Jacqueline de Jong papers

Jacqueline de Jong (1939-), is a Dutch artist. She was associated with the social, political, and artistic movements Internationale situationniste and Gruppe SPUR during the 1960s, and served as editor of The Situationist Times from 1962 to 1967.

De Jong was born in 1939 in Hengelo, Netherlands, to art collectors Hans and Alice de Jong. De Jong and her mother found refuge in Switzerland during World War II, after which they returned to the Netherlands. In 1958, De Jong obtained a position at the Stedelijk Museum, a contemporary arts institution located in Amsterdam. Her parents’ collecting and her experience at the museum exposed her to current artistic movements, including the Internationale situationniste (I.S.), recently formed by French intellectual Guy Debord and Danish artist Asger Jorn. Jorn had also been a founding member of the earlier avant-garde movements CoBrA (1948-1951) and International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (1955-1957). De Jong and Jorn first met in 1958, and were romantic partners through the 1960s. De Jong herself joined the I.S. in 1960 and participated to the movement’s fourth conference in London in September of that year. Though one of few women in the movement’s inner circle, she assumed the leadership of its Dutch section.

De Jong’s time in the I.S. proved short lived, as Debord dismissed her in 1962, but her engagement with situationism continued. Now residing in Paris, France, she founded the English-language magazine The Situationist Times, which she designed, edited, printed, and distributed from 1962 to 1967. With her first solo show and her participation in a Gruppe SPUR exhibition, the year 1962 also marked the beginnings of de Jong’s professional art career. Through the 1960s, she exhibited paintings, sculptures, and drawings largely in the Netherlands, Denmark, and France. Involved in the politics of the day, de Jong participated in the May 1968 protests, and printed posters in support of the students on strike. In 1970, after the end of her relationship with Jorn, de Jong moved back to Amsterdam with gallerist Hans Brinkman to pursue her painting career.

The Situationist Times was a periodical in six issues published in Europe between 1962 and 1967 that blended situationist theory, political commentary, conceptual art, and avant-garde aesthetics.

The movement Internationale situationniste (I.S.) emerged out of the Internationale lettriste and the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus in 1957, largely under the leadership of Guy Debord. The ideas of the group were embodied in the French-language journal Internationale situationniste, but did not have an English-language outlet. Disagreeing with Debord over the expulsion of the German Gruppe SPUR from the I.S. and over the role of visual arts in situationism, de Jong began publishing The Situationist Times shortly after he excluded her from the group.

Article contributions for the magazine came from practitioners of a range of disciplines active across Europe. With de Jong's original drawings, collages, and selections of photographic reproductions, the magazine's visual content reflected her artistic vision. The first issue, co-edited with French author Noël Arnaud, was released in May 1962 and focused heavily on Gruppe SPUR. De Jong, Arnaud, and Danish-Belgian artist Serge Vandercam co-edited the second issue, which was published in September 1962. The third issue, dated January 1963, was edited and published solely by de Jong, and printed in her home town of Hengelo, Netherlands. Articulated around the themes of knots, interlaces, and topology, it was the first in a thematic series. The subsequent issues were published and distributed by the Danish publishing company Rhodos. No. 4, released in October 1963, was the “labyrinths” issue, and no. 5, released in December 1964, was the “rings and chains” issue. Both were created in collaboration with English-born artist Gordon Fazakerley. Released in 1967, no. 6, the last published issue, exclusively contained original lithographs from 32 artists. De Jong planned a seventh issue on the theme of “wheels”, but never completed it.