Jean Dubuffet

Collection Victor K. Kiam, New York
Stephen Hahn Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Jean Dubuffet: Retrospective Exhibition 1943 - 1959, p. 65, illustrated
New York, Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles; County Museum of Art; Chicago, The Art Institute, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, 1962, p. 146, illustrated

Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fasc. XVII: Materiologies, Paris 1970, p. 56, no. 59, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: Unexamined out of its frame, this work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals some light craquelure scattered intermittently to the lighter pigment along the edges. There is a pin prick-sized loss towards the centre of the lower right quadrant. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Powerfully expressive and conveying a sensation of visceral strength, Coq à l'oeil is a magisterial work dating from a highly significant period of Jean Dubuffet’s creative development. Brilliantly conveying the artist’s fascination with the potentials of surface texture through diverse layers and striations of pigment, Coq à l'oeil re-interprets the human figure through Dubuffet’s utterly distinctive painterly parlance, resulting in a work which magnificently re-defines the conventional notions of beauty and grace through a totally innovative form of portraiture. The subject of Coq à l'oeildominates the canvas with a massive centrality, unencumbered by any suggestion of horizon or perspective, in a style that was one of the leitmotifs of Dubuffet’s figural compositions of the time. The memorable title - translating literally as ‘eye of the rooster’ or ‘cock eyed’ – was used by Dubuffet for one of his experimental musical compositions, indicating that the phrase appealed to him in its brevity and phonetics, whilst also being particularly apposite to the current lot, in which one of the subject’s eyes appears to squint downwards.  The neutral colour tones, suggestive of earth or sand, arguably indicate the inspiration of Dubuffet’s visits to the Sahara Desert in the late 1940s, experiences which were to profoundly influence the artist’s palette and technique over the following decade. Reminiscent of some primeval rock formation or rugged cliff face, Dubuffet imbues his figure with the epic grandeur of the natural forms found within one of the world’s most dramatic and hostile environments: the desert.

Alongside other artists active in Paris in the decade following the end of the Second World War, in particular Wols and Jean Fautrier, Dubuffet championed the emerging movements of Art Brut and Art Autre, embracing a style which utilised sometimes rudimentary materials and rough textures far removed from the smooth finish of traditional painting. In his quest to forge an entirely innovative artistic language, one that was unconnected to conventional Western notions of beauty, Dubuffet was especially drawn to so called ‘primitive’ art as well as that produced by mental patients. The artist believed that these forms of creative effort were closer to the truth of the subliminal unconscious, resulting in a more realistic artistic language devoid of unnecessary aesthetic ornamentation. The importance of this concept as a driving force behind his stylistic methods was outlined by Dubuffet in a speech in 1951: “Western man believes that he can use thought to achieve perfect insight into things… But ‘primitive man’ tends to see reason and logic as an affliction… For this reason he values and admires the mental conditions that we define as delirium. "I must confess that I am intensely interested in delirium and I am convinced that art is very closely linked with it" (the artist, cited in Exhibition Catalogue, Bilbao, Guggenheim, Jean Dubuffet, Trace of an Adventure, 2003-04, p. 33). In its simplified yet commanding composition, Coq à l'oeil reflects the inspiration of earlier and ‘outsider’ art forms whilst celebrating and elevating an ordinary personage through means of portraiture, a genre redolent with historical associations. Ultimately Coq à l'oeil is a truly superb painting that magnificently epitomises the key creative ideals and concerns of one of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century.