The Posters of May ‘68

Renewed social unrest in France has seen the iconic posters of May ’68 re-surface, as militants evoke the power of protest imagery. French history abounds with the symbols of revolt, from the revolutionary cockades and festivals of 1789-93, through historical paintings, statues and political caricatures of the 1800s, to the socialist realist posters of the thirties.

Students prepare for street protests, March 2006With every great social revolt comes a surge in artistic creativity, and May ‘68 was no exception. Even in today’s technologically advanced age, artists can continue to find inspiration in the simple posters of the 1968 Paris Art school occupations, in the same way that radicals look back to that year’s revolutionary implications. For example, dance duo the Chemical Brothers drew heavily on the posters’ fist-pumping chimneys and smashing anvils in 2005’s ‘Push the Button’ album & videos.

The poster imagery lends itself easily to the themes of political protest, such that re-worked versions, notably that of the riot police CRS-SS, could be seen in 2006’s giant anti-CPE (youth labour law) demos (see figs 1-3).

Being under 26 seriously damages your healthIn their own words, the militants of 1968’s Atelier art school occupations put their art ‘at the service of the people’. Poster politics were inspired by the revolutionary left, anti-imperialist ideas of the radical Salon de la Jeune Peinture (SJP) - Young Painters Group, and the direct experience of student street protest. For the most part the posters were combinations of slogans and images. Unitary themes included a hatred of the old Gaullist order, and a distrust of the media, parliament and mainstream political parties, particularly the socially conservative Communist Party (PCF). Their style flowed from a blend of techniques: ‘narrative figuration’- mixing images with the pop-art motifs widespread in the sixties, surrealism, and the influential situationist technique of ‘misappropriation’, a comic-strip subversion of the consumer society. The clenched fists and flags of the workers movement were also built into the imagery.

CRS=SSUsing the simple method of silk-screen printing (or serigraphy), the occupiers mass-produced radical posters which were quickly taken and pasted up by other student volunteers. The result was a series of texts and images plastered to the walls of Paris and other French towns for the best part of May and June, which told the story of the great revolt of 1968, and threatened the status quo on virtually every level. People could follow a mural argument directed by the radicals against the authorities that sought to challenge all of bourgeois society’s preconceptions.

Within a week of the million-strong student-worker demo on the 13 May, virtually every college and workplace in France was occupied, the government paralysed by the power of the biggest general strike in history. SJP artists and students at the Beaux-Arts threw their doors open to workers who saw in the posters an imaginative power and propaganda value that official union leaflets failed to match. For example, Citroen car workers ordered the Capital-smashing poster (fig 5). Gérard Fromanger, pop artist centrally involved in the occupation, describes the production and distribution process:

In the morning there would be a general meeting to present the requests of Action Committee (AC) representatives, who’d come from all over France... postal workers, dustmen, college students etc... We’d decide which ideas we liked, then set to work on them during the day. In the evening we’d meet up again to vote on which posters would be printed that night or the following day. Within a day or two the AC reps would leave with their bundles of posters.(1)

Bewildered by the speed and scale of the revolt, president de Gaulle reacted in knee-jerk fashion, exclaiming ‘Les réformes oui, la chienlit non!/ Reforms yes, but not this shitty mess’, prompting the production, in all sizes and formats, of the cheeky poster (fig 6.) The students mercilessly teased other quotes and attributes of the president. He was depicted as the oppressive ‘father’ presiding over an old and authoritarian France which denied youth the freedom of expression (fig.8.)

Artists displayed their internationalist credentials in support of student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, whom Communist Party leader Georges Marchais had at first denounced as a German anarchist, while sections of the media played on his Jewish origins; the government later banned him from the country. At first the poster reply proclaimed ‘We are all German Jews’ (fig 9.), lifted from the chant in solidarity with Cohn-Bendit on student demos. However, it was felt to be too raw, and changed to ‘We are all unwanted’, before being flyposted. Atelier artists broadened their anti-racist, anti-borders stance by appealing to workers in different languages (fig 10.) All over the world, radicals began to draw on the French experience, including its images and icons. Copycat posters hit the walls of Prague and Mexico City in revolt later that year, and the silkscreen print was incorporated into West Coast American artists’ propaganda battle against the Vietnam War.

Towards the end of May, the posters began to warn against deals with the government and bosses, reflecting the revolutionary mood among students. Leftists in the colleges regarded talks as class collaboration designed to dupe, then subdue the workers, and they were finding a strong echo in the workplaces. A secret silkscreen press was even set up at Renault-Flins, where some students had established a strong rapport with car workers (figs 11.)

Le Combat Continue - A recent Arts-decoratifs poster commemorating May ‘68However, on 27 May the Communist-led CGT, and other unions agreed to concessions offered by the government at the Paris Grenelle accords, and immediately went to sell the deal to strikers. Despite initial rejection of Grenelle by large sections of workers, the movement of occupations failed to articulate a common, alternative strategy of radical change, allowing the union leaders to negotiate and push for a return to work factory by factory throughout June. The tone of Beaux-Arts posters hardened in response to this fragmentation of the movement. Besides calling on workers to hold firm, they now targeted the bias of the media (fig 13), the duplicity of union leaders and finally the elections set by de Gaulle for the end of June (fig 15). That month’s posters were part of a formidable rearguard action by the Action Committees, which ultimately failed as the mass movement itself dissipated.

The press - do not swallowMay ‘68 represents a highpoint of radical poster and caricature production; no other event in the postwar period quite manages to equal its fusion of political art and real-life grassroots protest. The Paris ateliers were the cultural heartbeat of a mass movement discovering itself. And the simple, iconic images have entered a radical lexicon, embraced by subsequent generations of striking students and workers. If the future is to bring further mass eruptions against neo-liberalism and war, expect to see new and powerful forms of political art emerge, true to the spirit of May ’68.

(1) Interview with the author 5.08.05

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Further reading:

Atelier Populaire, Posters from the revolution (London: Dobson 1969)
Chris Harman, The fire last time: 1968 and after (London: Bookmarks 1987)
Mark Kurlansky, 1968, the year that rocked the world (London: Vintage 2004)
Marc Rohan, Paris '68: graffiti, posters, newspapers and poems of the events of May 1968 (London: Impact 1988)
Kristin Ross, May ‘68 and its afterlives (London: University of Chicago Press 2002)
Daniel Singer, Prelude to revolution (London: Cape 1970)