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拍品专文
Executed in the distinctively raw and honest style of Art Brut, Pleurnichon is one of a small number of unique sculptures in Jean Dubuffet’s Petites statues de la vie précaire (Little Statues of Precarious Life) series. Dating from 1954, these rare and highly coveted works mark the French master’s first forays into three-dimensions, and display many of the qualities of his ground-breaking experiments with what he called “assemblages” of the following year. Echoing the size and proportions of a traditional marble bust, Dubuffet’s interpretation of sculptural portraiture in Pleurnichon—French for cry-baby—is both humorous and touching. Perhaps attracted to his material by the hint of a resemblance to a human figure on the brink of tears, Pleurnichon summons anthropomorphic qualities from a natural sponge. Eyes, nose and mouth have been carefully represented simply but clearly, as has the slim shoulders and shape of a twisting body. Although the medium is unusual, the sponge’s uniquely variegated texture and natural lightness transposes a dynamic weightlessness to the sculptural form, creating an animated and lively interpretation of the human figure, and a pertinent way of conveying the precariousness of human existence.
Assembled from an assortment of discarded raw materials, Dubuffet’s earliest sculptures like Pleurnichon demonstrate many of the artist’s pioneering concerns. As a result, they have been included in many of the artist’s major retrospective exhibitions, such as at the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris in 2001. Many of these small but seminal works are in museum collections across Europe and America.
Dubuffet vehemently believed that the importance of art lay in its ability to express man’s natural state, and the 1950s saw his interest in Art Brut develop into ever more exuberant and innovative manifestations. He pursued the idea that art should be a direct reflection of emotion and instincts, without being sullied by the distorting effects of what he called art culturel—academic training and historical conventions. For inspiration, he turned away from the traditions of the past, and looked to the raw, unprompted creative expressions of the unaffected, such as graffitti, work by prisoners, children, of the mentally ill, and so-called primitive art. In 1948, he had such a substantial personal collection of this type of art that in 1948 he helped found the Compagnie de l’Art Brut to promote its study.
Objecting to the hierarchies of both material and subject matter that are implicit to Western aesthetics, Dubuffet sought out an art that was more immediate and truer than what had gone before. In his famous lecture ‘Anticultural Positions’, given at the beginning of the 1950s, Dubuffet stated that “For most western people, there are objects that are beautiful and others that are ugly; there are beautiful people and ugly people, beautiful places and ugly ones. But not for me. Beauty does not enter into the picture for me. I consider the western notion of beauty completely erroneous. I absolutely refuse to accept the idea that there are ugly people and ugly objects. Such an idea strikes me as stifling and revolting...The so-called savages do not believe in this at all. They do not comprehend what you mean by beauty. This is precisely the reason why we call them savages. A name reserved for anyone who fails to understand that there are beautiful things and ugly things and doesn’t really worry about it either” (J. Dubuffet, “Anticultural Positions, 1951,” quoted in Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality, ed. M. Glimcher, New York, 1987, p. 129).
Pleurnichon’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the human form reflects Dubuffet›s contrarian position and his delight in using unorthodox materials. The year preceding the execution of this work, was the year that Dubuffet had coined the term “assemblages” to describe his three-dimensional collages of natural and man-made materials, like butterfly wings or found objects. He found his materials everywhere, fashioning work out of tobacco leaves, driftwood, bricks, leaves and papier-mâché. Displaying endless technical variation and imagination, he had also made a series of heavily textured portraits using this method, which display a dynamic and bold variety of patterns and color. With these as well as in in 3D, he had set out to disrupt traditional boundaries for portraiture. “For a portrait to function really well,” he said in one of his earliest exhibition catalogues, “I need it to be barely a portrait. At the limit that it is no longer a portrait. It is then that its function takes its full force. I love things taken to their extreme limit” (J. Dubuffet quoted in People are much more beautiful than they think, exh. cat., Galerie René Drouin, Paris, 1947, n.p.).
Dubuffet’s radical project attracted widespread critical attention. The year Pleurnichon was made, Dubuffet was awarded a retrospective exhibition at the Cercle Volney in 1954, and his first museum retrospective only a few years later, at the Schlo Morsbroich (now Museum Morsbroich), Leverkusen, West Germany. His work proved influential on other avant-garde artists, and the use of natural materials to create heavily textured, raw artwork was a method that came to be employed by a younger generation. Yves Klein, for instance, became enamored with the distinctive forms and textures of the natural sponge, saturating them in vivid color to create his own seminal series of sculptures. The French writer and critic Michel Tapié termed this desire to break free of all traditional notions of formal composition and order Art Informel. Alongside Dubuffet, its other leading proponents included Willem de Kooning, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Alberto Burri and Karel Appel, and it became one of the most significant movements of the post-war era. In championing qualities that had been ignored or overlooked by the centuries of art that preceded them, Dubuffet was part of an important quest for something that was truly ‘other’. Breaking dramatically with all that went before them, Dubuffet and his peers played an integral role in paving the way for the ground-breaking art of the 21st century.
Assembled from an assortment of discarded raw materials, Dubuffet’s earliest sculptures like Pleurnichon demonstrate many of the artist’s pioneering concerns. As a result, they have been included in many of the artist’s major retrospective exhibitions, such as at the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris in 2001. Many of these small but seminal works are in museum collections across Europe and America.
Dubuffet vehemently believed that the importance of art lay in its ability to express man’s natural state, and the 1950s saw his interest in Art Brut develop into ever more exuberant and innovative manifestations. He pursued the idea that art should be a direct reflection of emotion and instincts, without being sullied by the distorting effects of what he called art culturel—academic training and historical conventions. For inspiration, he turned away from the traditions of the past, and looked to the raw, unprompted creative expressions of the unaffected, such as graffitti, work by prisoners, children, of the mentally ill, and so-called primitive art. In 1948, he had such a substantial personal collection of this type of art that in 1948 he helped found the Compagnie de l’Art Brut to promote its study.
Objecting to the hierarchies of both material and subject matter that are implicit to Western aesthetics, Dubuffet sought out an art that was more immediate and truer than what had gone before. In his famous lecture ‘Anticultural Positions’, given at the beginning of the 1950s, Dubuffet stated that “For most western people, there are objects that are beautiful and others that are ugly; there are beautiful people and ugly people, beautiful places and ugly ones. But not for me. Beauty does not enter into the picture for me. I consider the western notion of beauty completely erroneous. I absolutely refuse to accept the idea that there are ugly people and ugly objects. Such an idea strikes me as stifling and revolting...The so-called savages do not believe in this at all. They do not comprehend what you mean by beauty. This is precisely the reason why we call them savages. A name reserved for anyone who fails to understand that there are beautiful things and ugly things and doesn’t really worry about it either” (J. Dubuffet, “Anticultural Positions, 1951,” quoted in Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality, ed. M. Glimcher, New York, 1987, p. 129).
Pleurnichon’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the human form reflects Dubuffet›s contrarian position and his delight in using unorthodox materials. The year preceding the execution of this work, was the year that Dubuffet had coined the term “assemblages” to describe his three-dimensional collages of natural and man-made materials, like butterfly wings or found objects. He found his materials everywhere, fashioning work out of tobacco leaves, driftwood, bricks, leaves and papier-mâché. Displaying endless technical variation and imagination, he had also made a series of heavily textured portraits using this method, which display a dynamic and bold variety of patterns and color. With these as well as in in 3D, he had set out to disrupt traditional boundaries for portraiture. “For a portrait to function really well,” he said in one of his earliest exhibition catalogues, “I need it to be barely a portrait. At the limit that it is no longer a portrait. It is then that its function takes its full force. I love things taken to their extreme limit” (J. Dubuffet quoted in People are much more beautiful than they think, exh. cat., Galerie René Drouin, Paris, 1947, n.p.).
Dubuffet’s radical project attracted widespread critical attention. The year Pleurnichon was made, Dubuffet was awarded a retrospective exhibition at the Cercle Volney in 1954, and his first museum retrospective only a few years later, at the Schlo Morsbroich (now Museum Morsbroich), Leverkusen, West Germany. His work proved influential on other avant-garde artists, and the use of natural materials to create heavily textured, raw artwork was a method that came to be employed by a younger generation. Yves Klein, for instance, became enamored with the distinctive forms and textures of the natural sponge, saturating them in vivid color to create his own seminal series of sculptures. The French writer and critic Michel Tapié termed this desire to break free of all traditional notions of formal composition and order Art Informel. Alongside Dubuffet, its other leading proponents included Willem de Kooning, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Alberto Burri and Karel Appel, and it became one of the most significant movements of the post-war era. In championing qualities that had been ignored or overlooked by the centuries of art that preceded them, Dubuffet was part of an important quest for something that was truly ‘other’. Breaking dramatically with all that went before them, Dubuffet and his peers played an integral role in paving the way for the ground-breaking art of the 21st century.