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Lot Essay
A triumph of Dubuffet’s early career, Quatres Notables anticipates the artist’s famous Wall with Inscriptions (1945), which now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The consummate flâneur, Dubuffet was inspired by the energy and excitement of his immediate surroundings, such as these four noble men standing in front of a brick apartment building. Their simplified forms have been physically etched into the built-up, almost asphalt-like, surface of the painting, so that the marks made upon it take on a degree of permanence. Employing a technique developed by the Surrealists, Dubuffet prepared the surface of the cardboard with a thick layer of oil paint, which he then carved to extrude the figures in a sculptural approach to painting. The naively rendered figures and houses signal the artist’s intention to break free from the tropes of traditional art in favor a freer, more direct mode of expression.
It was not until 1942, in the wake of Nazi occupation of Paris, that Dubuffet fully committed himself to painting and, with it, a resolve to forge his own unique path that rejected the artistic establishment. As Art historian Andreas Franzke elaborates: “[Dubuffet] introduced into the game the kind of creative expressions and elementary approaches to making images that unschooled persons have. Their images, he says, are products of a more authentic, less falsified, less spoiled, and wholly human desire for self-expression. Children’s drawings, anonymous scribbles on walls and most of all, the art of people cut off from all contact with the cultural milieu—these are what interest Dubuffet, and often provide points of departure for his own inventions” (A. Franzke, Dubuffet, New York, 1981, p 10).
Quatre Notables was completed on June 29, 1944. Working in Paris, Dubuffet would not have known that less than a month later, on August 19, 1944, Paris would be liberated from Nazi forces, and that by September 2, 1945, World War II would be over. Throughout the denouement of modern art, Dubuffet stood by painting, creating the first images for a world that would soon begin a new and would necessitate a new aesthetic language.
It was not until 1942, in the wake of Nazi occupation of Paris, that Dubuffet fully committed himself to painting and, with it, a resolve to forge his own unique path that rejected the artistic establishment. As Art historian Andreas Franzke elaborates: “[Dubuffet] introduced into the game the kind of creative expressions and elementary approaches to making images that unschooled persons have. Their images, he says, are products of a more authentic, less falsified, less spoiled, and wholly human desire for self-expression. Children’s drawings, anonymous scribbles on walls and most of all, the art of people cut off from all contact with the cultural milieu—these are what interest Dubuffet, and often provide points of departure for his own inventions” (A. Franzke, Dubuffet, New York, 1981, p 10).
Quatre Notables was completed on June 29, 1944. Working in Paris, Dubuffet would not have known that less than a month later, on August 19, 1944, Paris would be liberated from Nazi forces, and that by September 2, 1945, World War II would be over. Throughout the denouement of modern art, Dubuffet stood by painting, creating the first images for a world that would soon begin a new and would necessitate a new aesthetic language.