LE SURRÉALISME MIS EN DÉBAT – PERSPECTIVES LETTRISTES ET SITUATIONNISTES
SURREALISM UNDER SCRUTINY – LETTERIST AND SITUATIONIST PERSPECTIVES

Summary/Abstract: Surrealism under Scrutiny – Letterist and Situationist Perspectives. The aim of the present article is to outline the major points of the severe criticism launched by the Letterist International and subsequently by the Situationist International against the attempts to revive the surrealist movement in the post-war years. The situationists criticised the surrealists' overestimation of the unconscious, the poverty of their imagery, the encouragement of passivity, the submission to chance alone and, on a general scale, the reification of the artistic object, the atomisation of the arts, the insufficiency of the aesthetic perspective and the communicative failure. In return, the situationists proposed: the replacement of the artistic object with consciously and constructively designed poetic situations, the integration of the arts into the context of the urban life, a changed view on the means of entertainment and of organising the free time and the distortion of received ideas.

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