Lot Essay
One of Dubuffet's main concerns was material: finding the right medium to express plastically his conception was of primary importance and led him to experiment more broadly than any painter since Paul Klee, whom Dubuffet held in high esteem. In some ways, the progression of his work through the 1950s might be seen as the medium taking over as the subject of his paintings. Viewed this way, The Geologist is particularly interesting: painted in Decmeber 1950, the material of the earth presses the tiny figure of the geologist up against the top of the picture. The rocky terrain takes over the surface, like a fissure in the earth caused by an earthquake or a volcano. Nothing can live under the naked sun on this parched landscape. One may only visit to observe, as the little geologist does, nature at its most primordial, uninflected by man and modern society.
"In December 1950, he painted The Geologist, a little man armed with a magnifying glass, walking over the barren crust of the earth, or perhaps on top of a cross-section of geological strata. The soil is seen head-on and simultaneously from the top, but a narrow band of sky still gives us some possibility of orientation. Soon, even the sky is eliminated and the total picture surface is covered by a hard impasto forming the relief of the landscape. The little geologist becomes engulfed in the scarred earth: we, the viewer, become, in fact, the geologist as we are offered the surface face-on for investigation..." (P. Selz, op cit, p. 55).
Dubuffet further elaborated his work for a catalog published by Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1952:
"Perhaps it was the time I spent in the deserts of White Africa that sharpened my taste (so fundamental to the mood of Islam) for the little, the almost nothing, and, especially, in my art, for the landscapes where one finds only the formless--flats without end, scattered stones--every element definitely outlined such as trees, roads, houses, etc., eliminated. Surely I love especially the earth and enjoy places of this sort. But I must say also that a picture, where a painter would have succeeded in producing strongly a presence of life without employing anything more precise than formless terrain, would be for me very worthwhile; and that is why I always come back to that enterprise. It seems to me the life enclosed in such a picture would be--by being born in such dismalness--more marvelous; and it seems to me also the effect of gasping produced by the mechanisms of the creation of life, in a painting of this kind, would be more intense than in any other, where the artist makes it easy for himself to dodge the difficulty by peopling his work with objects easily recognizable" (J. Dubuffet, Landscaped Tables, Landscapes of the Mind, Stones of Philosophy, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York 1952).
"In December 1950, he painted The Geologist, a little man armed with a magnifying glass, walking over the barren crust of the earth, or perhaps on top of a cross-section of geological strata. The soil is seen head-on and simultaneously from the top, but a narrow band of sky still gives us some possibility of orientation. Soon, even the sky is eliminated and the total picture surface is covered by a hard impasto forming the relief of the landscape. The little geologist becomes engulfed in the scarred earth: we, the viewer, become, in fact, the geologist as we are offered the surface face-on for investigation..." (P. Selz, op cit, p. 55).
Dubuffet further elaborated his work for a catalog published by Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1952:
"Perhaps it was the time I spent in the deserts of White Africa that sharpened my taste (so fundamental to the mood of Islam) for the little, the almost nothing, and, especially, in my art, for the landscapes where one finds only the formless--flats without end, scattered stones--every element definitely outlined such as trees, roads, houses, etc., eliminated. Surely I love especially the earth and enjoy places of this sort. But I must say also that a picture, where a painter would have succeeded in producing strongly a presence of life without employing anything more precise than formless terrain, would be for me very worthwhile; and that is why I always come back to that enterprise. It seems to me the life enclosed in such a picture would be--by being born in such dismalness--more marvelous; and it seems to me also the effect of gasping produced by the mechanisms of the creation of life, in a painting of this kind, would be more intense than in any other, where the artist makes it easy for himself to dodge the difficulty by peopling his work with objects easily recognizable" (J. Dubuffet, Landscaped Tables, Landscapes of the Mind, Stones of Philosophy, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York 1952).