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拍品專文
‘When one has looked at a painting of this kind, one looks at everything around one with a new refreshed eye, and one learns to see the unaccustomed and amusing side of things. When I say amusing, I do not mean solely the funny side, but also the grand, the moving and even the tragic aspects [of ordinary things]’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973, p. 23).
‘A meandering, uninterrupted and resolutely uniform line, which brings all planes to the surface and takes no account of the concrete quality of the object described, its size and position but, rather, abolishes all the usual categories of one notion and another, of the notion of chair, for instance, as distinct from that of tree, person, cloud, earth, landscape, or what you will’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in M. Glimcher (ed.), Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality, New York 1987, p. 223).
Towering above the viewer, Brouette en Surplomb II, forms an early and important part of Jean Dubuffet’s signature aesthetic. Created in 1964, the work dates from an exciting period when the artist would apply his well known Hourloupe style to a series focused on celebrating the details of everyday life. Turning his attention to the overlooked manufactured utensils that surrounded him, Brouette en Surplomb II, stands as one of the earliest examples of his Ustensiles Utopiques series that would be his focus for the next year. Part of his famed l’Hourloupe, the Ustensiles Utopiques are identified by a jigsaw of amorphous cells which form an object, all set against a black backdrop. This shift furthers his celebration of the object, here becoming the sole focus of his compositions. A partner work, Brouette en Surplomb II, forms part of the collection of the Musée Cantini de Marseille.
Over the course of a series of phone calls in July 1962, ‘Dubuffet let his red ball-point pen wander aimlessly over some small pieces of paper, and out of these doodles emerged a number of semiautomatic drawings, which he struck through with red and blue lines. The painter cut out these as yet undetermined compositions and quickly observed that they changed aspect as soon as they were placed against a black background’ (M. Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet: fascicule XX: L’ Hourloupe 1, Paris 1966, p. 15). The script of these works defined a new pictorial style initially used to represent human figures but later employed to depict domestic objects such as wheelbarrows, chairs, scissors, teapots, and lamps. He described his Hourloupe paintings as ‘a meandering, uninterrupted and resolutely uniform line, which brings all planes to the surface and takes no account of the concrete quality of the object described, its size and position but, rather, abolishes all the usual categories of one notion and another, of the notion of chair, for instance, as distinct from that of tree, person, cloud, earth, landscape, or what you will’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in M. Glimcher (ed.), Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality, New York 1987, p. 223). First exploring these objects against a monochrome background in a series of small drawings on paper in June of 1964, for the next two years Dubuffet would focus his attention on creating large scale paintings of industrial objects, which he called Ustensiles Utopiques. Created on July 29, 1964, Brouette en Surplomb II stands as one of the first of these large scale paintings.
Continuing the spatial investigations of his celebrated 1950s Corps de Dames series, which deconstructed the female form, here, Dubuffet has flattened his figures against the background. Through the descriptive geometry of his confident lines, Dubuffet renders the third-dimension through a series of elongated, slender black shapes with thin white streaks that dash around the outline of the flattened figure. The deep, receding colour of these cells, as well as their outward pointing strokes reintroduces a sense of the depth that would once have existed in the composition. Approaching his subjects from distinct perspectives, Dubuffet renders the wheelbarrow in brilliant colour and flattened two-dimensionality, paralleling the dialogue across the Atlantic where Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein were undertaking their own vibrant homages to mass produced and commercial goods. With the use of the most rudimentary lines and shapes, the Hourloupe dissolves the simplistic values that we attribute to the world around us.
For Dubuffet, the objective was not figuration, nor pure abstraction, but a novel mediation of the two, as articulated by the unschooled assembly of artists united under Art Brut. To Dubuffet, the importance of art was to express man’s natural state rather than his cultured afterthoughts. Just as van Gogh and Millet painted still-lifes of farmer’s clogs as a symbol of rural peasant life, Dubuffet floats his wheelbarrow upon on a black backdrop, liberating it from the landscape so that it may be the sole focus of our attention. As the artist concluded ‘...when one has looked at a painting of this kind, one looks at everything around one with a new refreshed eye, and one learns to see the unaccustomed and amusing side of things. When I say amusing, I do not mean solely the funny side, but also the grand, the moving and even the tragic aspects [of ordinary things]’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973, p. 23).
‘A meandering, uninterrupted and resolutely uniform line, which brings all planes to the surface and takes no account of the concrete quality of the object described, its size and position but, rather, abolishes all the usual categories of one notion and another, of the notion of chair, for instance, as distinct from that of tree, person, cloud, earth, landscape, or what you will’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in M. Glimcher (ed.), Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality, New York 1987, p. 223).
Towering above the viewer, Brouette en Surplomb II, forms an early and important part of Jean Dubuffet’s signature aesthetic. Created in 1964, the work dates from an exciting period when the artist would apply his well known Hourloupe style to a series focused on celebrating the details of everyday life. Turning his attention to the overlooked manufactured utensils that surrounded him, Brouette en Surplomb II, stands as one of the earliest examples of his Ustensiles Utopiques series that would be his focus for the next year. Part of his famed l’Hourloupe, the Ustensiles Utopiques are identified by a jigsaw of amorphous cells which form an object, all set against a black backdrop. This shift furthers his celebration of the object, here becoming the sole focus of his compositions. A partner work, Brouette en Surplomb II, forms part of the collection of the Musée Cantini de Marseille.
Over the course of a series of phone calls in July 1962, ‘Dubuffet let his red ball-point pen wander aimlessly over some small pieces of paper, and out of these doodles emerged a number of semiautomatic drawings, which he struck through with red and blue lines. The painter cut out these as yet undetermined compositions and quickly observed that they changed aspect as soon as they were placed against a black background’ (M. Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet: fascicule XX: L’ Hourloupe 1, Paris 1966, p. 15). The script of these works defined a new pictorial style initially used to represent human figures but later employed to depict domestic objects such as wheelbarrows, chairs, scissors, teapots, and lamps. He described his Hourloupe paintings as ‘a meandering, uninterrupted and resolutely uniform line, which brings all planes to the surface and takes no account of the concrete quality of the object described, its size and position but, rather, abolishes all the usual categories of one notion and another, of the notion of chair, for instance, as distinct from that of tree, person, cloud, earth, landscape, or what you will’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in M. Glimcher (ed.), Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality, New York 1987, p. 223). First exploring these objects against a monochrome background in a series of small drawings on paper in June of 1964, for the next two years Dubuffet would focus his attention on creating large scale paintings of industrial objects, which he called Ustensiles Utopiques. Created on July 29, 1964, Brouette en Surplomb II stands as one of the first of these large scale paintings.
Continuing the spatial investigations of his celebrated 1950s Corps de Dames series, which deconstructed the female form, here, Dubuffet has flattened his figures against the background. Through the descriptive geometry of his confident lines, Dubuffet renders the third-dimension through a series of elongated, slender black shapes with thin white streaks that dash around the outline of the flattened figure. The deep, receding colour of these cells, as well as their outward pointing strokes reintroduces a sense of the depth that would once have existed in the composition. Approaching his subjects from distinct perspectives, Dubuffet renders the wheelbarrow in brilliant colour and flattened two-dimensionality, paralleling the dialogue across the Atlantic where Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein were undertaking their own vibrant homages to mass produced and commercial goods. With the use of the most rudimentary lines and shapes, the Hourloupe dissolves the simplistic values that we attribute to the world around us.
For Dubuffet, the objective was not figuration, nor pure abstraction, but a novel mediation of the two, as articulated by the unschooled assembly of artists united under Art Brut. To Dubuffet, the importance of art was to express man’s natural state rather than his cultured afterthoughts. Just as van Gogh and Millet painted still-lifes of farmer’s clogs as a symbol of rural peasant life, Dubuffet floats his wheelbarrow upon on a black backdrop, liberating it from the landscape so that it may be the sole focus of our attention. As the artist concluded ‘...when one has looked at a painting of this kind, one looks at everything around one with a new refreshed eye, and one learns to see the unaccustomed and amusing side of things. When I say amusing, I do not mean solely the funny side, but also the grand, the moving and even the tragic aspects [of ordinary things]’ (J. Dubuffet, quoted in Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973, p. 23).