Visualising The Revolution: A Gallery of Posters from the Paris Uprising of May 1968

The politics of anarchists and communists was marked in hundreds of posters and flyers distributed around France in May 1968. The movement’s visual culture is key to its understanding.

 

 

These artworks and others like them were distributed in Paris and parts of the country amid student protests, strikes, and barricades erected in the Latin Quarter. Was it a popular revolt? “We’re slightly prisoners of a myth,” says historian Danielle Tartakowsky.

The campaign for radical change and the vibrant spirit of hope for something better can be in part explained as Situationism and the Situationist International (SI). “It is important to understand the SI in relation to Marx,” notes the Anarchist Library, “to see how they saw their own project as a continuation of Marx’s critique of capitalism… ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,’ wrote Marx. ‘So far philosophers and artists have only interpreted situations; the point now is to transform them,’ wrote the SI.”

 

 

The mood was epitomised by the likes of Spanish painter Joan Miró’s work May 1968  – “This painting is all explained by the title: May 1968,” he said. “Drama and expectation in equal parts: what was and what remained of that unforgettable young people’s revolt…” – and  vérité film by 20-year-old Frenchman Philippe Garrel, who shot in the streets of Paris during the student protests.

 

 

Not long ago, we featured a gallery of these images from the Atelier Populaire, a group of artists and students who occupied the École des Beaux-Arts and produced thousands of posters. This gallery of more than 300 images from the time is archived at the Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

 

 

We’ve a selection of designs from this movements in our shop. See them here.