Invisible insurrection of a million minds

The Situationist International was a loose affiliation of European political radicals, socialists and anarchists, which existed between 1957 and 1972. The two leading Situationists were the philosopher Guy Debord (author of The Society of the Spectacle) and the Danish artist Asger Jorn. Although they were a small, fringe group, the Situationists had a profound affect on the European counterculture and the development of avant-garde art in the 1960s—much more so than the superficially similar Yippies in the USA. The essential aim of Situationism is neatly summed up in the title of the Situationist manifesto published by the Scottish writer Alex Trocchi in 1962, Invisible insurrection of a million minds. Or, in the words of a famous graffito that appeared on Paris walls during the Évènements of May 1968, “Be realistic—demand the impossible!”

Asger Jorn (Danish, 1914-1973)

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Despite the importance of Asger Jorn to the movement, the Situationists were more comfortable with staged happenings than with art that could be hung an a gallery wall and sold. In fact in 1962 the members of the German art collective SPUR were expelled en masse because of their commercial activities. Asger Jorn had resigned the previous year, but this seems to have been a token action, as he rejoined the next day under the pseudonym George Keller.

Arne Haugen Sørensen (Danish, 1932- )

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Antonio Saura (Spanish, 1930-1998)

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Yasse Tabuchi (Tabuchi Yesukazu, Japanese, 1921-2009)

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Asger Jorn was also one of the leaders of the Pop Art group CoBrA (Copenhagen/Brussels/Amsterdam), founded in 1948 in Paris. Other leading CoBrA artists were Karel Appel from the Netherlands and Pierre Alechinsky from Belgium. Officially active only from 1948-1952, the essence of CoBrA’s anarchic experimentation was profoundly influential on the European art of the 1950s and 60s. It can be seen for instance, in the work of the avant-grade artists who formed the Paris-based movement Figuration Narrative, launched with the exhibition Mythologies Quotidiennes at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1964.

Pierre Alechinsky, Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Reinhoud d'Haese (Belgian, 1928-2007)

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

The artists of these two movements, CoBrA and Figuration Narrative, make up the bulk of the contributors to the 6th and last issue of the journal Situationist Times (Les Temps Situationistes), published in 1967 under the editorship of Jacqueline de Jong. This issue consists of 33 original lithographs, printed by Clot, Bramsen et Georges, by artists sympathetic to Situationism. It is notable that none of the Gruppe Spur artists are featured.

Jacqueline de Jong, On fait ce qu'on peux

Hanlor (German?, active 1960s)

Projet pour un relief variable

Lithograph, 1967

Situationist Times 6 was published in an edition of 2500 copies. This is a fairly substantial run, but as the journal was aimed at a readership of anarchists and hippies, I suspect many fewer than that will have survived the travails of time (especially as the lithographs were so lightly attached to the cover, itself a litho by Ulf Trotzig, that the entire publication is liable to fall apart as soon as it is opened).

Roland Topor (French, 1938-1997)

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Contributors associated with CoBrA include Alechinsky and Jorn, plus the Japanese artist Yasse Tabuchi, the Belgian Reinhoud d’Haese, Ulf Trotzig from Sweden, and Jacqueline de Jong herself. Another movement of the European avant-garde represented in this issue of Situationist Times is the Naples-based Gruppo 58, whose members included Guido Biasi and Lucio del Pezzo.

Guido Biasi, Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Lucio del Pezzo (Italian, 1933- )

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Milvia Maglione (Italian, 1943-2010)

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Les Temps Situationistes 6 is a wonderful document of European Pop Art and radical chic, with a psychedelic flavour redolent of the idealistic days of 1967, and a political edge anticipating the social upheavals of 1968. Several of the lithographs could be out-takes from the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine.

Maurice Henry (French, 1907-1984)

Untitled composition

Lithograph, 1967

Hannes Postma (Dutch, 1933- )

Mimicry in No-Mans Land

Lithograph, 1967

I have two further posts to come on this fascinating document of 1960s rebellion: one on the Figuration Narrative artists, and another on the surprising number of Latin American contributors.

Explosions of colour: Walasse Ting

The painter and lithographer Walasse Ting, who died earlier this year, occupies a unique place in the dialogue between American and European art in the 1960s. Ting was an outsider to both cultures. He was born Ding Xiongquan in Shanghai in 1929. After studying briefly at the Shanghai Art Academy, he left China in 1946, living initially in Hong Kong before sailing to France in 1950. In Paris, Walasse Ting came under the influence of the artists who made up the avant-garde group CoBrA, most notably Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, and Asger Jorn. In 1958, Ting moved to America, where his closest associate was the Abstract Expressionist painter Sam Francis. In 1964, Walasse Ting and Sam Francis collaborated on one of the greatest artist’s books of the period, a collection of Ting’s stream-of-consciousness Pop Art poems illustrated with original lithographs by a total of 28 artists, entitled One Cent Life. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of this, but it’s a remarkable work, and particularly notable for the way in which it mixes the slick Pop Art of Americans such as Andy Warhol with the turbulent work of the CoBrA artists. Whereas in the USA Pop Art concerned itself largely with surfaces, as a comment on consumerism, in Europe it concerned itself with structures, as a critique of consumerism. A typical CoBrA work is a violent, semi-abstract, distorted, highly-sophisticated version of a child’s drawing. There are echoes of folk art and tribal art, and a sense of rejection of society’s falsely-imposed sense of order and respectability. Walasse Ting could straddle both these worlds, and it is largely due to his One Cent Life that one can even speak of a single Pop Art movement, embracing both the Americans and the Europeans. 

Pierre Alechinsky. Hommage à Aimé et Marguerite Maeght

Lithograph, 1982

Sam Francis, Noise

Lithograph, 1989

Like his friends Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell, Walasse Ting was very open to European ideas, and it is these three above all who incorporated into American Abstract Expressionism the aesthetics of the gestural semi-abstract European style known as Art Informel (which, in turn, was profoundly influenced by de Kooning and Pollock). From the mid-1970s Wallace Ting’s art became much more figurative and decorative, concentrating on brightly-coloured images of naked women, flowers, birds, horses, and other animals, in a vivid dreamscape of sensual pleasure. These works, painted in acrylics with a Chinese brush on rice paper, have a great deal of charm and vivacity (you can see a selection here), but I prefer his more challenging earlier work. Wallace Ting’s lithographs of the 1960s simply explode onto the page in an orgasmic riot of colour. There’s a rawness and immediacy to his work of this period that really appeals to me.

Walasse Ting, Untitled composition 1

Lithograph, 1963

Walasse Ting, Untitled composition 3

Lithograph, 1963

Walasse Ting, Untitled composition 6

Lithograph, 1963

Walasse Ting, Untitled composition 9

Lithograph, 1963

My first Walasse Ting lithographs are all untitled compositions from the catalogue to his 1963 exhibition at the Galerie Birch in Copenhagen. The lithographs were printed by Permild and Rosengreen.

Wallace Ting, Butterfly gun

Lithograph, 1967

Walasse Ting, Iris bursting

Lithograph, 1967

Walasse Ting, Singing in the rain

Lithograph, 1967

Walasse Ting, Twinkling star

Lithograph, 1967

My next group of lithographs, also printed by Permild and Rosengreen, were made in 1967 for Walasse Ting’s collection of classical Chinese poetry, in his own translations, Chinese Moonlight. The lithographs were bound into the book, so have a central vertical fold and minute thread holes; on the plus side, all four of mine are boldly signed in pencil Ting ’67; the book is additionally inscribed by Ting to John Schiff.

Walasse Ting, Someone make love

Lithograph, 1969

Walasse Ting, Love is many splendored thing

Lithograph, 1969

Walasse Ting, Male order

Lithograph, 1969

Walasse Ting, Chicken chow mein

Lithograph, 1969

Walasse Ting, Rainbow as thread

Lithograph, 1969

Walasse Ting, Dedicated to all prostitutes in the world

Lithograph, 1969

My final Walasse Ting lithographs, printed by Bjørn Rosengreen and published by the Sam Francis Foundation, come from his poetry collection Hot & Sour Soup. My copy of this was inscribed by Ting to the influential art critic of the New York Times, “To John Canaday, Sunshine as best wishes, moonlight as desert, from Walasse Ting 22 October 1969 NYC”.

Walasse Ting, Dragonflies mating

Ink drawing, 1969

And last of all I have a single Walasse Ting ink drawing, boldly drawn on a blank page of Hot & Sour Soup for John Canaday.

Walasse Ting, 1929-2010

Photographed in 1963

In his later years Wallace Ting lived in Amsterdam, making frequent trips to both New York and Tahiti. He ceased painting in 2002 after suffering a severe stroke, and died in New York on May 17, 2010.