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Lot Essay
Paysage philosophique à Maurice Culberg (1952) is an important work from a significant series, entitled Sols et Terrains, that Dubuffet pursued during the early 1950s. The work has great tactile presence, so representative of Dubuffet’s approach to painting, especially of this period. Rather than simply showing a landscape, the present work seems to actually embody — through its colors, shapes and textures — the material stuff of landscape itself: earth, sand and soil. The copper, umber and ochre tonalities are perhaps meant to evoke the terrain of the Sahara of Algeria, a region Dubuffet had visited and one to which he was drawn for inspiration. The thickly applied paint created a layer that afforded the artist an opportunity to dig into, gouge and scratch the surface, suggesting the raw energy of urban graffiti. Paysage philosophique à Maurice Culberg displays in striking style a signature feature of this series of Dubuffet’s paintings: in dramatic contrast with traditional methods of handling paint, Dubuffet mixed his pigment in such a way as to develop a paste-like consistency, achieving widely varied textures that interacted with each other, forming cracks and rough edges as they dried. The artist would add materials including plaster, cement, coal dust, pebbles, sand and gravel to the paint and further developed his complex, textured surfaces by admixing additional rough elements into the surface of the canvas before it had dried, strategies readily apparent in the current work.
The absence of traditional European art conventions of perspective, depth and volume in this work challenges notions as to the meaning of landscape. The raw energy evident in Paysage philosophique à Maurice Culberg, together with its turn away from classical European artistic norms and its embrace of primitivism, mark it as a work that expresses the essence of Dubuffet’s concerns as an artist. The title of the painting makes reference to Maurice Culberg, an important American collector and patron of Dubuffet from early in his career, and the top right portion of the canvas fittingly includes Dubuffet’s dedication to the collector. The artist and the patron remained close friends for the rest of Culberg’s life. In Dubuffet’s words, the Paysage paintings “are landscapes of the brain. They aim to show the immaterial world which dwells in the mind of man: disorder of images, of beginnings of images, of fading images, where they cross and mingle, in a turmoil, tatters borrowed from memories of the outside world, and facts purely cerebral and internal — visceral perhaps" (J. Dubuffet, quoted in P. Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, New York, 1962, p. 71).
The absence of traditional European art conventions of perspective, depth and volume in this work challenges notions as to the meaning of landscape. The raw energy evident in Paysage philosophique à Maurice Culberg, together with its turn away from classical European artistic norms and its embrace of primitivism, mark it as a work that expresses the essence of Dubuffet’s concerns as an artist. The title of the painting makes reference to Maurice Culberg, an important American collector and patron of Dubuffet from early in his career, and the top right portion of the canvas fittingly includes Dubuffet’s dedication to the collector. The artist and the patron remained close friends for the rest of Culberg’s life. In Dubuffet’s words, the Paysage paintings “are landscapes of the brain. They aim to show the immaterial world which dwells in the mind of man: disorder of images, of beginnings of images, of fading images, where they cross and mingle, in a turmoil, tatters borrowed from memories of the outside world, and facts purely cerebral and internal — visceral perhaps" (J. Dubuffet, quoted in P. Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, New York, 1962, p. 71).