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Internationale Situationniste #2 (December 1958)

Translated by Reuben Keehan

IN 1958, something of a conspiracy launched a new avant-garde movement

that had the peculiar trait of having been defunct for seven years. Though
never presented in clear terms, allusions are made to the continuing
existence of none other than Cobra. In some cases an origin is fixed,
implying its permanence. Thus, on 18 September, France-Observateur
wrote on the painter Corneille: "At this time (1950), he participated in the
founding of the artistic group Reflex, which was slowly integrated into the
avant-garde movement Cobra." In other cases, given the fact that Cobra is
hardly ever mentioned, the illusion is created that its constitution is more
recent, as in Le Monde of 31 October: "With his combination of abstract
lyricism and African aesthetic influences, Holland's Rooskens is part of the
avant-garde movements Reflex and Cobra..."
What is the reality? Between 1948 and 1951, there was an Experimental
Artists International more often known as the Cobra movement, after the
name of its journal (its title, short for Copenhagen - Brussels - Amsterdam,
expressed its almost exclusively Northern European composition). The
journal Reflex, which was the organ of the Dutch Experimental Group
before international contact and the publication of Cobra, ran to only two
numbers in 1948. The groups that made up the Cobra movement were
united in the proclamation of experimental cultural research. But this
positive aspect was paralyzed by an ideological confusion maintained by
the strong participation of neo-surrealists. The only effective experiment
that Cobra could carry out was that of a new style of painting. In 1951, the
Experimental Artists International put an end to its own existence. The
representatives of its advanced tendency pursued their research in different
forms. On the other hand, a number of artists abandoned their
preoccupation with experimental activity, putting their talent to use in
making this particular pictorial style, which was the sole tangible result of
the Cobra endeavor, and highly fashionable (for example [Karel] Appel in
the UNESCO building).
It is the commercial success of old members of the Cobra movement that
has recently led to other more mediocre artists, who were of very little
importance to Cobra and its afterlife, to plot to various ends the
mystification of an uninterrupted, eternally young Cobra movement,
classically experimental in the style of 1948, where their wretched
commodities can be marketed under the same prestigious label as those of

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Corneille and Appel. Cobra's old editor-in-chief [Christian] Dotremont is

responsible for this charade, by trying to please everyone. Indeed, the
artists linked to this scheme, whether or not they participated in the brief
experiment of 1948-1951, attach a supposed "theoretical" value to their
works by declaring themselves an organized movement. And the
individuals who control the judgment and sale of the decomposed
repetitions of modern art have a vested interest in making people believe
the objects in question are expressions of a truly innovative movement.
They therefore struggle against real changes, whose foreseeable extent
must entail their practical disappearance from the posts they hold, and the
ideological failure of their entire life (the taste, the practical consideration,
and the dominant cultural elite of ebbing movements, whose strongest
example remains that of the surrealists, but is discretely beginning to
manifest itself even in regard to some lettrist recordings, in spite of the near
complete opposition that they met at the time of lettrism and the difficulty of
exploiting that movement).
It is most likely, however, that no matter how favorable conditions may be,
the reactionary effort now being deployed under the Cobra flag will not last.
At the beginning of 1958, Neo-Cobra was assured of a show at the
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, once upon a time the site of a scandalous
exhibition by the movement, and whose extremely overrated reputation in
Paris should be attributed to a few hack journalist friends of the warmed up
Cobra as much as the old cultural world of museums. Neo-Cobra intended
to organize a highly eclectic major exhibition designed to travel to other
capitals, and above all to make an impression on the American market. The
situationists, who found themselves implicated in this little affair because
two of them had played important roles in Cobra, made it known that they
would only accept this exhibition in a rigorously historical form, whose
appraisal would be undertaken by a delegate chosen by them, and that
they would be limited to opposing as unimportant any sort of attempt to
present Cobra as contemporary research. In the face of our opposition the
Stedelijk Museum withdrew its agreement. It goes without saying that this is
behind the present campaign to resurrect Cobra. And it is doubtful that this
campaign can expect any worthwhile success if its promoters cannot find
considerable enough support to allow the them to show the assembled bits
and pieces of their pseudo-movement.
The despicable character of this attempt at a new beginning is familiar to
anyone who knows the program adopted by Cobra ten years ago, as is
demonstrated by the Manifesto of the Dutch Experimental Group, written by
Constant and published in Reflex #1:
The historical influence of the upper classes has pushed art
into more and more of a position of dependence, accessible
only to exceptionally gifted spirits, capable only of pulling off a
little formalist freedom.
An individualist culture is therefore constituted and is

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condemned alongside the society that produced it, its

conventions no longer offering any possibility of imagination
or desire, even preventing vital human expression.
At this stage, a popular art cannot correspond to the
conceptions of the people, as the people do not participate in
artistic creation but in historically imposed formalisms. What
characterizes popular art is a vital, direct and collective
expression...
A new freedom will come that allows humans to satisfy their
creative desires. With this development the professional artist
will lose his privileged position: this explains the current
resistance in the arts.
In the transitional period creative art found itself in permanent
conflict with existing culture, while at the same time
announcing a new culture. With this double aspect, whose
psychological effect would have a growing importance, art
played a revolutionary role in society. The bourgeois spirit still
dominates all of life, even to the point of bringing a
prefabricated popular art to the masses.
The cultural void has never been more obvious than in the
post-war era...
Any prolonging of this culture appears impossible, and
therefore the task of artists cannot be constructive in the
framework of such a culture. It is necessary first of all to rid
ourselves of old cultural shreds which instead of permitting us
an artistic expression prevent us from finding one. The
problematic phase in the history of modern art is over, and it is
about to be succeeded by an experimental phase. This is to
say that the experience of a period of unlimited freedom must
allow us to find the laws of a new creativity.
Naturally, those who marched in line with such a program can today be
found among the ranks of the Situationist International.
Related Correspondence

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