Jean Dubuffet

Galerie Ariel, Paris
Eiteljorg Family Collection, Indianapolis
Sale: Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art, 5 February 2004, Lot 36
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Paris, Cercle Volney, Jean Dubuffet, 1954, no.116

Max Loreau, Catalogue Intégral des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, Fascicule VIII: Lieux Momantanés, Pâtes Battues, Paris 1989, p. 59, no. 64, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. The catalogue illustration fails to fully convey the vibrant multi-coloured highlights apparent within the cream pigment in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is minor canvas buckling in the top corners. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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In the early 1950s, Jean Dubuffet turned his focus toward landscape painting, often depicting fictitious scenes he called “landscapes of the mind.” The present work, Paysages aux Griffures (1953) is one such landscape that illustrates an imagined location, ambiguously nestled between fantasy and reality. The picture plane of Paysage aux Griffures clearly divides sky and ground, yet the ground occupies the majority of the composition so the picture resembles a vertical cross-section of soil, almost like an archaeological site. Perhaps this work foreshadows Dubuffet’s texturologies and topographies series from the late 1950s in which the artist endeavored a full exploration of techniques to convey the physical materiality of soil.

 

Throughout his career, Dubuffet experimented with varied materials and processes to structurally transform his canvases, and in the 1950s, he began coating layer upon layer of paint onto the surface, thickening the impasto to become whipped up and malleable. From there, he would scratch away at the paint, revealing underlying layers of colours and creating a three-dimensional texture. Dubuffet fetishised this novel technique in his memoir: “I derived a curiously keen satisfaction from these designs cut into the paste...I am at a loss to explain just what it was in these paintings that gave me - that still gives me - such a keen satisfaction. It probably has something to do with the physical pleasure derived from spreading freely, with a large spatula as broad as one's hand, this beautiful white paste, dazzling and consistent, over a ground previously covered with dark colours, and then letting the long knife with rounded end wander over the smooth paste, tracing with such perfect ease graffiti of sonorous colour” (Jean Dubuffet, Memoir on the Development of My Work from 1952, pp. 73-138).

 

This period in Dubuffet’s career came on the heels of his visit to New York, where he met the preeminent Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock. Dubuffet was moved by the all-over composition, layered paints and pure, total abstraction of Pollock’s canvases and began integrating increasingly abstract and textured surfaces into his established aesthetic. Pollock’s physical engagement with his canvas as he poured, smeared and dripped paint along the canvas inspired Dubuffet to scrape away at the canvas, swapping a paint brush for a palette knife, resulting in a web of interconnected lines and silhouettes. The title of Paysage aux Griffures, which translates to “landscape of scratches,” makes direct reference to this physical technique. Through this process, Dubuffet transformed how he interacted with his art as vague forms emerge organically and often by chance, creating a in a wholly novel composition, texture and aesthetic.