Lot Essay
This work belongs to a series of works executed between July and September, 1954. During that summer Jean Dubuffet worked on a group of canvases using a new technique: peintures laquées or enamel paintings. A few years later the artist made the following comment on this experience.
I had decided to experiment with a new technique
based on the almost exclusive use of very fluid
industrial paints called "enamel paints"...these
particular paints were those quick-drying ones known
as "four-hour enamels." Spread over a preliminary
layer not yet completely dry, they became decomposed,
causing a fine network of fissures and crackles. I
took full advantage of this property.... I combined
these enamel paints with ordinary oil paint and, as
they displayed a lively incompatibility, the result
was a whole set of digitate spots and convolutions
which I was careful to provoke and turn to account....
After, as in The Extravagant One (Extravagant Lady),
I would often finish the painting with a little
brush, a task requiring both time and patience. This
underlined the tiny network of small veins and
oscillations provoked by the juxtaposition of the two
hostile paints....the set of reasons which governs
the images is to be found in the capricious and
complex designs that form by themselves because of
the simultaneous use of two kinds of paint with
different reactions which combine badly with each
other. Later...I deliberately set to work to adopt
their language. The result, a whole succession of
marbling (small internal branching and intricately
embellished surfaces) which succeeds in transporting
the subjects of the painting--figure, landscape or
anything else--to a world ruled by entirely different
reasons, making them appear in an unaccustomed light.
In this way, by the revelation of our familiar
objects suddenly transformed and strange, is evoked,
even quite startingly sometimes (at least for me),
these strange bewildering worlds that exercise a kind
of fascination. (exh. cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet, 1981, p. 14)
I had decided to experiment with a new technique
based on the almost exclusive use of very fluid
industrial paints called "enamel paints"...these
particular paints were those quick-drying ones known
as "four-hour enamels." Spread over a preliminary
layer not yet completely dry, they became decomposed,
causing a fine network of fissures and crackles. I
took full advantage of this property.... I combined
these enamel paints with ordinary oil paint and, as
they displayed a lively incompatibility, the result
was a whole set of digitate spots and convolutions
which I was careful to provoke and turn to account....
After, as in The Extravagant One (Extravagant Lady),
I would often finish the painting with a little
brush, a task requiring both time and patience. This
underlined the tiny network of small veins and
oscillations provoked by the juxtaposition of the two
hostile paints....the set of reasons which governs
the images is to be found in the capricious and
complex designs that form by themselves because of
the simultaneous use of two kinds of paint with
different reactions which combine badly with each
other. Later...I deliberately set to work to adopt
their language. The result, a whole succession of
marbling (small internal branching and intricately
embellished surfaces) which succeeds in transporting
the subjects of the painting--figure, landscape or
anything else--to a world ruled by entirely different
reasons, making them appear in an unaccustomed light.
In this way, by the revelation of our familiar
objects suddenly transformed and strange, is evoked,
even quite startingly sometimes (at least for me),
these strange bewildering worlds that exercise a kind
of fascination. (exh. cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet, 1981, p. 14)