Le Refus Global was a manifesto that completely rejected the social, artistic and psychological norms and values of Québécois society at the time.
Calling for "an untamed need for liberation," the manifesto cried out for "resplendent anarchy" and criticized the "cassocks that have remained the sole repositories of faith, knowledge, truth, and national wealth."
"[1] Jean Paul Riopelle, who also signed the document, interviewed later, said it was "written by Borduas...to reject those conditions, both material and intellectual, that had been our lot up to that point".
In Quebec, unlike Europe, automatism was better understood by everyday people while being snubbed by the elite, making it more of a movement for the democratization of art.
[12] Borduas lost his job as a professor at the École du Meuble de Montréal,[3] a position that he had occupied since 1937,[12] and he went into exile in the United States.
[16] In the 1980s, a period where Quebec was striving to clarify its identity and political autonomy, Borduas was perceived as a hero, saving the cultural integrity of the French Canadian population.
Since then, Refus Global has become a reference for the idea that the Grande Noirceur had not drowned out all innovative intellectual life in Quebec; as a result, it is seen as a precursor to the Quiet Revolution.