that arrière-garde
3740-537: The medium and to narrative entirely. In the early 1950s, one segment of Orson Welles ' film journal, which was entitled Le Letrrisme est la Poesie en Vogue , included an interview with Isou and Maurice Lemaître . In the 1980s, Isidore Isou was accorded French citizenship. His final public appearance was at the University of Paris on 21 October 2000, aged 75. He is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. In
3808-450: The neighbourhood is spending the night in the Catacombs —another of Joël's bright ideas. I have a good many projects which are liable to remain just that—projects. ... Decades later, Debord would nostalgically (though also somewhat ambiguously) sum up the spirit of the times in his Panegyric (1989): "Between the rue du Four and the rue de Buci, where our youth so completely went astray as
3876-406: The public split from Isou, it was not formally established until 7 December 1952. The four signatories of the Chaplin tract (Debord and Wolman, together with Jean-Louis Brau and Serge Berna ) agreed on a constitution for the group during a visit to Aubervilliers (where Brau's father lived). Anyone collaborating with 'Isouian activities', they declared, would be automatically excluded, even if this
3944-479: The reformatory—but her sister, sixteen and a half, has taken her place. There have been other arrests, for narcotics, for who knows what else. It's getting very tiresome. There is G[uy]-E[rnest Debord], who has just spent ten days in a nursing home where his parents sent him following a failed attempt to gas himself. He's back in the neighbourhood now. Serge [Berna?] is due out on 12 May. The day before yesterday I threw up royally outside Moineau's. The latest diversion in
4012-611: The revised subtitle "Information bulletin of the Situationist International". Each issue comprised between one and four mimeographed sheets. Les Lèvres Nues , though not an LI publication, published some of their most important articles. All of these texts, together with a few other miscellaneous tracts, are reprinted in Documents Relatifs A La Fondation De L'Internationale Situationniste (Editions Allia, 1985). Debord's 1959 collaboration with Asger Jorn, Mémoires ,
4080-593: The rock music of the 1970s, the "art" descriptor was generally understood to mean "aggressively avant-garde" or "pretentiously progressive". Post-punk artists from the late 1970s rejected traditional rock sensibilities in favor of an avant-garde aesthetic. Whereas the avant-garde has a significant history in 20th-century music, it is more pronounced in theatre and performance art, and often in conjunction with music and sound design innovations, as well as developments in visual media design. There are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to
4148-399: The signatories to their texts. Worthy of special mention among these girlfriends is Eliane Papaï (1935–?). An alumna of the same Auteuil orphanage the letterists had attempted to liberate, she was first the girlfriend of Debord, then the wife of Mension, and finally the wife of Brau. Debord recalled her fondly in many of his later films and writings, and she herself (as Eliane Brau ) produced
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#17328585505484216-453: The spelling 'Lettrist' is also common in English, authors and translators such as Donald Nicholson-Smith , Simon Ford, Sadie Plant and Andrew Hussey use the 'Letterist International' spelling. The group was a motley assortment of novelists, sound poets , painters, film-makers, revolutionaries, bohemians, alcoholics, petty criminals, lunatics, under-age girls and self-proclaimed failures. In
4284-400: The work was deemed revolting by many critics present at the premiere. The film was booed and hissed from the start, but after the first section was completed and the screen went completely blank with the audio still going, the audience was furious and the screening had to be stopped. It was, nonetheless, celebrated by Cannes jury member Jean Cocteau , who called it "the most beautiful scandal of
4352-510: Was also established in late 1954, but were almost immediately excluded ( Potlatch no. 15). In September 1956, Wolman represented the LI at the World Congress of Artists in Alba , Italy . This conference had been organised by Asger Jorn and Pinot-Gallizio of the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (IMIB), and important links between the two groups were consolidated. Wolman himself
4420-408: Was being done in defence of the LI. 'It is in the transcendence of arts that everything has yet to be done.' The official base of the group was at 32, Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviéve, Paris , subsequently to become the official base of the Situationist International (but invariably referred to by both groups as "Rue de la Montagne-Geneviéve", signalling their disdain for religion). This was in fact
4488-464: Was briefly imprisoned and sentenced to prison for eight months (his sentence was suspended); a fine of 2000 francs was imposed along with the destruction of all copies of a book which 1950s' French jurisprudence considered completely obscene. The same year, he also published the first of his works on political theory: Traité d'économie nucléaire: Le soulèvement de la jeunesse ( Treatise of Nuclear Economics: Youth Uprising ). Lettrism continued to grow as
4556-412: Was directly concerned with the early days of the LI. The new Gallimard edition of his Oeuvres gathers many LI texts, including some never before published. Michèle Bernstein's novels, Tous les chevaux du roi (1960) and La Nuit (1961), present fictionalised accounts of her life with Debord during this period. Patrick Straram's Les bouteilles se couchent was a semi-fictionalised contemporary account of
4624-527: Was excluded from the LI shortly afterwards, but the remaining members, Debord and Michèle Bernstein , subsequently visited Cosio d'Arroscia where, on 28 July 1957, the LI officially fused with the IMIB and the London Psychogeographical Association to form the Situationist International. Besides the Charlie Chaplin protest, some of the more noteworthy/startling activities of the LI include: Although pre-dating
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