Paysage Au Drapeau

The present work, Paysage au Drapeau (1968), gives physical form to what Jean Dubuffet called “mental derivatives” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in M. Rowell, “Jean Dubuffet: An Art on the Margins of Culture,” in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973, p. 27). Its stack of outlined slabs both recalls rocky cairns and resists identification with the real world. Concurrent with the Hourloupe cycle, a group of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations inspired by ball-point pen doodles, Paysage au Drapeau marks the territory of Dubuffet’s imagined world—one he believed accessible to artists and viewers alike. His use of artificial materials echoes his intention to create from scratch, rather than represent from reality, the landscape of a parallel universe, and underscores his desire to root his work in quotidian trappings: “I aspire to an art that…arises directly from this daily life, which would be a direct emanation from our real life and our real moods” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in R. Heller,“ ‘A Swan Only Sings at the Moment It Disappears’: Jean Dubuffet and Art at the Edge of Non-Art,” in Jean Dubuffet: Forty Years of His Art, exh. cat., University of Chicago, 1985, p. 22).