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To cite this article: Nathalie Aubert (2006) Cobra after Cobra and the Alba Congress, Third Text, 20:02, 259-267, DOI:
10.1080/09528820600590959
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CTTE_A_159078.fm Page 259 Tuesday, April 4, 2006 7:57 AM
Nathalie Aubert
Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online Third Text (2006)
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09528820600590959
CTTE_A_159078.fm Page 260 Tuesday, April 4, 2006 7:57 AM
260
The Alba Congress had been called by Asger Jorn and Giuseppe
Gallizio in the name of the International Movement for an Imaginist
Bauhaus. Debord, of the Lettrist International, sent Gil Wolman as a
delegate. Constant was the other ex-Cobra member present whose ideas
had evolved progressively towards architecture and urbanism.3 In fact,
when he arrived in Alba, he announced himself as an ex-artist by way
of a declaration of his commitment to the construction of situations.
There were also representatives of avant-garde groups from eight
countries (Algeria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Great
Britain, Holland, Italy) determined to establish the bases for a united
organisation. Due to the political developments in Eastern Europe, the
Czechoslovakian representatives Pravoslav Rada and Kotik were
prevented from entering Italy (in spite of the organisers protests). None-
theless, it was in a fluid political context that the members of the
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261
We do not paint so that the picture looks like this or that. We paint
because our emotions are saturated with all we see and endure because
we are forced to. As artists, we will collaborate with those who work
to make man happier and richer, materially and intellectually. We are not
spectators, indifferent to invisible tragedies.6
All the artists were strongly marked by the war and Cobra would swiftly
become one of the most important new revolutionary art movements in
Europe in the immediate postwar period. The three countries from
which Cobra drew its artists were committed to the Western European
reconstruction effort in the Cold War era. Dotremont, Jorn and
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262
True realism, materialist realism, lies in the search for the expression of
forms faithful to their content. But theres no content detached from
human interest. True realism, materialist realism, renouncing the idealist
equation of subjectivity with individualism as described by Marx, seeks
the forms of reality that are common to the senses of all men.
He continued:
263
264
The Alba Congress will probably one day be seen as a key moment, one
of the difficult stages in the struggle for a new sensibility and a new
culture, a struggle which is itself part of the general revolutionary resur-
gence characterising the year 1956, visible in the upsurge of the masses in
the USSR, Poland and Hungary (although in the latter case we see the
dangerously confusing revival of rotten old watchwords of clerical
nationalism resulting from the fatal error of the prohibition of any
15 Originally appeared as a Marxist opposition), in the successes of the Algerian revolt, and in the
leaflet published after the major strikes in Spain. These developments allow us the greatest hopes
Congress of Free Artists for the near future.15
held in Alba, 28
September 1956 and was
signed by J Calonne, The last words of the declaration show that the free artists gathered
Constant, G Pinot-Gallizio, still conceived the future in rather optimistic terms and, in particular,
Jorn, J Kotik, P Rada, P
Simondo, E Sottsass Jr, E
that they still believed in the power of experiment to act upon reality.
Verrone and G J Wolman. Wolmans unitary urbanism seemed to require that Situationists some-
Drawn up by Jorn together how start to build their new city, just as utopians had before them.
with others and later
printed in Potlatch, no 27,
Constant was ready to rise to the challenge, seeing in the convergence of
November 1956. See Ken Situationism and the latest structural technology the chance finally for
Knabb, op cit, p 78 architecture to escape the confines of rationalism.16 However, if
16 Simon Sadler, The Constant had thrown himself into the conception of the New Babylon,
Situationist City, MIT it later became clear that the utopia they were all seeking was much
Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1999, closer to its sixteenth-century origins in Thomas Mores original concep-
p 121 tion of a perfect society as ou-topos, a place that can be found nowhere.
CTTE_A_159078.fm Page 265 Tuesday, April 4, 2006 7:57 AM
265
266
which was always young and alive. Through him, Cobra held itself in
total opposition to all possible aestheticism and formalism (classical
formalism as much as warm or cold abstraction). In this way we uncon-
sciously added the climate of continuous research to the unity of form
and expression.22
In his opening speech at the Alba Congress, Jorn referred clearly to the
new conditions in which he wanted his new Institute of Artistic Experiment
and Theory to evolve. He opened up the notion of avant-garde to the
intellectual milieu in general, by stepping towards the Lettrist International
but also, more generally, towards human society and artistic progress:
The banner of the artistic Avant-Garde has always seemed suspect to me.
Extremism is usually an empty attitude. There are two conditions that
apply for a movement to be called avant-garde. In the first place, it must
be isolated, without direct support from the established order, and given
over to an apparently impossible and useless struggle. I think everybody
will recognise that our movement exactly fulfills this first condition.
Next, the struggle of this group must be of essential importance for the
forces in whose name it struggles in our case, human society and artistic
progress and the position conquered by this avant-garde must later be
confirmed by a more general development.
267