Keep Walking Intently. The Ambulatory Art of the Surrealists, the Situationist International, and Fluxus

Walking, that most basic of human actions, was transformed in the twentieth century by Surrealism, the Situationist International, and Fluxus into a tactic for revolutionizing everyday life. Each group chose locations in the urban landscape as sites—from the flea markets and bars of Paris to the sidewalks of New York—and ambulation as the essential gesture. Keep Walking Intently traces the meandering and peculiar footsteps of these avant-garde artists as they moved through the city, encountering the marvelous, studying the environment, and re-enchanting the banal. Art historian Lori Waxman reveals the radical potential that walking holds for us all.
Lori Waxman lives in Chicago, where she is the art critic for the Chicago Tribune and a senior lecturer at the School of the Art Institute. She performs occasionally as the “60 wrd/min art critic.”