Jean Dubuffet

The Pace Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Germany
Sale: Christie’s, London, Twentieth Century Art, 2 July 1998, Lot 219
Private Collection, United States
Sale: Christie's, Paris, Art Contemporain, 3 December 2012, Lot 18
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

New York, The Pace Gallery, Jean Dubuffet: Mires, 1984-85, n.p., illustrated
Luxemburg, Banque Paribas, Un Regard sur Jean Dubuffet, 1993, p. 41, no. 16, illustrated in colour
Avignon, Palais des Papes, Dubuffet: 'Hauts lieux': Paysages 1944-1984, 1994, p. 156, illustrated in colour

Max Loreau, Ed., Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fasc. XXXVI: Mires, Paris 1988, p. 29, no. 47, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although they are slightly more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals some minor wear with associates specks of loss to the upper left and two lower corner tips, and a small nick on the lower edge towards the lower right corner tip.
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Upon a vibrant yellow ground, Jean Dubuffet has created bold, free forms in rich red and blue tones in Mires G53 (Kowloon). The present work comes from the Mires series (mires coming from the verb to look in French and Spanish), which the artist painted between 1983 and 1984, towards the end of his life. In this piece, and indeed the surrounding series, Dubuffet continued to evoke both the playful and unrestrained nature of children’s drawings and street graffiti as seen in his earlier work, rejecting conventional standards of beauty and order in favour of a more authentic, almost primitive approach to artistic creation. A significant series of work from this seminal artist, his Mires paintings were exhibited at the French Pavillion of the Venice Biennale of 1984.

Through the title given to the series, Dubuffet encourages the viewer to look closely, to discover the unexpected. The subtitle of the present work, Kowloon, refers to the bustling and densely populated urban district in Hong Kong. The scribbles and bold gestures on the picture plane suggest the chaos of the streets, the stridency of noise and the swarm of bodies and energy. The physical surface created by the clouds of marks draws the viewer inwards, inviting them to become part of the hubbub. There is no narrative, no order and indeed no actual scene, no figures, but a vivid allusion to the lyrical ambiance of the Kowloon street.

There is a deliberate indeterminacy about the present work; the eye has no clear resting point or path over the picture plane. In this way, and in the sense of disorder they emit, the Mires series has been linked to Dubuffet’s earlier Texturologies and Materiologies series. This art is absent of rules, and allows the viewer to freely look on the work without any presumptions or pre-conditioning. In Mires G53 (Kowloon), Dubuffet allows the viewer to travel on a vivid adventure, confirming his ability to uncover unexplored realms of the subconscious mind.