Stylogenyin the style of Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)

Counterculture · 1968 · Western Europe

Atelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)

Also known as Affiches de Mai 68, Atelier populaire des Beaux-Arts, Atelier populaire de l'ex-École des Beaux-Arts, May '68 posters

The posters of the Atelier populaire, set up when students, teachers and artists occupied the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris on 14 May 1968, until police cleared the school on 27 June. Designs were voted on at evening assemblies, left unsigned and pulled on improvised silkscreens: one flat ink on cheap or donated paper, a single brushed silhouette (a riot policeman, de Gaulle, a factory) and a short punning slogan in rough capitals, pasted up across Paris overnight.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

Use it with care

The posters were made anonymously and given away, and some equate the police or de Gaulle with the Nazis (the SS on a riot policeman's shield, popularly 'CRS SS'; Hitler holding a de Gaulle mask); do not attribute them to individual designers, sell pastiches as May '68 originals, or aim those Nazi comparisons at real people today without that history in view. 'Nous sommes tous des Juifs allemands' answered antisemitic attacks on Cohn-Bendit's origins (the far-right press smeared him as a Marxist German Jew, and Georges Marchais wrote in L'Humanité of 'the German anarchist'); do not reuse it, or the 'indésirables' poster, as a generic 'we are all X' template without that history.

01

How it works

  • Print one flat ink per poster on whatever paper is to hand, such as white stock, newsprint cut from donated rotary rolls or brown wrapping paper, with no halftone or gradient; in May, before a small photo lab arrived in June, no photograph either.
  • Keep the drawing simple enough to paint gum arabic around it on the screen, blocking the silk everywhere else (Rougemont's rule: 'un dessin simple, facilement contournable avec de la gomme arabique pour boucher la soie'): one stark silhouette or sign, such as a riot policeman's shield, de Gaulle's profile, a factory chimney ending in a fist or a medicine bottle, standing alone on bare paper.
  • Write a short slogan, often only a few words, in rough brushed letters, take it from the walls and the marches, and lock it to the image as a pun or a reversal ('La chienlit c'est lui', 'Presse ne pas avaler', the SS on a riot policeman's shield).
  • Put every design to the evening general assembly, judge it on political clarity rather than looks, and print only what the vote approves; a slogan brought in by striking workers is always accepted.
  • Leave every sheet unsigned, marked at most with the workshop's stamp, and hand it straight to the student committees and strikers who paste it up the same night.

Paris, 14 May to 27 June 1968: the occupied École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where students, teachers and painters of the Salon de la Jeune Peinture took over the lithography studio and Guy de Rougemont set up the first silkscreen the next day; further ateliers populaires followed in Paris (the Arts Décoratifs, the Faculty of Medicine), at striking factories such as Renault-Flins and Cléon, and in other cities such as Montpellier, and after the eviction the Beaux-Arts painters went on founding ateliers populaires for two or three years, some provincial ones running for years

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Straight photography, Halftone & Ben-Day dots, Gradients, Full polychrome, Abundant decoration, Eclectic mixing, Collage & layering, Luxurious & glamorous

Palette

  • #f2eee3
  • #141414
  • #cf2027
  • #23408e
  • #b4875a

Typefaces

  • Brushed letters, left open on the silk while gum arabic is painted around them to block the screen, so the edges stay ragged and uneven

    no typesetting; no photographic stencil until a small photo lab arrived in June

  • Wall-slogan handwriting of May '68, lifted from graffiti and marches

    'La chienlit c'est lui', 'Usine-Université-Union'

  • Heavy block capitals drawn for the lithographic hand press, as in the three-letter UUU

Known for

  • 'Usine-Université-Union', three large letters UUU

    the first poster, lithographed on the Beaux-Arts hand press in about 30 copies in mid-May 1968 and torn from the printers' hands to be pasted on the walls (Beaux-Arts de Paris collection; Gérard Fromanger's account)

  • 'SS' (popularly 'CRS SS')

    a riot policeman in helmet and goggles raises a truncheon behind a shield lettered SS, screenprinted in black/dark blue and printed on 18 May 1968 (V&A, E.225-1985)

  • 'La chienlit c'est lui' and 'La chienlit c'est encore lui!'

    de Gaulle's silhouette with raised arms, turning his own word for the unrest back on him (V&A, E.399-2021; Beaux-Arts de Paris)

  • 'Sois jeune et tais-toi'

    a shadowy, exaggerated de Gaulle profile covers a young man's mouth; a two-colour poster, 111.4 × 64.5 cm (House of European History, Brussels, C.2018.002.001)

  • 'La Presse Ment' (white on black screenprint, V&A, E.1784-2004) and 'Presse ne pas avaler', a medicine bottle labelled with the slogan, dated 10 June 1968 (V&A, E.672-2004; Beaux-Arts de Paris)

  • 'La Police vous parle tous les soirs à 20h.'

    a helmeted policeman speaking into an ORTF microphone during the broadcasting strike, lithograph (V&A, E.671-2004)

  • 'Renault Flins'

    a masked skull clenching a spanner, made on 9 June 1968 after the riot police occupied the Flins car factory (V&A, E.669-2004)

  • 'Travailleurs Unis'

    a white figure and a black figure, French and immigrant workers, arm in arm while a small stout man in a hat tries to part them (V&A, E.794-2004)

03

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

Nothing earlier is recorded: in the atlas it is a starting point.

This styleAtelier Populaire (May '68 Screenprint Poster)1968 · Western Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Sources

  1. Victoria and Albert Museum, 'La Presse Ment', Atelier Populaire, screenprint, ca. May 1968, E.1784-2004, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O120966/ (an estimated 120,000 posters from 300 designs; most printed by cheap, home-made silkscreen; slogans and designs selected by assemblies and committees; white on black; estimates vary: Fromanger gives about 800 posters and wall newspapers)
  2. Victoria and Albert Museum, 'Travailleurs Unis', E.794-2004, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102356/ (most silkscreened, some lithographs); 'Presse ne pas avaler', 10 June 1968, E.672-2004, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102003/; 'Une jeunesse que l'avenir inquiète trop souvent...', E.19-1999, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O25674/ (stamped 'Atelier Populaire')
  3. Victoria and Albert Museum, 'SS', screenprint printed on 18 May 1968, E.225-1985, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O75984/; 'La Chienlit c'est encore lui!', E.399-2021, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1664192/; 'La Police vous parle tous les soirs à 20h.', lithograph, E.671-2004, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102001/; 'Renault Flins', 9 June 1968, E.669-2004, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102069/; 'Etudiants, Solidaires, Travailleurs', red on brown wrapping paper, possibly by the Atelier Populaire, E.236-1985, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1023206/; 'Cross of Lorraine', lithograph from the poster workshop of the Faculty of Medicine, marked 'ATELIER POPULAIRE Numéro 3', E.670-2004, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O102012/; 'Hitler / de Gaulle', screenprint, ca. May 1968, E.1338-2004, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O120947/
  4. House of European History, Brussels, 'Sois Jeune et Tais Toi', Atelier Populaire, 1968, C.2018.002.001, https://online-collection.historia.europa.eu/en/collection/item/9212/ (two-colour poster, 111.4 × 64.5 cm; printed on newspaper rolls, almost never signed; later influence on Jamie Reid's punk graphics)
  5. Laurent Gervereau, 'La sérigraphie à l'école des Beaux-Arts. Entretien avec Rougemont', Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps 11–13 (1988), pp. 180–183, doi:10.3406/mat.1988.403851, https://www.persee.fr/doc/mat_0769-3206_1988_num_11_1_403851 (arrived 14 May; first screen installed the next day; no exposure or photographic means at first; rules: a simple drawing, easy to go round with gum arabic to block the silk, no halftone, flat areas, one colour per poster; a small photo lab with exposure installed in June; successful posters reprinted in offset by friendly printers who ran for the workshop while on strike, with Merri Jolivet among the go-betweens; paper from roll ends)
  6. Laurent Gervereau, 'L'atelier populaire de l'ex-École des Beaux-Arts. Entretien avec Gérard Fromanger', Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps 11–13 (1988), pp. 184–191, reprinted in CIRA Lausanne, Art & anarchie: L'Atelier populaire des Beaux-Arts en mai 68 (2018), https://www.cira.ch/media/gtl/10_Broch_GTL_affiches_WEB.pdf (general assembly of 15 May; the UUU lithograph in 30 copies; Rougemont brought silkscreen; one assembly a day around 19:00 voting on the day's designs; unsigned posters; 2,000–3,000 posters a day; paper from donated rotary rolls; slogans taken from the walls; a slogan from striking workers always accepted (p. 8); about 800 posters and wall newspapers, print runs of at least 2,000 on average (p. 10); workshops at Flins and Cléon, provincial ones running for years (p. 10); hours of discussion over the Cohn-Bendit poster, a first printing 'Nous sommes tous des Juifs et des Allemands', then 2,000 copies of 'Nous sommes tous indésirables', since the word 'juif' still sounded racist to many (p. 15); the Dobson book of the posters; ateliers populaires founded 'un petit peu partout' for two or three years afterwards (p. 16); page numbers of the CIRA reprint)
  7. Sebastian Voigt, '"Nous sommes tous des juifs allemands." Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Pierre Goldman und der Pariser Mai 1968', Medaon 7 (2010), https://www.medaon.de/pdf/A_Voigt-7-2010.pdf (on 22 May 1968 the Interior Minister barred Cohn-Bendit from re-entering France; 4,000 students marched in solidarity chanting 'Nous sommes tous des juifs allemands' and 'Nous sommes tous indésirables'; the far-right press smeared him as a Marxist German Jew, and Georges Marchais wrote in L'Humanité of 'the German anarchist')
  8. Queens College Special Collections and Archives, 'nous sommes tous "indesirables" / flins pas flics', https://qcarchives.libraryhost.com/archival_objects/nous_sommes_tous_indesirables-_-flins_pas_flics (Atelier Populaire poster with an image of Daniel Cohn-Bendit above the slogan)
  9. Beaux-Arts de Paris, press kit for 'Images en lutte. La culture visuelle de l'extrême gauche en France (1968–1974)', curated by Philippe Artières and Éric de Chassey, 21 February – 20 May 2018, https://beauxartsparis.fr/sites/default/files/inline-files/2018.02.21_DP_Images_lutte_0.pdf (occupation from 14 May; posters made collectively and anonymously; political rather than aesthetic decisions; evicted by police at the end of June; the posters 'Usines Université Union', 'La chienlit c'est encore lui !', 'Presse ne pas avaler', 'Nous sommes tous indésirables', 'La police s'affiche aux Beaux-Arts')
  10. Yale University, 1968 @ 50, 'Beauty in the Streets: Atelier Populaire and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris '68', https://aap68.yale.edu/node/136 (set up in the school's lithography studio; police raid and closure on 27 June 1968)
  11. Ministère de la Culture, 'Hommage à Gérard Fromanger' (19 June 2021), https://www.culture.gouv.fr/presse/communiques-de-presse/Hommage-a-Gerard-Fromanger (Fromanger took part in founding the Atelier populaire des Beaux-Arts)
  12. Victoria and Albert Museum, 'Solidarity and design: an introduction to OSPAAAL', https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/solidarity-and-design-an-introduction-to-ospaaal (the vast majority of OSPAAAL posters printed in offset lithography, silkscreen less often); Cooper Hewitt, 'Revolutionary Design: The Cuban Film Poster' (8 October 2019), https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2019/10/08/36082/ (ICAIC opened its own screenprinting workshop by 1960 and used silkscreen rather than offset)
  13. fr.wikipedia: 'La beauté est dans la rue' (the poster published in Montpellier by the Atelier populaire, a young woman throwing a paving stone; citing Patricia Badenes Salazar, 2008, and Graham Robb, 2010)
  14. Further reading: Atelier populaire, L'atelier populaire présenté par lui-même (Paris, 1968); Johan Kugelberg and Philippe Vermès (eds), Beauty Is in the Street: A Visual Record of the May '68 Paris Uprising (Four Corners Books, 2011); Philippe Artières and Éric de Chassey (eds), Images en lutte (Beaux-Arts de Paris, 2018)

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