151was instituted first and foremost in response to the question of the position of the
artist in the age of machines. The Bauhaus’s answer was to work on the education
of the artist. According to Jorn, however, experience has proven that the solution did
not lie there: “The direct transfer of artistic gifts is impossible; artistic adaptation
takes place through a series of contradictory phases: Stupefaction—Wonder—
Imitation—Rejection—Experience—Possession.... Our practical conclusion is the
following: we are abandoning all effort at pedagogical action and moving toward ex-
perimental activity.”^4 Jorn therefore emphasized the experimental character that
was inherent in the practice of art. In his view, this laboratory function by which dif-
ferent artists stimulated each other to research and innovation was the most vital
contribution of the Bauhaus experience of the 1920s. It was this quality that he aimed
once more to restore to prominence in his Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus and
in his critique of functionalism.
In the conflict between Bill and Jorn, a rift emerges that is very similar to the
one Bloch had observed between functionalism and expressionism. Bill emphasizes
functionality and rationality in construction, while ascribing a subordinate role to the
imagination. In Jorn’s view the validity of all activity in the field of design lies in the
imagination—in innovation and experiment; the requirements of function and ratio-
nality are entirely secondary categories for him.
Jorn was not alone in his views. He found allies and fellow spirits in various
groups and individuals who saw themselves as the legitimate heirs of the prewar
avant-garde movements. They opposed the integration of artists in a commercial cir-
cuit, insisting on the role of the artist as social critic and innovator. This avant-garde
in fact operated to the left of modernism in architecture. The symbiosis that had ex-
isted between progressive architects and artists before the war had ceased to be
self-evident.
In 1957 various groups, among them the Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus,
decided to merge in the Situationist International. In their early years most of the ac-
tivities of the situationists formed part of the program for a “unitary urbanism” that
consisted of a vigorous critique of current modernist urbanism. Unitary urbanism re-
jected the utilitarian logic of the consumer society, aiming instead for the realization
of a dynamic city, a city in which freedom and play would have a central role. By op-
erating collectively, the situationists aimed to achieve a creative interpretation of
their everyday surroundings, and they created situations that subverted the normal
state of affairs.
A striking feature of international situationism was its pronounced theoretical
content. An active exchange developed between situationist theory and the discus-
sions of Marxist groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie. Lucien Goldmann and Henri
Lefebvre in particular exercised an unquestionable influence on the theoreticians of
this movement. As a result international situationism formed one of the moments in
the twentieth century where the trajectory of the artistic avant-garde merged with a
theoretically informed political activism.150