Jean Dubuffet, Arbre Biplan, 1968-69

Begun in July 1968, Arbre Biplan was the first monumental ‘Hourloupe’ sculpture Dubuffet made. Standing at over four and a half metres high and spanning five metres across, its towering form marked the grand evolution of his most original and inspired cycle of works, and the culmination of his pictorial ambitions. It was one of only eleven works realised on this scale during the artist’s lifetime; six of which are in major public institutions and museum collections and two of which are in installed in the US cities of Houston and Chicago.

The monumental Hourloupe sculptures Dubuffet made during his lifetime are:
Arbre Biplan, (2nd version), (1968), Fondation Dubuffet, Périgny-sur-Yerres, France
Le Bocage, (1970) Private Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany
Jardin d'hiver, (1970) Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Groupe de Quatre Arbres, (1972) Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, New York, USA
Closerie Falbala, (1973) Fondation Dubuffet, Périgny-sur-Yerres, France
Jardin d'émail, (1974), Kröller Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands
Chambre au Lit sous l'Arbre, (1977) Private Collection, Long Island, USA
Manoir d'essor, (1982) Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humlebaek, Denmark
Monument au fantôme, (1983), Interfirst Plaza, Houston, USA
Monument à la bête debout, (1984), Thompson Center, Chicago, USA

The present work was itself formerly in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago between 1969-1990, and occupies a place of seminal importance within the context of the ‘Hourloupe’ series as well as within Dubuffet’s wider oeuvre. Besides being the first sculpture he made on this monumental scale, it also provided the starting point for his first major public commission by David Rockefeller and the other works involving similar tree motifs like Jardin d’email and Le Boquetau. Its magnificent installation at Chatsworth allows for a sublime juxtaposition between the resolute artificiality of its aesthetic and the surrounding natural landscape.

“I want to give monumental dimensions to these unrestricted works; the works that escape from the paper’s surface which usually serves as a support… I was taken by the desire to not only face these paintings while maintaining my feet on the shore of everyday life, but to abandon this shore, to enter into the images, to inhabit them. The result is a kind of allusive and figurative architecture… images formed in a habitat. One sees oneself inside them, totally surrounded by one's mental productions, and one can make it one's only nourishment." (Jean Dubuffet speaking at the presentation of his Groupe de quatre arbres to Chase Manhattan Bank on 24th October 1972)

The ‘Hourloupe’ was born in July 1962 with an aimless biro doodle Dubuffet had made whilst speaking on the telephone. The series evolved over the next twelve years through countless variations of both subject and media, and occupied him longer and more intensely than any of his earlier or subsequent cycles. Created through a stream of spontaneous, sub-conscious thought, in common with Surrealist écriture automatique, he equated its freehand meandering script with the emergence of his suppressed, inner creativity: something that had been the ultimate goal of his Art-Brut aesthetic from the start. It followed on from his much acclaimed ‘Paris Circus’ series, and saw him once again transgressing prevailing notions of aesthetic decency. Dubuffet himself regarded it as the cumulative peak of his creative evolution and his most radical change of direction yet.

Arguably the most revolutionary structural reinterpretation since Cubism, between 1962-1974, the ‘Hourloupe’ series evolved from small biro drawings into paintings, reliefs, sculptures and even complete architectural environments, such as the Centre George Pompidou’s Jardin D’Hiver (1970) and the Fondation Dubuffet’s Closerie Falbala (1973) at Périgny-sur-Yerres. As it progressed, Dubuffet increasingly sought to integrate the viewer inside the work to force closer reflection between the real and the imaginary; to explore the idea of an alternative reality; of a continuity existing between figures, objects, and spaces outside of learned mainstream awareness. This he achieved with Arbre Biplan. Bordering the territory between mental and physical spaces, between a notion and its existence, this work bridges the gap between the rational and the irrational; between art and nature; between abstraction and figuration. It inhabits its own reality – one that is intentionally ambiguous and artificial yet actual in presence. Like the concept of the ‘Hourloupe’ itself, it is a reality of the subconscious mind. The stark artificiality of its flat vinyl surfaces and absence of associative colour are enhanced by the vibrant garden landscape of Chatsworth which further reverse the dichotomies between form and image.

To compliment his efforts in subverting the institutionalised traditions of high art, throughout his career Dubuffet, employed materials conventionally regarded as ‘inferior’. In the ‘Hourloupe’, he continued this by working in polystyrene - a light and easily manipulated industrial packaging material that allowed him to work on an unprecedented scale. Carving into it using a hot wire “with as much liberty and ease as a pencil gliding over paper,” over the course of the cycle’s evolution, the polystyrene (and the epoxy resin into which its shapes were cast) rewarded him with numerous technical discoveries that in turn inspired him to develop and renew his work. The resin allowed Dubuffet to mould durable outdoor sculptures from his fragile polystyrene maquettes and lent itself effortlessly to mimicking the whiteness and surface texture of the polystyrene. In monumental sculptures like Arbre Biplan, there is an acute tension between the weight and solidity of the sculpture’s physical reality and its polystyrene appearance.

Despite Dubuffet’s monumental ambitions for his ‘Hourloupe’ series, during his lifetime he transformed only a handful of his designs into the larger resin formats in which he had envisaged them. The majority remained in miniature: their monumental realities realised only in his imagination.