Je participe...
Poster
1968 (Designed and printed)
1968 (Designed and printed)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
From a young age, French children master their native language by copying out the various tenses of verbs. This shared cultural experience is here used by French art students for the cause of protesting President Charles de Gaulle's May 1968 proposal for citizen's participation. A hand is shown writing the verb "to participate" in its single and plural forms. The message of dissent comes in the final copied line (third person plural) where the hand conjugates instead a form of the verb "to profit". The radical statement is their belief that all of one's good intentioned participation with goverment edicts will result in someone else's gain.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Je participe... (assigned by artist) |
| Materials and techniques | Screenprint |
| Brief description | "Je participe" Parisian student protest poster. France, 1968. |
| Physical description | Hand conjugating the various forms of the verb "to participate." (The thrust of the message is the final line of text: the third person plural is a form of the verb "to profit"). |
| Dimensions |
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| Marks and inscriptions |
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| Credit line | Gift of the American Friends of the V&A; Gift to the American Friends by Leslie, Judith and Gabri Schreyer and Alice Schreyer Batko |
| Production | published in Paris, the second week of July, 1968 |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Place depicted | |
| Summary | From a young age, French children master their native language by copying out the various tenses of verbs. This shared cultural experience is here used by French art students for the cause of protesting President Charles de Gaulle's May 1968 proposal for citizen's participation. A hand is shown writing the verb "to participate" in its single and plural forms. The message of dissent comes in the final copied line (third person plural) where the hand conjugates instead a form of the verb "to profit". The radical statement is their belief that all of one's good intentioned participation with goverment edicts will result in someone else's gain. |
| Bibliographic reference | 'Texts and Posters by Atelier Populaire: Posters from the Revolution Paris, May 1968' by Atelier Populaire. London: Dobson, 1969. |
| Other number | LS.1378 - Leslie Schreyer Loan Number |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.673-2004 |
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| Record created | August 12, 2004 |
| Record URL |
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