Le nez au vent

'For a portrait to function really well, I need it to be barely a portrait. At the limit that it is no longer a portrait. It is then that its function takes its full force. I love things taken to their extreme limit' (J. Dubuffet quoted in People are much more beautiful than they think, exh. cat., Galerie René Drouin, Paris, 1947)

Bearing a striking resemblance to the artist himself, Le nez au vent is a rare example of male portraiture within the artist's pivotal Corps de Dames series. From deep within the impastoed layers of paint, a jovially confident man emerges, his face illuminated with a beaming smile, his chest puffed with pride. With a buoyant assertiveness, the gentleman subject meets the viewer's gaze. The distinctive nose playfully referenced in the title suggests self-portraiture; exaggerated in side-profile, the elongated nose turned up in the air, calls attentions to the distinctive feature of the artist, wryly drawing a direct and unmistakable connection to the artist himself.

Completed in March of 1950, Le nez au vent is executed in the painterly tradition that would come to define the artist's seminal Corps de Dames series from the same year. The sculptural, claylike quality of the multilayered surface is scraped back to reveal palimpsests of rich plum through a palette of scorched ochre, requiring an almost archeological investigation into the raw reduction of forms.
In contrast to the splayed, deconstructed female form in the Corps de Dames series, the distinctive characteristics of Le nez au vent denotes a work focused solely on the representation of the figure. The prominent figure is deliberately flattened and reduced to its most basic forms, his silhouette articulated by deep scours scratched into thick impasto. As the artist suggested, 'for a portrait to function really well, I need it to be barely a portrait. At the limit that it is no longer a portrait. It is then that its function takes its full force. I love things taken to their extreme limit' (J. Dubuffet quoted in People are much more beautiful than they think, exh. cat., Galerie René Drouin, Paris, 1947). Here, through the most minimal of features, a vibrant, animated personality emanates from the gentleman figure. It is clear that Dubuffet has imbued his own exuberance into Le nez au vent, the figure seemingly sharing in the artist's cheerful joie de vivre and an exultation of spirit.

Recalling Dubuffet's fascination and early interest with the art of the primitive, the work evokes the aesthetic tradition first explored in his early development of Art Brut. Testament to its resonance with this movement, Le nez au vent was consigned by Michel Tapié in 1952 to coincide with the influential Art Autre exhibition. Curated by Tapié, Dubuffet was exhibited alongside significant artists such as Jackson Pollock, Karel Appel, Sam Francis, Wols and Jean-Paul Riopelle. Juxtaposed against the Abstract Expressionist and Art Informel pictures, Dubuffet's fluid, tactile working method takes on a new meaning, at once appearing more abstract; the deeply scored lines creating a dynamic and almost animate surface.

A unique self-referential work from within a formative period in Dubuffet's career, Le nez au vent was exhibited in the 1954 retrospective of Dubuffet's work at the Cercle Volney in Paris. It was here that Le nez au vent was among the handful of works Max Loreau described as Interludes. Referring to the unique section of male portraits Dubuffet painted between January 1950 and February 1951, Interludes form a discursive counterpoint to highly-charged female forms in the Corps de Dames series, many of which are now included in the collections of the most important museums in the world (including Museum of Modern Art in New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Beyeler Foundation in Basel, and National Gallery in Berlin, Kunsthalle in Hamburg).