Jean Dubuffet

Max Loreau, Brussels (gift of the artist in June 1969)
Francine Loreau, Brain l'Alleud
Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in November 1985

Berlin, Akademie der Künste; Vienna, Museum Moderner Kunst - Museum des 20 Jahrhunderts; Cologne, Joseph-Haubrich-Kunsthalle, Dubuffet: Retrospektive, September 1980 - March 1981, cat. no. 136, p. 337
London, Waddington Galleries, Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, October 1983, cat. no. 12, p. 18, illustrated in color

Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet: Fascicule IX: Assemblages D'empreintes, Paris, 1968, cat. no. 123, p. 90, illustrated

This work is in very good condition overall. There is evidence of light wear and handling along the edges. There is some minor stable hairline craquelure in the upper white painted section of the canvas. The texture of the paint varies throughout, resulting in scattered white dots and lines, all of which appear intentional and inherent to the artists working method. Under Ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Framed
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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A staunch advocate of Art Brut, Jean Dubuffet utilized his canvases as a representation of the deepest primal elements of the human psyche and a subversion of convention. Deviating from the trend among his contemporaries in Paris, Dubuffet drew his inspiration not from what he referred to as “Occidental,” or Western, culture, but instead from society’s outsiders, stating in his 1951 lecture “Anticultural Positions” at The Arts Club of Chicago: “Personally I believe very much in the values of savagery. I mean instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness” (Jean Dubuffet, Anticultural Positions, The Arts Club of Chicago, December 20, 1951, reprinted in Exh. Cat., Richard L. Feigen & Co., Dubuffet and the Anticulture, New York, 1969, p. 2).

Campagne Fastueuse (avec deux personnages) contains many elements of the philosophies Dubuffet explored in his Chicago lecture. Conventional pictorial elements of naturalism, form, color and perspective are rejected for a muted suggestion of two spectral figures floating in an underground realm. The picture plane is a subterranean cross section seen in two dimensions, with only a thin dark line differentiating between earth and sky. One could imagine viewing this tableau through a  microscope, under whose lens the amorphic happenings not otherwise visible to the naked eye are unveiled. Dubuffet’s choice of an underground setting directly corresponds to his method of creation:

The whole art, the whole literature and the whole philosophy of Occident rest on the landing of elaborated ideas. But my own art, and my own philosophy, lean entirely on stages more underground. I try always to catch the mental process at a deeper point of its roots, where, I am sure, the sap is much richer (Jean Dubuffet, Anticultural Positions, p. 8).

One of Dubuffet’s first criticisms of Western culture was in the way which occidental man rejected his likeness to the natural world. The artist favored an opposite approach to the relationship between man and nature, stating:

[The so called primitive man] believes in a real similitude between himself and [nature]. He has a very strong sense of the continuity of all things… a feeling that man is not at all the owner of the beings but one among the others (Ibid., pp. 4-5).

In the present work, Dubuffet illustrates this idea of the unity between man and nature by engulfing the figures in their surrounding environment. The palette is uninterrupted as pigments flow freely between the outlined bodies and their subterranean atmosphere. The upper figure reaches out towards a root that penetrates into the ground, seeking sustenance from the same stuff he is made from. The compositional coherence between the various elements of the picture builds on the artist’s subsequent suggestion that the traditional differentiation between parts and whole is incorrect:

My inclination leads me, when I want to see something really well, to regard it with its surroundings, whole. If I want to know this glass on the table, I don’t look straight on this glass, I look on the middle of the room, trying to include in my glance as many objects as possible (Ibid., p. 10).

In order to better understand the work, Dubuffet encourages the viewer to look beyond recognizable shapes and gestures, and instead at the horizontal canvas as a whole. Although the bruised colors and pox-like texturization may at first be unpleasing to the eye, this more visceral palette addresses Dubuffet’s final and most important rejection of Western thought, which is the concept of Beauty:

If [man] becomes aware that there is no ugly object nor ugly person in the world and that beauty does not exist anywhere, but that any object is able to become for any man a way of fascination and illumination, he will have made a good catch. I think such an idea will enrich life more than the common idea of beauty (Ibid., p. 17).

Devoid of beautiful lines and color harmonies, Dubuffet attempts to address his art “to the mind, and not to the eyes.” Underpinned by the artist’s philosophical beliefs, Campagne Fastueuse explores the possibility of representing a utopian world and absolute truths through painting outside of the normal categories of western humanist thought. In approaching his work this way, Dubuffet articulates a sense of the continuity of all living matter that he felt had long been undermined by the influence of Western culture and history.