Paris 1942.
A 41 year old wine merchant makes a third attempt
at becoming a painter
His name is Jean Dubuffet
and he's on his way to becoming one of the
most provocative artists of the 20th century
In a world ravaged by war,
the grand traditions of the ‘Beaux-Arts’ feel dead
Dubuffet searches for a more visceral language
A brutal aesthetic that expresses a more intense reality
He takes inspiration from cave paintings graffiti and creations from children tattooists
incarcerated artists, and patients in psychiatric care
Like an alchemist, he turns his studio into a laboratory
blending paint with mud, tar, sand, coal dust, pebbles, and shards of glass
His exhibitions provoke public outrage but artists revere his rebellious spirit
His main advice was clear-cut
Paint boldly
Feel inspired? Here's Dubuffet's top 10 tips for artists
Gravitating towards unconventional materials
rather than the expensive supplies sold in traditional art shops,
Dubuffet experimented in all directions
wanting to go against the grain of common sense
'Team up with chance', he declared
'An artwork is all the more enthralling the more of an adventure it has been on'
'What interests me is not cake, it's bread'
He wanted to create art that would be more modest
and could speak to the average person in the street
'I want painting that smells of life,
decorations, distempers, shop signs, and the heel's traces in the earth'
Dubuffet knew that his work could provoke strong reactions
In 1944, he opened his first solo exhibition at the René Drouin Gallery in Paris
Critics were outraged by his gaudy palette and childlike style
leading to public demonstrations in front of the gallery
Rather than shutting it down, he extended the show,
hiring security guards to protect the paintings
It was a sell out.
Dubuffet saw materiality as the true language of painting
'Art should be borne of the material and retain the marks left by the tools'
'Each material has its own language and spirituality
and should borrow the language of the material'
'The secret is to do a thing badly.
If you serve someone spinach cooked in the way it should be
no one notices or remembers that they have eaten spinach
If you burn it, it shocks their taste buds
and they become immediately aware that it is burnt spinach
and they gain new insights into the characteristics of spinach and cooking'
Some of Dubuffet's paintings were so materially rich
that they literally melted off the canvas
Not a problem for an artist interested in the game of playing
with putting his treasures in peril
'When we're at the point of losing something it becomes illuminated'
Dubuffet praised instinct and passion over reason and logic
'A painter's basic action is not to spread tinted liquids
with a tiny pen or a lock of hair
plunge your hands into brimming buckets or basins
and then rub your hands and fingers across the wall'
in the 1960s duba faye worked on his longest cycle loop which he saw as his own parallel universe
Emerging from a single unbroken line traveling from drawings to paintings
to sculptures to architecture
'Let the mind see-saw,
let it rave'
'The highest degree of delirium further than any alcohol can go'
'Art is the most passionate orgy within man's reach'
Over 40 years Dubuffet experimented with very different styles
Constantly moving between abstraction and figuration
'Art has to proceed from two different poles like an electric arc
if one manages to dominate the light will dim
Dubuffet regretted that people became suspicious of anything pleasurable in art
'Those who would oppose virtue to pleasure
are seeking to establish an art that would exclude pleasure
and require only effort, valour and difficulty
Such arts are usually the opposite of art
Embrace a good joke as it shares common blood with art
the unforeseen, the unusual is their shared domain'