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拍品专文
“I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range; and for this reason – every place, for my eyes, being equal to every other – I see little use in travelling. I must say I have all my life always loved tables.” –Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet’s Nature Morte au Passeport is an exquisite example of the artist’s Pâtes Battues series, and draws upon the artist’s beloved “Landscaped Tables” series of 1952. Executed in 1953, Nature Morte au Passeport displays the artist’s fascination with the banality of the human lived experience. Through the incorporation of motifs of the everyday life, Dubuffet is able to capture and explore the many layers of the human condition. Dubuffet had long been fascinated with how the actions of everyday life leave behind textures and marks on household everyday objects, such as doors and table tops. In his “Landscaped Tables” series, he sought to represent the scarred surfaces of tables as alternatives to landscape subjects. The artist once remarked “I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range; and for this reason – every place, for my eyes, being equal to every other – I see little use in travelling. I must say I have all my life always loved tables” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in P. Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1962, p. 72). Drawing upon this motif, Nature Morte au Passeport presents a table as a new landscape populated by hieroglyphic-type images of household items: a scrawled receipt for two thousand francs, a check, and a passport.
Differing from the Tables Paysagées series, the works included in the Pâtes Battues series featured a new paste-like medium which composes the background. Dubuffet found this new paste to be smoother and more pliant, which allowed him to include brighter and more blended colors, and added an element of playfulness to his technique of scraping away at the painted surface. To create these works, Dubuffet would smooth a light colored paste unevenly across the canvas with a plasterer’s knife then cut into the paste with a round cutting knife. He once said, “I am at a loss to explain just what it was in these paintings that gave me- that still gives me- such a keen satisfaction. It has probably something to do with the physical pleasure derived from spreading freely… this beautiful white paste over a ground previously covered with dark colors, and then letting the long knife with rounded end wander over the smooth paste, tracing with such perfect ease graffiti of sonorous colors” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in P. Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1962, p. 78). This process created a rare and complex textural composition evident in the present lot.
In the spirit of Art Brut, Nature Morte au Passeport finds poetry in the everyday: successfully transforming a piece of furniture into a surface endowed with life. The painting emphasizes Dubuffet’s increasing concern with delineating objects so they could be perceived in unusual and surprising ways by his viewers. Through provoking the viewer’s imagination, and letting the material speak for itself, Dubuffet created a complex and richly detailed image that bridges earlier themes from the artist’s oeuvre with new, innovative techniques.
Jean Dubuffet’s Nature Morte au Passeport is an exquisite example of the artist’s Pâtes Battues series, and draws upon the artist’s beloved “Landscaped Tables” series of 1952. Executed in 1953, Nature Morte au Passeport displays the artist’s fascination with the banality of the human lived experience. Through the incorporation of motifs of the everyday life, Dubuffet is able to capture and explore the many layers of the human condition. Dubuffet had long been fascinated with how the actions of everyday life leave behind textures and marks on household everyday objects, such as doors and table tops. In his “Landscaped Tables” series, he sought to represent the scarred surfaces of tables as alternatives to landscape subjects. The artist once remarked “I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range; and for this reason – every place, for my eyes, being equal to every other – I see little use in travelling. I must say I have all my life always loved tables” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in P. Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1962, p. 72). Drawing upon this motif, Nature Morte au Passeport presents a table as a new landscape populated by hieroglyphic-type images of household items: a scrawled receipt for two thousand francs, a check, and a passport.
Differing from the Tables Paysagées series, the works included in the Pâtes Battues series featured a new paste-like medium which composes the background. Dubuffet found this new paste to be smoother and more pliant, which allowed him to include brighter and more blended colors, and added an element of playfulness to his technique of scraping away at the painted surface. To create these works, Dubuffet would smooth a light colored paste unevenly across the canvas with a plasterer’s knife then cut into the paste with a round cutting knife. He once said, “I am at a loss to explain just what it was in these paintings that gave me- that still gives me- such a keen satisfaction. It has probably something to do with the physical pleasure derived from spreading freely… this beautiful white paste over a ground previously covered with dark colors, and then letting the long knife with rounded end wander over the smooth paste, tracing with such perfect ease graffiti of sonorous colors” (J. Dubuffet, quoted in P. Selz, The Work of Jean Dubuffet, exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1962, p. 78). This process created a rare and complex textural composition evident in the present lot.
In the spirit of Art Brut, Nature Morte au Passeport finds poetry in the everyday: successfully transforming a piece of furniture into a surface endowed with life. The painting emphasizes Dubuffet’s increasing concern with delineating objects so they could be perceived in unusual and surprising ways by his viewers. Through provoking the viewer’s imagination, and letting the material speak for itself, Dubuffet created a complex and richly detailed image that bridges earlier themes from the artist’s oeuvre with new, innovative techniques.