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拍品專文
“I aim for an art which would be in immediate connection with daily life, an art which would start from this daily life, and which would be a very direct and very sincere expression of our real life and our real moods”
Jean Dubuffet.
Dubuffet’s elegant and captivating Amoncellement à l’épi emerges out of the artist’s iconic L’Hourloupe cycle as a three-dimensional construction adorned with uniform black lines embodying a graphic message articulated within an undifferentiated universe. The eight variously shaped disparate elements of this construction expand this universe, offering a multiplicity of picture planes. The artist stated that rather than sculpture, works from this series “should be considered drawings which extend and expand in space,” and the intricate integration of the different elements into a singular form offers the artist ample surface area to explore illusionary effects (“Remarks on the Unveiling of the Group of Four Trees” quoted in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973, p. 36).
The present work exemplifies Dubuffet’s long study of art brut—works created by artists without academic training, seen in street art and outsider art as well as the work of children. Dubuffet saw in these works powerful raw expressions of emotion unrestrained by the art historical canon or visual tradition. Embracing these outsider artists, Amoncellement à l’épi belongs more to a mental than to a physical register, its almost phantasmatic quality conjured by the unsteady illusion of depth producing an unreal semblance for which Dubuffet describes works from this period as simulacres.
He began his L’Hourloupe cycle with a series of polychrome paintings employing the same meandering, uninterrupted and uniform line used in the present work. It diffuses across the surface of the canvas, generating a topography of formalized abstraction through which figures and objects seem to emerge. Dubuffet invented the term L’Hourloupe, observing that the pronunciation of the word evokes both some “grotesque object” and “something rumbling and threatening” (ibid., p. 35). Dubuffet felt restricted by the two-dimensionality of the canvas and, seeking to imbue his work with greater corporality, “undertook to assimilate them to three-dimensional forms, presenting, as do all solids, several sides to the observer” (ibid., p. 36).
The fruit of this effort, Amoncellement à l’épi, is a constituent of the black-and-white works which Dubuffet created between 1969-1970. Always attuned to materiality, Dubuffet carved the work with a heated wire and painted with epoxy paint. His reliance on industrial materials comes from his rejection of Occidental culture and his perception of how Western artistic production suffocates divergent practices and styles in its pursuit of a predetermined monoculture: “Western thought is polluted by its thirst for coherence, its illusion of coherence” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in Asphyxiating Culture and Other Writings, New York, 1988, p. 37). The present work articulates the artist’s rebellion against this crisis of Western culture by revealing the “arbitrary and specious character” of what he saw as the orthodox artistic logos, reinterpreting the world through a different logos which Dubuffet coins as “logogriph,” with griph—a puzzle or riddle—emphasizing the enigmatic nature of his constructions and the various interpretative paths they create (J. Dubuffet, quoted in 1969 Letter to Arne Glimcher, Paris, 1969, pp. 3-4).
Dubuffet’s highly individualized artistic practice sought to eschew traditional aesthetics in favor of a more authentic vision. While Dubuffet’s interest in deconstructing the picture plane and constantly reorienting perspectival points is attuned to the legacy of artists such as Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee, the artist remains in his own league among fellow twentieth century artists in terms of his ability to construct and articulate a profoundly personal visual vocabulary. Amoncellement à l’épi is testament to Dubuffet’s defining individualism, an exceptional work which prefigures by decades the institutional critique and interest in outsider art explored in this year’s Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere.
Jean Dubuffet.
Dubuffet’s elegant and captivating Amoncellement à l’épi emerges out of the artist’s iconic L’Hourloupe cycle as a three-dimensional construction adorned with uniform black lines embodying a graphic message articulated within an undifferentiated universe. The eight variously shaped disparate elements of this construction expand this universe, offering a multiplicity of picture planes. The artist stated that rather than sculpture, works from this series “should be considered drawings which extend and expand in space,” and the intricate integration of the different elements into a singular form offers the artist ample surface area to explore illusionary effects (“Remarks on the Unveiling of the Group of Four Trees” quoted in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973, p. 36).
The present work exemplifies Dubuffet’s long study of art brut—works created by artists without academic training, seen in street art and outsider art as well as the work of children. Dubuffet saw in these works powerful raw expressions of emotion unrestrained by the art historical canon or visual tradition. Embracing these outsider artists, Amoncellement à l’épi belongs more to a mental than to a physical register, its almost phantasmatic quality conjured by the unsteady illusion of depth producing an unreal semblance for which Dubuffet describes works from this period as simulacres.
He began his L’Hourloupe cycle with a series of polychrome paintings employing the same meandering, uninterrupted and uniform line used in the present work. It diffuses across the surface of the canvas, generating a topography of formalized abstraction through which figures and objects seem to emerge. Dubuffet invented the term L’Hourloupe, observing that the pronunciation of the word evokes both some “grotesque object” and “something rumbling and threatening” (ibid., p. 35). Dubuffet felt restricted by the two-dimensionality of the canvas and, seeking to imbue his work with greater corporality, “undertook to assimilate them to three-dimensional forms, presenting, as do all solids, several sides to the observer” (ibid., p. 36).
The fruit of this effort, Amoncellement à l’épi, is a constituent of the black-and-white works which Dubuffet created between 1969-1970. Always attuned to materiality, Dubuffet carved the work with a heated wire and painted with epoxy paint. His reliance on industrial materials comes from his rejection of Occidental culture and his perception of how Western artistic production suffocates divergent practices and styles in its pursuit of a predetermined monoculture: “Western thought is polluted by its thirst for coherence, its illusion of coherence” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in Asphyxiating Culture and Other Writings, New York, 1988, p. 37). The present work articulates the artist’s rebellion against this crisis of Western culture by revealing the “arbitrary and specious character” of what he saw as the orthodox artistic logos, reinterpreting the world through a different logos which Dubuffet coins as “logogriph,” with griph—a puzzle or riddle—emphasizing the enigmatic nature of his constructions and the various interpretative paths they create (J. Dubuffet, quoted in 1969 Letter to Arne Glimcher, Paris, 1969, pp. 3-4).
Dubuffet’s highly individualized artistic practice sought to eschew traditional aesthetics in favor of a more authentic vision. While Dubuffet’s interest in deconstructing the picture plane and constantly reorienting perspectival points is attuned to the legacy of artists such as Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee, the artist remains in his own league among fellow twentieth century artists in terms of his ability to construct and articulate a profoundly personal visual vocabulary. Amoncellement à l’épi is testament to Dubuffet’s defining individualism, an exceptional work which prefigures by decades the institutional critique and interest in outsider art explored in this year’s Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere.