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Lot Essay
'Dubuffet let his ball point pen wander aimlessly over some small pieces of paper, and out of these doodles emerged a number of semi-automatic drawings, which he struck through with red and blue lines. The painter cut out these as yet undetermined compositions and quickly observed that they changed aspect as soon as they were placed against a black background'
(M. Loreau, Catalogues des travaux de Jean Dubuffett, fascicule XX, Paris, 1966, p. 15).
Between the summer of 1962 and the autumn of 1974 the French painter Jean Dubuffet began what was to become his most innovative series of work to date. As part of this celebrated group of paintings that became known as L'Hourloupe, Massif aux Échancres, is comprised of series of diverse and vibrant interlocking forms that wrestle and tumble across the picture plane. Not completely abstract, nor completely figurative, the forms take on a vestige of humanity whilst not completely succumbing to the traditions of figurative painting. 'Hourloupe', a name Dubuffet says 'invented just for the sound of it. In French it calls to mind some object or personage of a fairytale-like and grotesque state and at the same time also something tragically growling and menacing.' (Dubuffet, quoted in A. Franze (ed.), Dubuffet, New York 1981, p. 159). Like the name L'Hourloupe, Massif aux Échancres is at once familiar yet at the same appears to distance itself from the basic human requirement for classification.
Painted in 1971, Massif aux Échancres is directly based on Dubuffet's unique method of semi-autonomous drawing that Dubuffet first started making whilst on the telephone. By combining these chance forms created by spontaneous and unconscious movements of the pen to create a series of indeterminate shapes, Dubuffet was able to arrange the elements in such a way that they evoke the figurative world, yet remain a deliberate, jangling chaos, filled with his customary sense of fun and play.
In addition to its visual energy, Massif aux Échancres's monumental size and method of execution adds an additional, exciting dimension to the work. Painted with acrylic paints on canvas and then mounted on a foam-like klegecell board, the resulting highlighted silhouette gives concrete form to a previously one dimensional object. The work now encompasses three venerable artistic traditions; drawing, painting and sculpture and in doing so gives us an additional sense of movement which seeks to enhance Dubuffet's already energetic execution of his work.
The Hourloupe paintings reached their true culmination in Coucou Bazar, the play-like visual extravaganza that Dubuffet organised over the two years after Massif aux Échancres was created and which was finally shown at his retrospectives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Grand Palais, Paris. Looking at the jumpy visual energy that fills Massif aux Échancres with its striating lines in bold colours contrasting so boldly with the white ground, one can see that it was probably no coincidence that the genesis of the Hourloupe came just after Dubuffet's celebrated Paris Circus series, in which the chaotic jumble of life in the French capital was captured in all its variety.
To some degree, Coucou Bazar and all the works associated with it should be seen as an extension or reincarnation of that series. And yet Dubuffet has very deliberately conjured this world into existence in a way that precludes any real differentiation on the viewer's part between the world of the stage and the human figures. These boundaries have been deliberately blurred by the 'uninterrupted and resolutely uniform meandering script, (unifying all planes to the frontal plane, paying no heed to the particular space of the object described, neither its dimensions, nor its distance nor closeness) thereby abolishing all particularities, all categories... so that this consistently uniform script indifferently applied to all things (and it should be emphasised, not only visible objects but also invisible inventions of our thoughts, imagination or fantasy; mixed together without discrimination) will reduce them all to the lowest common denominator and restitute a continuous undifferentiated universe; it will thereby dissolve the categories which our mind habitually employs to decipher (better to say cipher) the facts and spectacles of the world. Herewith the circulation of the mind from one object to another, from one category to another will be liberated and its mobility greatly increased' (Dubuffet, quoted in M. Rowell, 'Jean Dubuffet: An Art on the Margins of Culture', pp. 15-34, in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, New York 1973, p. 26).
Although at the time, works such as Massif aux Échancres were seen as a radical departure from his earlier work, they are now regarded as the most considered works of his later career. In 1973, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York held a retrospective of his work, where these works were received with rapt attention. Thomas M. Messer, the director of the museum at the time, summed up the excitement that surrounded works such as Massif aux Échancres , "L'Hourloupe which, separated from the long lineage of Dubuffet's previous workconstitutes a radical break with the earlier modes and furnishes a dramatic example of Dubuffet's capacity for self-renewal. It is a phase that preoccupied the artist longer and more intensely than any previous one, allowing him to give expression to a rich diversity of thought within the defined framework of a particular formal premise."
(T.M. Messer, quoted in A. Franze (ed.), Dubuffet, New York 1981, p. 159).
(M. Loreau, Catalogues des travaux de Jean Dubuffett, fascicule XX, Paris, 1966, p. 15).
Between the summer of 1962 and the autumn of 1974 the French painter Jean Dubuffet began what was to become his most innovative series of work to date. As part of this celebrated group of paintings that became known as L'Hourloupe, Massif aux Échancres, is comprised of series of diverse and vibrant interlocking forms that wrestle and tumble across the picture plane. Not completely abstract, nor completely figurative, the forms take on a vestige of humanity whilst not completely succumbing to the traditions of figurative painting. 'Hourloupe', a name Dubuffet says 'invented just for the sound of it. In French it calls to mind some object or personage of a fairytale-like and grotesque state and at the same time also something tragically growling and menacing.' (Dubuffet, quoted in A. Franze (ed.), Dubuffet, New York 1981, p. 159). Like the name L'Hourloupe, Massif aux Échancres is at once familiar yet at the same appears to distance itself from the basic human requirement for classification.
Painted in 1971, Massif aux Échancres is directly based on Dubuffet's unique method of semi-autonomous drawing that Dubuffet first started making whilst on the telephone. By combining these chance forms created by spontaneous and unconscious movements of the pen to create a series of indeterminate shapes, Dubuffet was able to arrange the elements in such a way that they evoke the figurative world, yet remain a deliberate, jangling chaos, filled with his customary sense of fun and play.
In addition to its visual energy, Massif aux Échancres's monumental size and method of execution adds an additional, exciting dimension to the work. Painted with acrylic paints on canvas and then mounted on a foam-like klegecell board, the resulting highlighted silhouette gives concrete form to a previously one dimensional object. The work now encompasses three venerable artistic traditions; drawing, painting and sculpture and in doing so gives us an additional sense of movement which seeks to enhance Dubuffet's already energetic execution of his work.
The Hourloupe paintings reached their true culmination in Coucou Bazar, the play-like visual extravaganza that Dubuffet organised over the two years after Massif aux Échancres was created and which was finally shown at his retrospectives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Grand Palais, Paris. Looking at the jumpy visual energy that fills Massif aux Échancres with its striating lines in bold colours contrasting so boldly with the white ground, one can see that it was probably no coincidence that the genesis of the Hourloupe came just after Dubuffet's celebrated Paris Circus series, in which the chaotic jumble of life in the French capital was captured in all its variety.
To some degree, Coucou Bazar and all the works associated with it should be seen as an extension or reincarnation of that series. And yet Dubuffet has very deliberately conjured this world into existence in a way that precludes any real differentiation on the viewer's part between the world of the stage and the human figures. These boundaries have been deliberately blurred by the 'uninterrupted and resolutely uniform meandering script, (unifying all planes to the frontal plane, paying no heed to the particular space of the object described, neither its dimensions, nor its distance nor closeness) thereby abolishing all particularities, all categories... so that this consistently uniform script indifferently applied to all things (and it should be emphasised, not only visible objects but also invisible inventions of our thoughts, imagination or fantasy; mixed together without discrimination) will reduce them all to the lowest common denominator and restitute a continuous undifferentiated universe; it will thereby dissolve the categories which our mind habitually employs to decipher (better to say cipher) the facts and spectacles of the world. Herewith the circulation of the mind from one object to another, from one category to another will be liberated and its mobility greatly increased' (Dubuffet, quoted in M. Rowell, 'Jean Dubuffet: An Art on the Margins of Culture', pp. 15-34, in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, New York 1973, p. 26).
Although at the time, works such as Massif aux Échancres were seen as a radical departure from his earlier work, they are now regarded as the most considered works of his later career. In 1973, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York held a retrospective of his work, where these works were received with rapt attention. Thomas M. Messer, the director of the museum at the time, summed up the excitement that surrounded works such as Massif aux Échancres , "L'Hourloupe which, separated from the long lineage of Dubuffet's previous workconstitutes a radical break with the earlier modes and furnishes a dramatic example of Dubuffet's capacity for self-renewal. It is a phase that preoccupied the artist longer and more intensely than any previous one, allowing him to give expression to a rich diversity of thought within the defined framework of a particular formal premise."
(T.M. Messer, quoted in A. Franze (ed.), Dubuffet, New York 1981, p. 159).