ARTIFICIAL HELLS

artificial hells
exhibitions in Paris by Asger Jorn (Modifications [Peinture détournée] at
Galerie Rive Gauche) and Giuseppe Pinot- Gallizio (Cavern of Anti- Matter
at the Galerie René Drouin), both in 1959. Both shows sought to complicate
traditional ideas of single authorship: Jorn by painting over existing
paintings purchased in flea markets, and Pinot- Gallizio by producing
abstract painting on rolls to be purchased by the metre, which he referred
to as ‘industrial paintings’. In the same year, the experimental architect
Constant Nieuwenhuys exhibited his model precinct maquettes at the
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. In 1960, however, the balance between
artistic and literary interests began to shift: Pinot- Gallizio was excommunicated
from the SI, and Constant resigned at the same time; both exits
were the result of disagreements and denunciations stemming from contacts
made in the art world. A year later Asger Jorn resigned, and after 1962 – in
part triggered by Jorn’s brother Jørgen Nash setting up a rival ‘Second
Situationist International’, and in part by Debord’s increased politicisation
following his dialogue with the Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre – the
group became increasingly opposed to art as an activity separated from
revolutionary praxis. 23 Membership tightened to the extent that artists were
excluded for activities and attitudes that did not synchronise with Debord’s
demand that art be radical not solely in its subject matter, but also its form. 24
Although some critics have disputed this division of the movement into an
early aesthetic position that evolved into a late political vanguardism, it is
conspicuous that by 1961, most of the artists had left the organisation,
either voluntarily or by expulsion. 25 Further evidence of this rupture is the
fact that art was no longer included on the programme of the SI’s fifth
conference in summer 1961.
Peter Wollen was one of the first to advocate this theory of an artistic
split in the SI in an early essay on their work: ‘The denial by Debord and
his supporters of any separation between artistic and political activity . . .
led in effect not to a new unity within Situationist practice but to a total
elimination of art except in propagandist and agitational forms . . . Theory
displaced art as the vanguard activity.’ 26 Critics still invested in the SI,
such as T. J. Clark and Donald Nicholson- Smith (both of whom were
excommunicated in 1967), argue otherwise: for them, it is precisely the
continual intersection of art and politics that makes the SI so distinctive. 27
However, they do not offer any concrete examples of how that intersection
was made manifest – in situations, images or text. (It is in fact Wollen
who provides the most compelling evidence of this conjunction when he
describes Debord’s writing as a combination of Western Marxism and
Bretonian Surrealism, and pays equal attention to the poetic aspect of the
group’s writing and their political ambitions.) Tom McDonough, by
contrast, emphasises that the theory of a rupture circa 1962 is too simplistic:
the SI were not against art and culture, he argues, but against the
production of commodifiable objects. He makes the point that collections
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