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Lot Essay
The comic and childlike qualities of Dubuffet's Chevaux de Sylvain are indicative of his desire to strip away all that he had learnt and seen of culture and classical style in order to return to artistic innocence. The unique works that Dubuffet produced throughout his lifetime in this spirit of naivety have rendered him one of the most influential artists of the post-war generation.
Dubuffet describes the traditional notion of female beauty, and the way that this has been represented in art over the centuries, as 'miserable and most depressing'. The figures in his Corps de Dames paintings appear almost monstrous, so removed are they from classical portrayals of beauty. However, Dubuffet claims that the beauty he is aiming to portray is a beauty that anyone and anything can possess. In Chevaux de Sylvain the artist does not depict the woman's profile in a traditional style, but dispenses with proportion, and with the details that make faces individual, in favour of accentuated features and a strikingly comic overall effect. This is enhanced by the delicate beauty and intricacy of the butterfly wings.
Dubuffet first used butterflies in his works in 1953, and he continued to do so until 1957. He was fascinated by the effects that their beauty enabled him to create, and described this as 'a diaphanous iridescent haze, impossible to analyse and richly luminous'. Even after the artist ceased to make butterfly paintings, he attempted to create the effects of these works through other methods.
The very material used (altogether unusual) and the play of the sinews, added a strange irreality to the paintings, but a compelling authority as well, due to the impression it gave of cohesion, of necessity, of an inexplicable logic, that set of reasons foreign to the reasons of the objects themselves.
The medium is reminiscent of 'l'art brut', a concept with which Dubuffet was intrigued. In 1949, the first exhibition of 'l'art brut' took place at the René Drouin gallery in Paris; the works were almost exclusively made by the institutionalised insane or artists who had lived in isolation and were unaffected by culture. As a result, the pieces in the exhibition embodied the naivety that Dubuffet favoured, and were created using a variety of unusual unrefined materials, such as shells, cork, bark and animal teeth. Dubuffet greatly admired the use of raw materials, in the same way that he sought inspiration in ordinary life rather than in museums: 'What interests me is not cake but bread'. His use of butterflies reflects this interest, and the fragility and intensity of the wings exemplify the astounding beauty that is present in the everyday.
Dubuffet describes the traditional notion of female beauty, and the way that this has been represented in art over the centuries, as 'miserable and most depressing'. The figures in his Corps de Dames paintings appear almost monstrous, so removed are they from classical portrayals of beauty. However, Dubuffet claims that the beauty he is aiming to portray is a beauty that anyone and anything can possess. In Chevaux de Sylvain the artist does not depict the woman's profile in a traditional style, but dispenses with proportion, and with the details that make faces individual, in favour of accentuated features and a strikingly comic overall effect. This is enhanced by the delicate beauty and intricacy of the butterfly wings.
Dubuffet first used butterflies in his works in 1953, and he continued to do so until 1957. He was fascinated by the effects that their beauty enabled him to create, and described this as 'a diaphanous iridescent haze, impossible to analyse and richly luminous'. Even after the artist ceased to make butterfly paintings, he attempted to create the effects of these works through other methods.
The very material used (altogether unusual) and the play of the sinews, added a strange irreality to the paintings, but a compelling authority as well, due to the impression it gave of cohesion, of necessity, of an inexplicable logic, that set of reasons foreign to the reasons of the objects themselves.
The medium is reminiscent of 'l'art brut', a concept with which Dubuffet was intrigued. In 1949, the first exhibition of 'l'art brut' took place at the René Drouin gallery in Paris; the works were almost exclusively made by the institutionalised insane or artists who had lived in isolation and were unaffected by culture. As a result, the pieces in the exhibition embodied the naivety that Dubuffet favoured, and were created using a variety of unusual unrefined materials, such as shells, cork, bark and animal teeth. Dubuffet greatly admired the use of raw materials, in the same way that he sought inspiration in ordinary life rather than in museums: 'What interests me is not cake but bread'. His use of butterflies reflects this interest, and the fragility and intensity of the wings exemplify the astounding beauty that is present in the everyday.