1968 is synonymous with dissent. In the spring of that year, the streets, universities, and factories of Paris were arena of daily protest and physical conflict. The posters produced by the Atelier Populaire are remarkable evidence of artists and students rallying to challenge the educations, cultural and political policies of the French state. The poster designs were chosen from submissions in response to the day’s events. An elected committee based the criteria for printing a poster on the political message and its visual/verbal punch.
The DIAL site contains images of a selection of posters produced by the Atelier Populaire during that riotous spring. The posters were to function as street weapons and not be accorded the status of art or even, historical documents. Although the exhibition defies this purpose, the provocations represented in the poster may enable those who have not “lived ’68” some sense of the intensity of that era now dissipated, even spectral, thirty years later.