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Lot Essay
Le signe du doigt celebrates Jean Dubuffet’s renowned ability to represent and create “the art of the common man,” through his skillful ability to see the beauty in simplicity, the primitive and the everyday. This work is emblematic of paintings he created at the height of the Art Brut movement, which highlights art that does not resort to the familiar and intentional. During the span of the artist’s prolific career, he embraced the beauty of ambiguity in his compositions: “I aim for an art which would be an immediate connection with daily life and which would be a very direct and very sincere expression of our real life and our real moods” (J. Dubuffet quoted in Jean Dubuffet: Forty Years of His Art, p. 29)
Le signe du doigt contains characteristics that showcase signature elements of Dubuffet’s work and his rich, multi-faceted process. The layers of paint blend into one another on the surface, creating an active and expressive texture that subtly reveals an ambiguous figure. The layers also illustrate the great depth of the work, the surface covered beneath multiple layers of paint. The imposing figure appears to be in a precarious state, brows furrowed, layers formed through the painterly process, seemingly scraped on by the artist and then off the canvas itself. The figure holds their right forearm at a slight angle, displaying a pointed finger, as though mirroring or demonstrating a traditionally religious gesture. The undefined outlines of the figure contrast with the crispness and figurative elements that certain components of the painting do have, such as the finger, the lips, and the eyes. The incorporation of rich reds alludes to flesh, and creates a suggestive human tonality around the lips and hands. The dark background recalls the paintings of Old Masters portraiture, and illustrates the artist’s fascination with primitive art. It remarks upon Dubuffet’s interest in creating child-like figures that further emphasize the artist’s motivation to portray the common, the simple and banal.
By 1954, Dubuffet had left the bustling city of Paris, a place that had evoked tremendous inspiration and had an incredible impact on so many of his artistic masterpieces in the 1940’s. During the time that Dubuffet painted Le signe du doigt, he was living in the countryside of Durtol in Auvergne. The painting came to life in the middle of Dubuffet’s Assemblage d’empreintes period, where he became completely immersed in assembling collages that included the butterfly wings that he collected in the mountains of Savoy in 1953.
Dubuffet clearly places a strong focus on the hand gesture of the figure within the title of Le signe du doigt. The title of the work, Le signe du doigt (Finger Gesture) is very literal in its meaning, which proves consistent with Dubuffet’s notion to title many of works in this accessible and simplified way. One can draw connections with the famous hand gesture to works throughout art history, from Albrecht Durer to Alberto Giacometti.
As a well-known artist with a widely popular reputation in both Europe and New York City, Dubuffet was also quite the visionary inventor with a progressive way of thinking. Fascinated with experimentation and discoveries of the possible unknown, Dubuffet was on a mission to seek a kind of alternative creativity that possessed zero ties to western culture. His intense motivation to seek new findings prompted many of his travels in the 1940’s, where he researched unknown artists who had little to no training, as well as artists who created work with little intentions. Through all of this, Art Brut, as an artistic movement and new vehicle, was born. Some have drawn a connection between Dubuffet and Picasso, placing the monumentally successful artists in a similar category due to their shared passions for discovery, and abstraction mixed with figurative styles. The artist stated: “I hope to find in them modes of representation of objects that are borrowed not from some false position of the eyes arbitrarily directed to such objects but from the record of unconscious looks, of unintentional traces spontaneously inscribed in the memory of every ordinary human, and of the affective reactions that normally link each one to the things that surround them and occasionally fall under their attention” (J. Dubuffet quoted in Dervaux, Dubuffet Drawings 1935-1962, p. 52).
Le signe du doigt contains characteristics that showcase signature elements of Dubuffet’s work and his rich, multi-faceted process. The layers of paint blend into one another on the surface, creating an active and expressive texture that subtly reveals an ambiguous figure. The layers also illustrate the great depth of the work, the surface covered beneath multiple layers of paint. The imposing figure appears to be in a precarious state, brows furrowed, layers formed through the painterly process, seemingly scraped on by the artist and then off the canvas itself. The figure holds their right forearm at a slight angle, displaying a pointed finger, as though mirroring or demonstrating a traditionally religious gesture. The undefined outlines of the figure contrast with the crispness and figurative elements that certain components of the painting do have, such as the finger, the lips, and the eyes. The incorporation of rich reds alludes to flesh, and creates a suggestive human tonality around the lips and hands. The dark background recalls the paintings of Old Masters portraiture, and illustrates the artist’s fascination with primitive art. It remarks upon Dubuffet’s interest in creating child-like figures that further emphasize the artist’s motivation to portray the common, the simple and banal.
By 1954, Dubuffet had left the bustling city of Paris, a place that had evoked tremendous inspiration and had an incredible impact on so many of his artistic masterpieces in the 1940’s. During the time that Dubuffet painted Le signe du doigt, he was living in the countryside of Durtol in Auvergne. The painting came to life in the middle of Dubuffet’s Assemblage d’empreintes period, where he became completely immersed in assembling collages that included the butterfly wings that he collected in the mountains of Savoy in 1953.
Dubuffet clearly places a strong focus on the hand gesture of the figure within the title of Le signe du doigt. The title of the work, Le signe du doigt (Finger Gesture) is very literal in its meaning, which proves consistent with Dubuffet’s notion to title many of works in this accessible and simplified way. One can draw connections with the famous hand gesture to works throughout art history, from Albrecht Durer to Alberto Giacometti.
As a well-known artist with a widely popular reputation in both Europe and New York City, Dubuffet was also quite the visionary inventor with a progressive way of thinking. Fascinated with experimentation and discoveries of the possible unknown, Dubuffet was on a mission to seek a kind of alternative creativity that possessed zero ties to western culture. His intense motivation to seek new findings prompted many of his travels in the 1940’s, where he researched unknown artists who had little to no training, as well as artists who created work with little intentions. Through all of this, Art Brut, as an artistic movement and new vehicle, was born. Some have drawn a connection between Dubuffet and Picasso, placing the monumentally successful artists in a similar category due to their shared passions for discovery, and abstraction mixed with figurative styles. The artist stated: “I hope to find in them modes of representation of objects that are borrowed not from some false position of the eyes arbitrarily directed to such objects but from the record of unconscious looks, of unintentional traces spontaneously inscribed in the memory of every ordinary human, and of the affective reactions that normally link each one to the things that surround them and occasionally fall under their attention” (J. Dubuffet quoted in Dervaux, Dubuffet Drawings 1935-1962, p. 52).