Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (1901 - 1985)
Jean Dubuffet developed his long career through the exploration of so-called “primitive” modes of expression and the rejection of conventional beauty. Raised in Le Havre, France, he studied art briefly at the Académie Julian, where he met Suzanne Valadon, Raoul Dufy, and Fernand Léger, among others. He gave up art to work in business in 1924 and lived in Argentina and France. Dubuffet returned to painting full-time in 1942; he would eventually base himself in Paris and in Vence, in the south of France.
He developed many series and stylistic approaches to his work, which he organized, documented, and exhibited with great care. This methodical approach to his prolific output belies the art itself. Dubuffet soundly renounced what he considered the conformity and orthodoxy of the Western canon and contemporary approaches to art. Instead, he embraced the opposite. Dubuffet found inspiration in a variety of idioms of “outsider” art: graffiti, children’s art, non-Western art, and art made by institutionalized mental patients (he collected art of the mentally ill). He sought out examples of Art Brut--a term he coined--and made three extended trips to the Sahara in his quest of authentic, creative expression, unspoiled by overbred contemporary society.
The art Dubuffet created featured deliberately clumsy, disorienting approaches to his subjects, as in Joë Bousquet in Bed (1947, Museum of Modern Art). Successive styles challenged traditional approaches to art in different ways. For instance, his Corps des dames series of 1950 subverts the archetypal signifier of beauty--the female nude--in thickly obese figures painted with slashing brushstrokes. And the Paysages du mental of slightly later in the 1950s, for instance, renders the oil medium viscous and unsettling by encrusting it with glass, sand or tar.
In the early 1960s, Dubuffet developed his series known as L’Hourloupe, a graphically powerful group defined by sinuous dark outlines and red, blue, and white interiors. Later in the decade, he combined this basic style with media including polyester and epoxy, resulting in a shift toward a lighter aesthetic, which he employed in his Coucou Bazar, an “animated painting” performance of costumed dancers and elaborate sets. Also in the late 1960s, the artist began working on his architectural constructions, which led to commissions for large-scale sculptures such as Group of Four Trees (1972, Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York) and the Jardin d’hiver (1969-70) at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Dubuffet had his first solo show in 1947 at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. The first of numerous museum exhibitions was held at the Schloss Morsbroich in Leverkeusen, Germany. He would go on to show at museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Dubuffet published a manifesto in 1951 and a book, Asphyxiante culture, in 1968. He died in Paris in 1985.
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