Jean Dubuffet

Private Collection, Paris
Richard L. Feigen & Co, New York
William Pall Gallery, New York
Private Collection, USA
Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1978

Bruxelles, Galerie Geert van Bruaene, Le Diable par la Queue, Dessins et Peintures de Jean Dubuffet, 1949, no. 04
Paris, Cercle Volney, Exposition de peintures, dessins et divers travaux exécutés de 1942 á 1954 par Jean Dubuffet, 1954, no. 40
Leverkusen, Château de Morsbroich, Jean Dubuffet, 1957, no. 10
Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft; Zürich, Kunsthaus, Jean Dubuffet, 1960-61, p. 12, no. 23, illustrated
Zürich, Kunsthaus, Jean Dubuffet, 1960-61, p. 12, no. 25, illustrated
New York, Richard L. Feigen & Co, Dubuffet and the Anticulture, 1969-70, p. 22, no. 10, illustrated
New York, William Pall Gallery, Dubuffet, 1976
Chicago, The David and Alfred Smart Gallery, The University of Chicago; Saint Louis, Washington University Gallery of Art, Jean Dubuffet: Forty Years of His Art, 1984-85. p. 15, no. 18, illustrated in colour
New York, Wildenstein Gallery & Pace Gallery, Jean Dubuffet, a Retrospective, 1987 
Madrid, Fundación La Caixa, Jean Dubuffet, Del Paisaje Físico al Paisaje Mental, 1992, p. 95, no. 77, illustrated in colour
Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Jean Dubuffet 1943-1963, 1993, p. 69, no. 25, illustrated in colour

Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet: Roses d'Allah, Clown du Désert, fascicule IV, Paris 1967, p. 122, no. 232, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter and more vibrant in the original. The illustration fails to convey the rich texture of the paint surface. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals a few hairline cracks in places throughout the composition. There are very minor losses to the extreme tips to the top and bottom right corners and two small losses to the extreme bottom left corner and towards the right centre of the bottom extreme overturn edge, visible in the catalogue illustration. There is rubbing to the extreme overturn edge towards the top right corner. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
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"Let us seek instead ingenious ways to flatten objects on the surface; and let the surface speak its own language and not an artificial language of three-dimensional space which is not proper to it. ... I feel the need to leave the surface visibly flat. The objects represented will be transformed into pancakes, as though flattened by a pressing iron.''

The artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, 1973, p. 24

Executed very early in the artist's mature career, Arabe au Fusil materialises the insatiable joy and vivacious energy of Jean Dubuffet's interpretation of the visual world around him. Having just spent several months in the Algerian Sahara Desert he was fascinated by the desert way of life and Arabic culture. Isolated from the conventions and doctrines of European culture, Dubuffet was enraptured both by the extraordinary nature of the Saharan environment and by the customs and way of life of the desert peoples and when he returned to Paris he immediately committed to studying Arabic and Arabian literature. The present work beautifully encapsulates this fascination and enthusiasm, and marks the inception and development of many technical and aesthetic possibilities that came to occupy much of this immortal artist's career.

Epitomising Dubuffet's desire to interact directly with what he saw as the inherently animate nature of the materials, this magisterial portrait emerges out of the variegated landscape of paint through faceted slabs of sumptuous colour and the negative relief of lines incised by his vibrant palette knife. Indeed, Arabe au Fusil serves as physical testament to the artist's comment on his use of material to imitate the corporeality of man's interaction with natural landscapes: "Mud, waste and dirt, which are man's companion throughout his life, should they not be his most treasured possession and is it not a service to him to remind him of their beauty?" (the artist cited in: Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fasicule II, 1966, p. 13). The textural depth and energy of the surface exposes Dubuffet's fascination with the flowing continuity of surface, which finds apt analogy with his experience of the Sahara's endless, ever-shifting and desolate landscape.

In the thick impasto hautes pâte Dubuffet has mixed and scraped the material into a vibrant, living surface: an organic topography of paint that breathes life into the gun-wielding character and his exotic surroundings. Dubuffet extended the boundaries of what can be achieved in paint, exploiting the expressive possibilities of the matière. Here his treatment of the rolling sandy dunes that contextualise the figure are replete with visceral mark-making and an intense assault of texture and colour right up to the very high horizon line. These features of the painting amply evidence Dubuffet's early interest in abstraction, which was of course finally to develop fully in his series the L'Hourloupe.

The extraordinary relief of Arabe au Fusil is enhanced by the layering of the hues which erupt across the surface with freshness and intensity. The rich array of deep ochres are set against the bright blue sky with the beaming sun at its centre, pushing against the very top of the composition, while the figure is accented by the rosy cheeks that have been lathered on with solid crimson, contrasting in both hue and texture with the scrawled and etched beard that frames the face. The avid colouristic and textural variety ingrained upon the terrain of the canvas harbours wide-ranging connotations from ancient ruins and archaeological excavations, to the art of children and the insane, to the haphazard aesthetics of street culture and graffiti, which Brassai was photographing in Paris at this time.

Having first travelled to Algiers with his wife Lili in February 1947, in total Dubuffet spent several months in the Sahara Desert during three trips in the late 1940s. There he found a methodology of existence that brilliantly resounded with his ambition to create a new art that cast aside the learned artistic techniques and modernist aesthetic of his pre-war style. There is of course a long tradition of French artists who have visited North Africa, from Eugène Delacroix to Auguste Renoir to Henri Matisse, who all ended up there in search of new inspiration. After the Second World War Dubuffet was confronted with a deep angst and consumed with the need to rid visual art of its affected heroics and cultural inhibitions. The development of his mature oeuvre from 1943 onwards was characterised by a move away from such traditions as three-dimensional perspective, volumetric illusion and prescribed colour relationships and towards a new kind of art. In this context the desert and its people became the ideal facilitator of his more immediate and invigorated spiritual approach to painting, and Arabe au Fusil should thus be seen as a painting of tremendous historical significance.