尚·杜布菲

Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris

Dr. Maunoury-Joignul, Quimper

Galerie Baudoin-Lebon, Paris

Private Collection, Florida

Sale: Christie’s, New York, Contemporary Art Part I, 7 May 1997, Lot 62

Pace Wildenstein, New York

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Paris, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Jean Dubuffet, Ustensiles, Demeures, Escaliers, 1967, n.p., no. 14, illustrated 

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Jean Dubuffet: Retrospektive, 1985-86, n.p., no. 30, illustrated in colour

New York, Gallery Urban, Jean Dubuffet Retrospective, 1986, n.p., no. 14, illustrated 

Tokyo, Art Centre Hall, Dubuffet, 1986, n.p., no. 14, illustrated 

Max Loreau, Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fasc XXII: Cartes, Ustensiles, Paris 1972, p. 140, no. 361, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate although the background is warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is some minor wear to the bottom right and top left extreme corner tips. Very close inspection reveals short and unobtrusive hairline drying cracks in places throughout. Close inspection reveals minute fly spots in isolated places. No restoration is apparent when examined under-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Explosive in its sheer vitality and forcefully volumetric across the entirety of its dynamic composition, Escalier III presents a totemic web of woven and tangled shapes, which simultaneously beg and inhibit analytic description. Measuring two and a half metres in height, and focussing on a subject that is at once typical of Dubuffet’s oeuvre and significant within it, it is a work that is as impressive in stature as it is in content; a superb example of perhaps the most recognisable artistic language of the Twentieth Century.

The Escalier series, encompassing thirty-three works, was created in the first part of 1967; examples are now held in the permanent collections at the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum Boijman von Beuningen. In focussing on such a fundamental architectural feature as a stair case, Dubuffet was acting in a manner archetypal of the Art Brut school that he founded; he eschewed the paradigms of high art and rejected the historically grandiose subject matters of Western culture in favour of mundane objects from everyday life. Dubuffet wanted to express man’s natural state rather than his cultural afterthoughts: “When one has looked at a painting of this kind, one looks at everything with a new refreshed eye, and one learns to see the unaccustomed and amusing side of things. When I say amusing, I do not mean solely the funny side, but also the grand, the moving and even the tragic aspects [of ordinary things]" (Jean Dubuffet quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, 1973, p. 23). According to these criteria, the present work is to be considered consummately successful.

However, even amongst the quotidian subjects immortalised by Dubuffet, the Escaliers are significant. The artist had lived on the Rue de Vaugirard near Montparnasse in Paris since 1945 and stayed there until his death forty years later. It had been purpose built in 1928 by avant-garde architect Auguste Perret as a studio/residence for the polish painter Mela Muter; Dubuffet absolutely adored it. He wrote to Perret in 1946: “I understand that the architecture of these parts, arrangements and proportions of the walls, doors, partitions, are a language, that constantly speaks to the ear of the user of the house” (Jean Dubuffet quoted in: Edouard Launet, ‘Dubuffet or Spirit of the Staircase’, Libération, 9 December 2013, online resource). Within the building, the stairs were perhaps his favourite part: “I assure you that I go up and down every day at least twenty times more than necessary” (Ibid.). Thus, in this context, the subject of this work – already apt for the artistic movement in which it was created – takes on a mood of personal affection and familiarity.

The Hourloupe cycle, the culmination of Dubuffet’s pictorial ambitions and the wider series to which the present work belongs, was begun in 1962 in the year after the artist returned to Paris from an extended stay in Vence in the South of France. The series, which occupied Dubuffet for over a decade, represented a marked shift in his dialogue. The recurrent subjects of his life-long activity – the themes of the human figure, landscape, and the mundane object – coalesced in these works, spreading and flowing into one another, contoured by black outlines and populated with a predominance of primary red and blue zones on a white ground. The result is, as maintained by Gaëton Picon, are “a true system, a net in which everything is caught, a grille through which everything is seen, in fact an alphabet… with which everything is said: a set of preconditions for imaginative perception, within which it is possible to see everything, and outside which it is not possible to see anything” (Gaëton Picon quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Waddington Galleries, Jean Dubuffet, 1972, p. 39). Implicit in this evaluation is the notion of utter absorption, visually and psychically, within the painted surface, a sensation that is inescapable when confronting the present work.