Most Important Artworks

There are several important artworks, that were created by members of the Situationists Interanational, among them is Guy Debord himself.





Psychogeographique de Paris.
Speech on the Passions of Love

Guy Debord, 1957

This work depicts a city map of Paris, cut into various pieces and rearranged with red broken lines added to create random paths.
The work embodies Debord's concept of creating new relations to urban environments. The conventional map, showing planned pathways and routes and place names, is détourned to depict a psychological geography of Paris. The randomness of placement conveys that this 'map' and its structures could be transformed and constantly adapted by the individual's playful and creative behavior. One wanders through this city in the process of dérive between ambient units that have emotional resonance, experiencing the city in a very different way.











The Change

Ralph Rumney, 1957

Rumney's abstract painting creates a vibrant field of mostly primary colors, in which a random and broken grid of black lines emerges. The shapes and grid convey a quasi-geometric effect, and as these traditional forms blur and merge, they form a psychogeographic map of some undefined location or state of mind.
Oil paint, household paint and metal leaf on hardboard.











Le canard inquiétant
(The Disquieting Duckling)

Asger Jorn, 1959

A gigantic duckling, its body and head a swirl of neon colors, impasto paint and thick vigorous lines, towers above a cottage on the bank of a quiet pond. The title is apropos, as the almost Godzilla-like duckling disturbs the traditional pastoral scene with orange paint dripping from its beak, the landscape disappearing in a sickly green on the right, and yet the creature is also exuberant as if spontaneously painted by a child. Alluding to Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, "The Ugly Duckling," about a swan raised by a family of ducks, the work reflected Jorn's sympathy with those displaced by the dominant social system, echoing Michèle Bernstein, a leading critic and cofounder of the movement, who declared, "monsters of all lands unite!".
Oil on canvas.











New Babylon/Sevilla TRIANA-GROEP

Constant Nieuwenhuys, 1965

In this work, Constant has superimposed the designs for his project of an anti-capitalist city, New Babylon, over a commercially available ink and watercolor map of Seville, Spain. The irregular sized rectangles, which outline structures and pathways in black and red ink, create a kind of wandering grid over the map, their random divergences evoking the path of one roaming the city. The transparency of the superimposed forms reflects the artist's concept for the city - "New Babylon is a gigantic labyrinthine complex raised above the earth on tall pillars. All forms of transport circulate below it. The various tiers of the city can be reached via lifts and stairs and are almost entirely roofed-in and climate-controlled. With their many levels and terraces, they form a vast multi-layered space that constantly offers new surprises as a result of its functional flexibility, climatic variability and light and sound effects. New Babylonians can wander around like modern nomads, in search of new experiences and unknown sensations"
Ink and Paper.