# Situationist Détournement Graphics

> Graphics of the Letterist and Situationist Internationals (1956–1972), built on détournement: taking existing words and pictures (comic strips, advertisements, news photographs, city maps, classic texts) and turning them against their source. Debord and Jorn scattered cut press fragments among splashes of coloured ink in the artist's books Fin de Copenhague and Mémoires, and cut the map of Paris into islands linked by red arrows. Strasbourg students and the CMDO refilled comic-strip balloons with theory and pasted the strips up.

- Period: 1956–1972
- Where: Western Europe, Northern Europe
- Origin: Paris and Copenhagen. The Letterist International, formed by Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman in June 1952 and formally founded in December 1952, practised détournement before it named the method: the soundtrack of Debord's film Hurlements en faveur de Sade (June 1952) was détourned from Isidore Isou, John Ford's Rio Grande, James Joyce and the French Civil Code, Debord's metagraphs were collages of mostly textual elements, and in 1953 he wrote 'Ne travaillez jamais' on a wall in the rue de Seine. Debord and Wolman set out the method in 'Mode d'emploi du détournement', published in the Belgian surrealist journal Les Lèvres nues, no. 8, in May 1956. In July 1957, at Cosio di Arroscia in Italy, the Letterist International, Asger Jorn's International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Association founded the Situationist International. Jorn's Bauhaus Imaginiste imprint published Fin de Copenhague (May 1957) and Debord's psychogeographic maps of Paris (1957); the Copenhagen printers Permild & Rosengreen printed the maps and Mémoires (dated 1959). Twelve issues of the journal Internationale situationniste appeared from June 1958 to 1969. In October 1966 Strasbourg students printed André Bertrand's détourned comic Le Retour de la colonne Durutti with student-union funds and pasted it up across the campus and the city to announce Mustapha Khayati's pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life, and in May 1968 lines from Debord and Khayati were written on Paris walls. The SI dissolved in 1972. Punk revived its pranks in the late 1970s, and culture jamming took up détournement in the late 1980s.
- Branch: Counterculture
- Also known as: Détournement, Situationist graphics, Détourned comics (bandes dessinées détournées), Lettrist détournement
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/situationist-detournement/

## How it works

- Make nothing from scratch: take a comic strip, advertisement, news photograph, map or classic text that the public already knows and change what it says, so the source speaks against itself.
- Empty the speech balloons of a comic strip or photo-romance and refill them with theory, so that cowboys on horseback or small children discuss reification and the spectacle.
- Cut press fragments, small ads, old engravings and pieces of city maps loose from their pages, scatter them without a grid, letting lines of text tilt and curve, and print a layer of splashed and dripped coloured ink over them to bind the fragments together.
- Cut a city map apart along its moods: pull the neighbourhoods apart into islands and mark the drift between them with red arrows instead of streets.
- Print mostly in black and quickly: a lithographic plate, an offset pamphlet, a flyposted sheet or a wall. Keep colour for an ink splash, an arrow or a metallic cover.
- Treat everything as free to take, titles included: retitle, recaption and reprint without asking, and choose captions whose link to the picture is not immediately obvious.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Collage & layering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/collage-and-layering/) (defining)
- [Framed panels](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/framed-panels/) (characteristic)
- [Dynamic asymmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/dynamic-asymmetry/) (occasional)
- [Full bleed](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-bleed/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Flat hierarchy](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-hierarchy/) (characteristic)
- [Sequential narrative](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/sequential-narrative/) (characteristic)
- [Visual tension](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/visual-tension/) (characteristic)

### Typography
- [Eclectic mixing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/eclectic-mixing/) (characteristic)
- [Lowercase only](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/lowercase-only/) (occasional)
- [Grotesque & neo-grotesque](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/grotesque-and-neo-grotesque/) (occasional)
- [Hand-lettering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-lettering/) (occasional)
- [Rotated & vertical setting](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rotated-and-vertical-setting/) (occasional)

### Colour
- [Monochrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/monochrome/) (characteristic)
- [Limited spot colours](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/limited-spot-colours/) (characteristic)
- [Light ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/light-ground/) (characteristic)
- [Jewel & metallic](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/jewel-and-metallic/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Naturalistic depiction](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/naturalistic-depiction/) (characteristic)
- [Stylised figuration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/stylised-figuration/) (occasional)
- [Squiggles & confetti](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/squiggles-and-confetti/) (occasional)
- [Biomorphic curves](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/biomorphic-curves/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Halftone & Ben-Day dots](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/halftone-and-ben-day-dots/) (characteristic)
- [Painterly brushwork](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/painterly-brushwork/) (characteristic)
- [Misregistration & overprint](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/misregistration-and-overprint/) (occasional)
- [Photocopy & distress](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/photocopy-and-distress/) (occasional)

### Ornament
- [Ornament-free](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ornament-free/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Found & vernacular imagery](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/found-and-vernacular-imagery/) (defining)
- [Comic & cartoon](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/comic-and-cartoon/) (characteristic)
- [Photomontage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/photomontage/) (characteristic)
- [Diagram & data](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/diagram-and-data/) (characteristic)
- [Typography only](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/typography-only/) (occasional)

### Medium & production
- [Offset printing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/offset-printing/) (characteristic)
- [Lithography](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/lithography/) (characteristic)
- [Architecture & signage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/architecture-and-signage/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Ironic & self-aware](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ironic-and-self-aware/) (defining)
- [Rebellious & subversive](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rebellious-and-subversive/) (defining)
- [Agitational & persuasive](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/agitational-and-persuasive/) (characteristic)
- [Playful & witty](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/playful-and-witty/) (characteristic)
- [Utopian & idealistic](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/utopian-and-idealistic/) (occasional)

Avoids: Modular grid, Abundant decoration, Floral & vegetal, Single focal point, Gloss & highlights, Rational & objective, Authoritative & institutional, Luxurious & glamorous, Calm & contemplative

Palette: #f3f0e8, #151515, #c62f2a, #2f5aa8, #e08a2c, #aeb0ad

Typefaces: Caractères Simples, a nineteenth-century French sans serif shown by Deberny, set in lowercase for the title on every issue of Internationale situationniste, Found press type: headlines, text fragments and small ads cut from newspapers and magazines and printed in whatever faces they came in (Mémoires, Fin de Copenhague, Debord's metagraphs), Comic-strip speech balloons emptied and refilled with new text (Le Retour de la colonne Durutti, the CMDO strips, Vaneigem's comic), Painted wall lettering: slogans written straight onto Paris walls, from Debord's 'Ne travaillez jamais' on the rue de Seine (1953) to the May 1968 graffiti photographed by Walter Lewino

Known for: Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman, 'Mode d'emploi du détournement' (A User's Guide to Détournement), Les Lèvres nues no. 8, May 1956: sets out minor détournement (a press clipping, a neutral phrase, a commonplace photograph) and deceptive détournement (an intrinsically significant element), and the metagraph, a collage of mostly textual elements such as Debord's The Death of J.H., which uses 125 classified ads to express a suicide; Asger Jorn, with Guy Debord as 'technical adviser in détournement', Fin de Copenhague, May 1957, Edition Bauhaus Imaginiste, edition of 200: 32 collages of material from stolen magazines and newspapers, transferred to lithographic plates, then printed with Indian ink that Jorn dropped onto the zinc plates from a ladder; the coloured marks were printed on both sides of the sheet, so that trimming and binding left them colliding across the spreads, and each copy was bound in flong, the papier-mâché mould of a newspaper page, embossed with a different page; Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, Mémoires: structures portantes d'Asger Jorn, dated 1959 (pages printed December 1958 by Permild & Rosengreen, Copenhagen, for the Internationale situationniste): 64 pages in three sections dated June 1952, December 1952 and September 1953; a black layer of found text fragments, maps of Paris and London, siege-warfare illustrations and old-master reproductions under a coloured layer of splashed ink, matchstick lines and a Rorschach blot, with lines of text that curve, twist and bend over some pages; bound in heavy sandpaper (Princeton University Library Graphic Arts Collection; Beinecke Library, Yale; Pérez Art Museum Miami); Guy Debord, Guide psychogéographique de Paris: discours sur les passions de l'amour, 1957, lithograph, 59.4 × 73.8 cm (MACBA, Barcelona, R.3779), published by Jorn's Bauhaus Imaginiste and printed in Denmark by Permild & Rosengreen: G. Peltier's 1951 bird's-eye view of Paris cut into distinct neighbourhood 'unities', spread apart and linked by red arrows for the most-used crossings; with its companion The Naked City, 1957 (Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Orléans; Beinecke Library); Internationale situationniste nos. 1–12, June 1958 – 1969: 235 × 155 mm booklets in metallic covers of a different colour for each issue, the title always in lowercase Caractères Simples; no. 8 (1963) printed on p. 42 a photograph, cropped to the inscription, of Debord's 1953 wall slogan 'Ne travaillez jamais' (rue de Seine), lifted from Louis Buffier's postcard; no. 11 (October 1967) carried René Viénet's call to détourn photo-romances and comic strips by changing their speech balloons, and two images from a comic strip by Raoul Vaneigem that led to police questioning of Debord, Vaneigem and Viénet in late 1967; André Bertrand, Le Retour de la colonne Durutti, October 1966: a four-page détourned comic printed with Strasbourg student-union (AFGES) funds, handed out at the university on 26 October 1966 and pasted up across the campus and the city to announce Mustapha Khayati's pamphlet On the Poverty of Student Life, which followed at the university's official opening ceremony; its best-known frame has two cowboys on horseback discussing reification (Yale, Art and Architecture of 1968; Lambiek Comiclopedia; Internationale situationniste no. 11); Conseil pour le maintien des occupations (CMDO), Le prolétariat comme sujet et comme représentation, 1968: a détourned comic strip whose text comes from Debord's La Société du spectacle (Beinecke Library, Yale); Walter Lewino, L'imagination au pouvoir, 1968: photographs of the May 1968 wall slogans, among them lines from Debord's The Society of the Spectacle and Khayati's pamphlet

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

- Grew out of: [Dada](https://stylogeny.com/styles/dada.md) (1916–1924)
- Influenced by: [Surrealist Graphics](https://stylogeny.com/styles/surrealism.md) (1924–1960)
- Alike in its design choices: [Arab Independent Comics (Samandal, TokTok, Lab619, Skefkef)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/arab-independent-comics.md) (2007–present), 64% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Cranbrook & Deconstructivist Typography](https://stylogeny.com/styles/deconstructivist-typography.md) (1980–1998), 57% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Grapus (French Militant Graphic Collective)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/grapus.md) (1970–1990), 50% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/chilean-estallido-graphics.md) (2019–2022), 48% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Punk & DIY Zine](https://stylogeny.com/styles/punk-diy.md) (1976–1986), 48% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/fluxus.md) (1962–1978), 45% alike

## Sources

- Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman, 'A User's Guide to Détournement' (Mode d'emploi du détournement, Les Lèvres nues no. 8, May 1956), trans. Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets, https://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm (minor and deceptive détournement; advertising as the richest source; 'all titles are interchangeable'; the metagraph as a collage of largely textual elements, a genre developed by the Lettrists, both metagraphs named being by Debord; Debord's The Death of J.H. with 125 classified ads; détourned novels illustrated with pictures whose link to the text is not immediately obvious)
- Wikipedia, 'Situationist International', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International (founded July 1957 at Cosio di Arroscia from the Letterist International, the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Association; twelve issues of Internationale situationniste from June 1958; the Strasbourg scandal of 1966, with Bertrand's comic flyposted and 10,000 copies of Khayati's pamphlet; lines from Debord and Khayati on walls in May 1968, documented in Walter Lewino's L'imagination au pouvoir; dissolved 1972), and 'Détournement', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9tournement (developed by the Letterist International in the 1950s; reprised by punk in the late 1970s; inspired culture jamming in the late 1980s)
- Tate, Art term 'Situationist International', https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/situationist-international (formed at a conference in Italy in 1957; a critique of capitalism mixing Marxism and surrealism; dissolved 1972)
- Wikipedia, 'Mémoires', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9moires (dated 1959, printed December 1958 by Permild & Rosengreen; 64 pages in three sections dated June 1952, December 1952 and September 1953; black layer of found text fragments, maps of Paris and London, siege-warfare illustrations and old-master reproductions; Jorn's coloured 'structures portantes' of splashed ink, matchstick lines and a Rorschach blot; sandpaper cover; Fin de Copenhague, May 1957, Edition Bauhaus Imaginiste, edition of 200, Debord as technical adviser in détournement, 32 collages on lithographic plates, Indian ink dropped from a ladder)
- Julie Mellby, Princeton University Library Graphic Arts Collection blog, 26 March 2019, https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2019/03/26/internationale-situationniste (Mémoires, 1959, Paris: Internationale situationniste, printed by Permild & Rosengreen; heavy-grade sandpaper cover suggested by the printer V.O. Permild; Fin de Copenhague made from collages of stolen magazines and newspapers transferred to lithographic plates and printed with dropped Indian ink)
- Postwar Culture at the Beinecke, 'Guy Debord', https://www.postwarcultureatbeinecke.org/guy-debord (Beinecke holdings: Internationale situationniste nos. 1–12, 1958–69; Fin de Copenhague, 1957; Mémoires, 1958 and 1959 issues, an artist's book of détourned text and images with drawing and overpainting; Guide psychogéographique de Paris, 1957; The Naked City poster; the CMDO's détourned comic strip Le prolétariat comme sujet et comme représentation, 1968, with text from La Société du spectacle)
- MACBA, Guy Debord, Guide psychogéographique de Paris, 1957, lithograph on paper, 59.4 × 73.8 cm, R.3779, https://www.macba.cat/en/obra/r3779-guide-psychogeographique-de-paris-discours-sur-les-passions-de-lamour-pentes-psychogeographiques-de-la-derive-et-localisation-dunites-dambiance/
- Drawing Matter, 'Guy Debord', https://drawingmatter.org/guy-debord/ (the Guide built from pieces of G. Peltier's bird's-eye view of Paris, Blondel la Rougery, 1951; published in Denmark by Jorn in the Bauhaus Imaginiste series; lithograph, 595 × 735 mm)
- Imaginary Museum, 'Psychogeographic guide of Paris', https://imaginarymuseum.org/LPG/Mapsitu1.htm (map cut into unities and spread apart; red arrows for the most frequently used crossings; edited by the Bauhaus Imaginiste, printed in Denmark by Permild & Rosengreen)
- Fondation du doute, Critique de la ville quotidienne, press kit, 2024, https://dda-nouvelle-aquitaine.org/IMG/pdf/critique-de-la-ville-quotidienne-dossier-de-presse_1_.pdf (Guy Debord, The Naked City, 1957, and the Guide psychogéographique de Paris, Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Orléans)
- Fonts In Use, 'Internationale Situationniste', https://fontsinuse.com/uses/58454/internationale-situationniste (journal 1958–1969, 12 issues, 235 × 155 mm booklets in metallic covers of changing colours, the title always in lowercase Caractères Simples), and 'Simples', https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/232459/simples (a heterogeneous series of nineteenth-century French sans serifs shown by Deberny)
- Guy Debord, letter to the Cercle de la Librairie, 27 June 1963, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/1963/never-work.htm ('Ne travaillez jamais' written on a wall on the rue de Seine in 1953; the photograph from Buffier's postcard reproduced, cropped to the inscription, on p. 42 of Internationale situationniste no. 8)
- René Viénet, 'The Situationists and the New Forms of Action Against Politics and Art', Internationale situationniste no. 11, October 1967, trans. Ken Knabb, Bureau of Public Secrets, https://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/11.newforms.htm (détourning photo-romances and comic strips by changing their speech balloons; pasting prepared placards over subway billboards; every situationist able to make a film)
- 'How the Delinquents Politicized', Internationale situationniste no. 12, September 1969, trans. Reuben Keehan, SI Online, https://sionline.researche-editions.cddc.vt.edu/si/delinquents.html (Debord, Vaneigem and Viénet questioned by the police in November and December 1967 over a comic strip by Vaneigem, two images of which appeared in I.S. no. 11; CMDO experiments in the same vein and revolutionary comic strips by autonomous groups)
- Yale University, Art and Architecture of 1968, 'Le retour de la colonne Durutti', https://aap68.yale.edu/le-retour-de-la-colonne-durutti (illustrated by André Bertrand, printed October 1966, pasted up across the Strasbourg campus and city; images pulled from mass media and pop culture, children with large speech bubbles of academic leftist text); Lambiek Comiclopedia, 'André Bertrand', https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/bertrand_andre.htm (four-page comic handed out at Strasbourg University on 26 October 1966 with Khayati's pamphlet; well-known drawings reworked with new text balloons; recirculated in May 1968; the two-cowboy frame later used by the band The Durutti Column); libcom.org, 'The Return of the Durutti Column', https://libcom.org/article/return-durutti-column-andre-bertrand (printed with unauthorised AFGES funds; best-known image of two cowboys on horseback discussing reification)
- 'Our Goals and Methods in the Strasbourg Scandal', Internationale situationniste no. 11, October 1967, libcom.org, https://libcom.org/article/our-goals-and-methods-strasbourg-scandal (Moles driven from his inaugural lecture on 26 October; shortly afterwards the AFGES publicised the pamphlet by pasting up Bertrand's comic; the pamphlet was distributed to the notables at the university's official opening ceremony); Wikipedia, 'On the Poverty of Student Life', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Poverty_of_Student_Life (10,000 copies printed with university funds and distributed during a ceremony marking the beginning of the academic year)
- Wikipedia, 'Letterist International', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterist_International (covertly formed by Debord and Wolman in June 1952, formally established on 7 December 1952 after a meeting at Aubervilliers; Debord's 1953 graffito 'Ne travaillez jamais'), and 'Hurlements en faveur de Sade', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurlements_en_faveur_de_Sade (premiered 30 June 1952; soundtrack détourned from Isou's Esthétique du cinéma, John Ford's Rio Grande, James Joyce and the French Civil Code)
- Rick Poynor, 'On My Shelf: Fin de Copenhague', Design Observer, 5 March 2013, https://designobserver.com/on-my-shelf-fin-de-copenhague/ (Jorn dribbled ink onto the zinc plates from a ladder; the marks printed on both sides of the sheet in graded colour, so trimming and binding produced random collisions of colour and shape on the spreads; covers of flong embossed with newspaper pages, all different); Thomas Hvid Kromann, 'Montager svøbt i matricepap', Fund og Forskning 54 (2016), pp. 587–625, abstract at https://pure.kb.dk/en/publications/montager-sv%C3%B8bt-i-matricepap-en-materialeark%C3%A6ologisk-unders%C3%B8gelse-/ (bound in flong, a waste product of newspaper production, making every copy of the edition of 200 unique)
- Pérez Art Museum Miami, Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, Mémoires, 1959, https://www.pamm.org/?p=14210 (two registers: found texts and images in black and Jorn's Rorschach-like splashes of colour; 'stanzas curve, twist, and bend over some pages'; Jorn credited with the sandpaper jacket)
- Timothy Clark, Christopher Gray, Donald Nicholson-Smith and Charles Radcliffe, 'The Revolution of Modern Art and the Modern Art of Revolution', unpublished text by the SI's English section, 1967, SI Online, https://sionline.researche-editions.cddc.vt.edu/si/modernart.html (pop art 'the last ditch attempt to shore up the decomposition of the spectacle'; 'the juvenile delinquents — not the pop artists — are the true inheritors of Dada'); Wikipedia, 'Roy Lichtenstein', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein (relatively close but not exact copies of war and romance comic panels, enlarged from newsprint to painting size; advertising imagery in his early Pop work)
- Gran Fury, 'About', https://www.granfury.org/about (appropriation strategies that used and critiqued 'Madison Avenue vernaculars'; work 'in direct line of descent with Situationist questions')

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Situationist Détournement Graphics”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/situationist-detournement/