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Lot Essay
In April 1950, Dubuffet painted L'oursonne (Corps de dame), a brutal mingling of animal and human forms. It was the beginning of his series Corps de dame, which was to pre-occupy him until the following February.
My intention was that this [manner of] drawing should confer on the figure no definite form whatsoever, that on the contrary it should hold it to a position of general concept and immateriality. It pleased me (and I think that that inclination must be virtually constant in all my paintings) to juxtapose brutally in these female bodies the very general and the very particular, the very subjective and the very objective, the metaphysical and the grotesquely trivial. According to my way of feeling, one becomes considerably reinforced by the presence of the other" (J. Dubuffet, from Prospectus et tous ecrits suivantes, in A. Franzke, Dubuffet, New York, 1981, p. 62).
In these paintings the female figure is reduced to human terrain, a vast field of action subject to a welter of painterly processes and textures. The depersonalization of form results in its head being shrunk and practically pushed to the edge of the composition. The artist merges painting and drawing as he produces a richness of surface incident that seems to overwhelm the limitations of the medium.
My intention was that this [manner of] drawing should confer on the figure no definite form whatsoever, that on the contrary it should hold it to a position of general concept and immateriality. It pleased me (and I think that that inclination must be virtually constant in all my paintings) to juxtapose brutally in these female bodies the very general and the very particular, the very subjective and the very objective, the metaphysical and the grotesquely trivial. According to my way of feeling, one becomes considerably reinforced by the presence of the other" (J. Dubuffet, from Prospectus et tous ecrits suivantes, in A. Franzke, Dubuffet, New York, 1981, p. 62).
In these paintings the female figure is reduced to human terrain, a vast field of action subject to a welter of painterly processes and textures. The depersonalization of form results in its head being shrunk and practically pushed to the edge of the composition. The artist merges painting and drawing as he produces a richness of surface incident that seems to overwhelm the limitations of the medium.