MY MAGICAL ATTIC: JEAN DUBUFFET: METAMORPHOSES OF LANDSCAPE AT FONDATION BEYELER

February 21, 2016

JEAN DUBUFFET: METAMORPHOSES OF LANDSCAPE AT FONDATION BEYELER

January 31, 2016 – May 8, 2016

JEAN DUBUFFET: METAMORPHOSES OF LANDSCAPE AT

FONDATION BEYELER

January 31, 2016 – May 8, 2016

The Exhibition’s Curator is Dr. Raphaël Bouvier,

The Fondation Beyeler is opening the year 2016 with the first retrospective of Jean Dubuffet’s multifaceted, imaginative oeuvre held in Switzerland in the 21st century.

“Jean Dubuffet – Metamorphoses of Landscape”, which runs from 31 January to 8 May 2016, features over 100 works by the highly experimental French painter and sculptor, who provided the art world with fresh inspiration and impulses in the second half of the 20th century, thereby opening up decisive new paths and possibilities for art. Dubuffet succeeded in liberating himself from aesthetic standards and conventions, fundamentally revising art from an essentially “anti-cultural” perspective.

Jean Dubuffet (born in Le Havre in 1901; died in Paris in 1985) is one of the defining artists of the second half of the 20th century. In 1942, at the age of forty-one, he gave up his occupation as a wine merchant and devoted himself exclusively to art. Inspired by the work of artistic outsiders as well as by the formal vocabulary and narrative style of children’s drawings, he cast off outdated traditions and virtually reinvented art. Dubuffet’s influence can still be felt today in contemporary art and street art, for example in the work of David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Ugo Rondinone.

The exhibition focuses on Dubuffet’s fascinating idea of landscape, which in his hands can transform itself into a body, a face or an object. Innovatively and at times humorously, Dubuffet seems to turn painting’s laws and genres upside down. Portraits, female nudes and still lifes turn into vibrant landscapes. In his works, Dubuffet experimented with new techniques and materials such as sand, butterfly wings, sponges and slag, using them to create a unique visual universe that was entirely his own.

Crucial impulses for Dubuffet’s revolutionary approach to art came to him in Switzerland. Visiting a number of psychiatric clinics in Geneva and Bern in 1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War, he made a close study of the profoundly expressive works produced by some of their patients. He later coined the term Art Brut to describe this kind of work.

One of the exhibition’s chief goals is to document the continued relevance of Dubuffet’s wide-ranging oeuvre to the art of recent decades. Statements by various artists are therefore juxtaposed in the catalogue with works by Dubuffet, testifying to the importance of his ideas and practice for their art. Those represented include some figures who are already sure of a place in the history of art, such as David Hockney, Claes Oldenburg, Keith Haring, Mike Kelley and Georg Baselitz, but the catalogue also features statements specially written by Miquel Barceló and Ugo Rondinone that are being published for the first time.

Alongside important paintings and sculptures from all the major phases of the artist’s oeuvre, the exhibition is also showing Dubuffet’s spectacular Coucou Bazar , a multimedia work of art combining painting, sculpture, theatre, dance and music.

The exhibition features loans from leading international museums and major private collections. It is being generously supported by the Fondation Dubuffet in Paris. Lenders include the MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in Paris; the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Moderna Museet in Stockholm; the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; the Museum Ludwig in Cologne; the Kunsthaus Zürich and many others.

Some of these works have never been seen in public; others are being shown to a wide audience for the first time in several decades. The latter include the painting Gardes du corps , a key work dating from 1943 that for more than forty years was thought lost and that attests in unique fashion to the groundbreaking aesthetic embodied in the fresh start on which Dubuffet embarked at that stage in his career.

Due to the close collaboration with Ernst Beyeler, Jean Dubuffet is one of the best represented artists in the collection of the Fondation Beyeler.

The exhibition “Jean Dubuffet – Metamorphoses of Landscape” is being supported by: Dr. Christoph M. and Sibylla M. Müller

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

MELE MOMENTS, 1976
Acrylic and Collage on Paper Mounted on Canvas

Dimensions: 248.9 x 360.7 cm
Private Collection, Courtesy Pace Gallery
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Courtesy Pace Gallery

MELE MOMENTS ( DETAIL ), 1976

SITE TO THE MAN SITTING 1974

SITE TO THE MAN SITTING (DETAIL), 1974

SITE DOMESTIQUE 1966

Vinyle on Canvas

Dimensions: 125 x 200 cm

TOPOGRAPHIE BLONDE ( DORMITION DU SOL ), 1958
Oil on Canvas (Assemblage)

Dimensions: 89 x 116 cm
Private Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich

LE MENTONNEUX 1959

Papier - Mâché

Dimensions: 31.8 x 15.4 x 15.9 cm

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift,

Andrew Powie Fuller and Geraldine Spreckels Fuller Collection, by Exchange,

in Honor of Thomas Messer, 1999

2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

Photo: David Heald © SRGF

“ My views and ideas with regard to art had also changed. I now called all values into question, and artistic creation seemed to me no longer to require all the skills I had made such an effort to acquire. On the contrary, it seemed to me more legitimate and more effective to work with unconstrained ease and to use the simplest, the most summary means. ”

Jean Dubuffet

LE COMMERCE PROSPERE, 1961
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 165 x 220 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mrs Simon Guggenheim Fund
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: © 2015. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence

LE COMMERCE PROSPERE (DETAIL), 1961

THE SHOT IN THE WING 1961

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 190 x 250 cm

Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of W. Hawkins Ferry

LE DEVISEUR I, 1969 - 2006
Polyurethane on Epoxy Resin

Dimensions: 319 x 200 x 70 cm
Collection Paul Schärer
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: © Jean Dubuffet. Collection Privée, Suisse.

Courtesy Galerie Jeanne Bucher Jaeger, Paris

DIVERGENT INCITEMENTS, 1976

Acrylic on Glued Paper on Canvas

Dimensions: 173 × 291 cm

Photo: Christian Baur / © Jean Dubuffet / Artists Rights Society (ARS),

New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fondation Beyeler

FETE VILLAGEOISE

Acrylic and Collage on Paper Mounted on Canvas

Dimensions: 248.9 x 324.5

SITE AVEC TROIS PERSONNAGES, 1974
Vinyl Paint on Cut - Out Pressed Wood

Dimensions: 296.5 x 446.7 x 3.2 cm
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Robert Bayer, Basel

ARGUMENT AND CONTEXT, 1977

Acrylic on Glued Paper on Canvas

Dimensions: 510.5 × 632.5 cm

Photo: Robert Bayer, Basel / © Jean Dubuffet /

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fondation Beyeler

VACHE LA BELLE FESSUE, 1954
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 97 x 130 cm
Collection of Samuel and Ronnie Heyman – Palm Beach, FL
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich

“ What I liked doing was [...] to place brutally side by side in these female bodies the highly general and the highly particular, the highly subjective and the highly objective, the metaphysical and grotesque triviality. [...]. From this same impulse derive apparently illogical juxtapositions to be found among these nudes, between textures reminiscent of human flesh [...] with other textures that have nothing to do with the human, such as bark, rocks, botanical and geographical elements. ”

Jean Dubuffet

VACHE LA BELLE FESSUE (DETAIL), 1954

SAÏMIRI, 1954

Sponge

Height: 42 cm

LANDSCAPE AS MATERIAL: THE ‘’ AILES DE PAPILLONS ‘’ AND THE ‘’ PETITES STATUES DE LA VIE PRECAIRE ‘’

Dubuffet had hitherto used the means of painting to explore a variety of material equivalents to landscape structures, but in the brightly colored butterfly wings of the series of small-format collages made between 1953 and 1955 he uses remnants of living nature. Moreover, he employs the ancient symbol of rebirth represented by the pupation of the caterpillar and its transformation into a butterfly as a subtle way of reflecting on the interplay between death and creation in both nature and art. And since butterflies have traditionally stood for the human soul in the visual arts, the artist’s playful images may also be understood, at least in part, as variations on the ‘’ Paysages du mental ‘’. With his first series of sculptures ‘’ Petites statues de la vie précaire ‘’ , on which he embarks in 1954, Dubuffet transfers his materials to work in three dimensions. Breaking with every convention of traditional sculpture, he prefers such materials as sponge, driftwood, volcanic rock, charcoal and slag to the familiar marble or bronze. These simple elements taken directly from nature appear to have been assembled almost by chance to form distinctive beings suggestive of earth spirits.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

TABLE CORAIL, 1953

Dimensions: 89 x 116 cm

TABLE CORAIL (DETAIL), 1953

THE URBAN LANDSCAPE: ‘’ PARIS CIRCUS ‘’

The series Paris Circus, begun in 1961, represents a fresh start in Dubuffet’s oeuvre. It marks a rediscovery of bright color, intensified to an almost explosive degree, and a return to the cityscape as a subject. The artist’s pictures in the 1950s had focused chiefly on land as used for agricultural purposes, but now he turns his attention to the chaos of life in the streets of an imaginary city based on his personal view of Paris. In this strange cosmos, opposites such as inside and outside, near and far, high and low, wide and narrow, deep and flat collide with one another, subverting customary experiences of space and literally calling their foundations into question.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

TABLE CORAIL (DETAIL), 1953

PONGE FEU FOLLET NOIR ( PONGE AS WILL – O – THE – WISP ), 1947

Oil on Canvas on Pavatex

Dimensions: 132.5 × 99.5 cm

Photo: Peter Schibli, Basel / © Jean Dubuffet / Artists Rights

Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fondation Beyeler

MONSIEUR PLUME PIECE BOTANIQUE ( PORTRAIT D’HENRI MICHAUX ), 1946
Oil and Mixed Media on Wood

Dimensions: 108 x 89 cm
Collection of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

The Charles E. Merrill Trust and Elisabeth H. Gates Fund, 1967
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: © 2015. Albright Knox Art Gallery/Art Resource, NY/Scala, Florence

MONSIEUR D’HOTEL, 1947

Oil and Sand on Canvas

Dimensions: 118.1 × 89.2 cm

Richard Gray Gallery

LETTRE A M. ROYER ( DESORDRE SUR LA TABLE ), 1953
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 81 x 100 cm
Acquavella Modern Art © 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: © Acquavella Modern Art

FACES INTO LANDSCAPE: THE ‘’ PLUS BEAUX QU’ILS CROIENT ‘’ PORTRAITS AND THE

‘’ PAYSAGES GROTESQUES ‘’

In 1946 and 1947 Dubuffet creates a number of caricature-like portraits of friends and acquaintances, amongst them ‘’ Monsieur Plume pièce botanique ‘’ , which he subsumes under the ironic title ‘’ Plus beaux qu’ils croient ‘’ , hence relativizing their supposed ugliness in terms of aesthetic convention. For Dubuffet, every face and its structural characteristics may be perceived as a miniature landscape in which the eye can discover all manner of things. After focusing on new ways of depicting the human face in portraits, Dubuffet returns increasingly to landscape subjects, encouraged by several trips to the Sahara. In 1947-49, cold winters and coal shortages in Paris prompt the artist and his wife Lili to pay several visits to the warm desert regions of Algeria. These works, collectively titled ‘’ Roses d’Allah ‘’, ‘’ clowns du desert ‘’ and produced both in France and Algeria, revolve around his experiences of the desert and the culture of its inhabitants. The cycle ‘’ Paysages grotesques ‘’ began with the paintings inspired by Dubuffet’s final trip to the Sahara, in March and April 1949. In these works, too, the artist developed a new way of representing landscape, while also devising a novel type of figure.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

PEDESTRIAN CROSSING 1961

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 97 x 130 cm

Private collection, Switzerland

DE – AND RECONSTRUCTING THE LANDSCAPE: THE ‘’ TABLEAUX D’ ASSEMBLAGES ‘’

His time at Vence in southern France prompts Dubuffet to embark on a new group of works in the mid 1950s, the ‘’ Tableaux d’assemblages ‘’ . In these he transfers the method used to produce the butterfly collages to the realm of painting. He cuts the canvases into pieces, and pins them together until their new order resonates with him. In dissecting nature, he reveals not only an anatomical and geological perception of landscape, but also a mythological view of its essence. An underlying search for the archaic and the primeval is indeed discernible in Dubuffet’s approach to landscape and accords fully with his ideas about art.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

THE FONDATION BEYELER

The Fondation Beyeler was officially inaugurated in Riehen on the outskirts of Basel on 18 October 1997, providing Hildy and Ernst Beyeler’s remarkable art collection with a publicly accessible home. The new museum was built by the Genovese architect Renzo Piano, whose work includes the Centre Pompidou in Paris, over a period of around three years. An extension to the museum was officially inaugurated in September 2000.

The building of the museum was financed by a non-profit-making foundation set up by Hildy and Ernst Beyeler in 1982, which also supports the Fondation Beyeler financially. The Riehen authorities provided the site free of charge and the Canton of Basel-Stadt annually contributes CHF 2.78 million towards the museum’s operating expenses (including a contribution from Riehen).

With his tranquil, restrained building, Renzo Piano has created a museum intended “to serve art, and not the other way round.” Clad with red porphyry, it consists of four monumental parallel walls, a glass façade at either end or a winter garden on the west side that looks out over the surrounding countryside. The glass roof suspended over the structure illuminates the whole building with the natural light so desirable for exhibiting works of art. All technical or design details that might distract visitors have been deliberately eliminated from the twenty-two exhibition rooms.

Consisting of around 250 paintings and sculptures by Modernist and contemporary masters, the Beyeler Collection was accumulated by Hildy and Ernst Beyeler during more than fifty years as successful gallery owners. The collection’s scope and reputation is constantly being enhanced by the acquisition of major works by artists such as Cézanne, van Gogh and Warhol. In some rooms, selected examples of tribal art from Africa, Alaska and Oceania are displayed side by side with European and American works, creating exciting encounters to be found in virtually no other museum in the world.

Through temporary exhibitions the Fondation Beyeler repeatedly creates links between the permanent collection and contemporary art. Three special exhibitions closely associated with the permanent collection’s contents and characters are held every year.

The following exhibitions have been held at the Fondation Beyeler since its inauguration: “Jasper Johns. Loans from the Artist”, “Renzo Piano Building Workshop”, “Colours–Sounds. Vasily Kandinsky and Arnold Schönberg”, “Roy Lichtenstein”, “The Magic of Trees” with “Wrapped Trees” by Christo & Jeanne-Claude, “Face to Face to Cyberspace”, “Cézanne and Modernism”, “Colour to Light”, “Andy Warhol. Series and singles”, “Mark Rothko”, “Ornament and Abstraction”, “Anselm Kiefer. The Seven Heavenly Palaces 1973–2001”, “Claude Monet ... up to digital Impressionism“, “Ellsworth Kelly. Works 1956–2002”, “EXPRESSIVE!”, “Paul Klee. Fulfillment in the Late Work”, “Mondrian + Malevich at the Center of the Collection”, “Francis Bacon and the Tradition of Art”, “Calder – Miró”,

“ArchiSculpture”, “Flower Myth. Vincent van Gogh to Jeff Koons”, “The Surrealist Picasso”, “René Magritte. The Key to Dreams”, “Contemporary Voices: Fondation Beyeler hosts The UBS Art Collection”, “Wolfgang Laib. The Ephemeral is Eternal”, “Henri Matisse. Figure Color Space” and, most recently “EROS. Rodin and Picasso” and "EROS in Modern Art”, “Edvard Munch. Signs of Modern Art”, “The Other Collection. Homage to Hildy und Ernst Beyeler“, „Forests of the World. The Other Engagement”, “Action Painting”, “Fernand Léger. Paris – New York“, „Venice“, „Visual Encounters – Africa, Oceania and Modern Art“, “Giacometti”, “Jenny Holzer”, “Henri Rousseau”, “Basquiat”, “VIENNA 1900. Klimt, Schiele and their Times”, “Beatriz Milhazes”, “Segantini”, “Constantin Brancusi and Richard Serra”, “Louise Bourgeois”, “Surrealism in Paris – Dalí, Magritte, Miró”, “Pierre Bonnard”, “Jeff Koons”, “Philippe Parreno”, “Edgar Degas”, “Ferdinand Hodler”, “Max Ernst”, “Maurizio Cattelan”, “Thomas Schütte”, “Odilon Redon”, “Gerhard Richter”, “Gustave Courbet” and “Peter Doig”. Forthcoming exhibitions in 2015: “Paul Gauguin”, “Marlene Dumas”, and “Kazimir Malevich”.

The Fondation Beyeler owes its unique attractiveness to its combination of a superb modern art collection and a fascinating architectural and natural setting, as well as to temporary exhibitions on the highest international level that offer visitors new insights not only into 20th-century art but also into the latest developments in contemporary art.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/museum/impressions

SAM KELLER DIRECTOR OF THE FONDATION BEYELER

THE FONDATION BEYELER DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO

THE ARCHITECTURE

The Fondation Beyeler consists of three parts: the Berower Park, acquired by the Riehen authorities in 1976, the 18th-century Berower Villa, which houses the restaurant and offices, and the museum recently built by Renzo Piano. In 1991, the Genovese architect Renzo Piano–who was awarded the renowned Pritzker Prize in 1998– was invited to develop an architectural concept for the Fondation. Piano described the assignment as follows: “A museum should attempt to interpret the quality of the collection and define its relationship with the outside world. This means taking an active, but not an aggressive role.” Two years later following a referendum held in Riehen, permission was given to build the museum. Construction work began the following year and continued until autumn 1997.

THE MUSEUM BUILDING

The elongated building covers the whole breadth of the narrow plot of ground situated between a busy main road and a protected area of farmland. It combines two contrasting motifs: long, solid walls and a light, apparently floating glass roof. All the external walls are clad with red porphyry from Argentina.

The building is supported by four 127 metre-long parallel load-bearing walls placed at intervals of about seven metres. The two end façades are made of glass and look out over the park. On the road side, the museum is completed by a windowless wall that protects the building and on the inside of which the Art Shop, cloakroom, toilets, etc. are located. Piano has described this wall as a kind of “backbone” or “formative zone” from which the architecture of the whole building develops. On the opposite wall there is a winter garden with a view of the surrounding countryside.

Located between the longitudinal walls, the exhibition rooms dedicated to the permanent collection are arranged in a well-proportioned pattern that can be altered if necessary. The rooms are not organised in any strict linear order, but visitors feel a natural inclination to move in a certain direction. Another distinctive characteristic of the Fondation Beyeler is the absolute serenity of the exhibition rooms, which is unmarred by any technical or design details and is enhanced by the sensitive interplay between the walls, the ceiling and the light-coloured French oak floor.

About one-third of the total exhibition space is reserved for temporary exhibitions that are presented directly beside the permanent collection. A staircase in the adjacent winter garden leads down to the museum’s lower level, where there is a 311 square metres multi-purpose room that can also be used for temporary exhibitions.

A large glass roof lets daylight into the whole building. Unlike conventional top lighting, this roof allows the zenithal daylight to filter into the building’s interior in its natural state instead of homogenising it and making it diffuse and milky. There are also three systems with artificial light sources that illuminate the rooms when there is insufficient light from outside. With his museum for the Fondation Beyeler, Renzo Piano has created a building of restrained elegance that serves art without being self-effacing. This characteristic is discussed in detail in the book “Renzo Piano–Fondation Beyeler. A Home for Art,” which places the building in the context of international museum architecture. Basel’s international reputation as a centre of fine architecture is considerably enhanced by the Fondation Beyeler.

THE EXTENSION

Less than two years after the Fondation Beyeler’s inauguration, the museum was extended by 12 metres (between September 1999 and May 2000). The total exhibition space was increased by 458 square metres to 3,764 square metres, offering more flexibility for the organisation of exhibitions. Additional space was created on the lower level for events, seminars, new media and offices. At the same time, the museum’s grounds were extended to the north so that the building now stands in the centre of them geographically as well as in other respects.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/Museum/Impressions/Architecture

THE FONDATION BEYELER DESIGN BY RENZO PIANO

THE FONDATION BEYELER

PROPITIOUS MOMENT ( L’INSTANT PROPICE ) 1962

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 200 x 165 cm

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

JEAN DUBUFFET: METAMORPHOSES OF LANDSCAPE

Landscape runs like a defining leitmotif throughout Jean Dubuffet’s multifarious oeuvre. From his earliest phase right up to his late period he constantly developed it in unexpected but consistent ways. The retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler focuses on Dubuffet’s innovative concept of landscape, which also served him as a springboard for addressing many other subjects.

Dubuffet has often been quoted to the effect that “Everything is landscape,” and landscape does indeed dominate his artistic practice and ideas: in both, anything can metamorphose into landscape at any time. It is this special capacity for metamorphosis, together with an intense delight in experimentation, that singles out the multi-faceted character of Dubuffet’s work. In his paintings, the shapes and textures of landscape can emerge even from bodies and faces. His art is governed by a unique interaction between nature and creatures that can even transform objects into landscape. With Dubuffet a landscape is not, therefore, a faithful depiction of actual appearances but their translation into mental images: landscape gives visible form to the immaterial world inhabited by the human mind. Instead of seeking beautiful idyllic landscapes, Dubuffet explores raw, naked earth, occasionally reaching down into its geological substructure. Sometimes he will fashion his landscapes and figures from actual natural elements, such as sand and gravel, making them the real material of his pictures. Natural landscape becomes a free and open field for artistic practice.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

LES VICISSITUDES, 1977

Acrylic Paint on Paper and Canvas

Dimensions Support: 2100 x 3390 mm

Collection: Tate

THE CREATION OF A DIFFERENT LANDSCAPE: ‘’ L’HOURLOUPE ‘’

Dubuffet produces his largest cycle of works over a period of twelve years, from 1962 to 1974, and coins the ambiguous neologism L’Hourloupe to describe it. This huge series, which comprises sculptural, architectural and theatrical installations as well as paintings and drawings, originated with doodles executed absent-mindedly in ballpoint pen while the artist was on the phone. From these scribbles he devised an intensely personal parallel world comprised of boldly outlined, organic-looking, amoebic shapes that interlock like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, distinguished from one another in color and internal hatching.

In L’Hourloupe Dubuffet works for the first time as a true sculptor, a large number of works being produced in such synthetic materials as polystyrene, polyester and epoxy resin. Some of these works are on a monumental scale and many engage closely with a landscape or another immediate environment. Visiting these artificial landscapes is like setting foot in a painting. As a total work of art, the L’Hourloupe cycle culminates in the large-scale piece for the stage Coucou Bazar , a unique encounter

between painting, sculpture, dance, language and music. On the stage, a number of single figures and other elements interact constantly, combining to generate a modular metamorphic landscape.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

COUCOU BAZAR, 1972-1973
Installation View
Collection Fondation Dubuffet, Paris
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris/Luc Boegly

“ The works connected with the Hourloupe cycle are linked closely to one another in my mind; each of them is an element intended for insertion into a whole. That whole aims to be the depiction of a world unlike ours, a world parallel to ours, if you like; and this world bears the name L’Hourloupe. ”

Jean Dubuffet

COUCOU BAZAR, 1972 - 1973

In his spectacular stage piece ‘’ Coucou Bazar ‘’, Dubuffet combined painting, sculpture, theatre, dance and music into a unique, multimedia work of art. This »animated painting« marks the climax not just of the ‘’ L’Hourloupe ‘’ cycle but of Dubuffet’s entire oeuvre. During the performance, the various costumed figures interacted continuously with each other and with the scenery, so that the presentation took on the form of a metamorphic figural landscape. Altogether 60 of these costumes and pieces of set are on display at the Fondation Beyeler—only rarely have the elements of ‘’ Coucou Bazar ‘’ been exhibited in public on this scale. Dubuffet’s large stage show was produced just three times: in 1973 in New York and Paris, and in 1978 in Turin. This last staging was documented in a film that can also be seen as part of this exhibition. For conservation reasons, Coucou Bazar can no longer be enacted in its entirety. The only two costumes that may still be animated are brought to life by professional performers on Wednesdays and Sundays during the exhibition.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/coucou-bazar

COUCOU BAZAR, 1972-1973
Installation View
Collection Fondation Dubuffet, Paris
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris/Luc Boegly

“ These 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. The transfer of these mental sites on the same plane as that of real concrete landscapes, and in such a way that an uncomfortable incongruity is the result (aggravated by the fact that these elements, stripped of materiality, are represented through a heavy medium, with impasto and high reliefs) seems to me an interesting operation. ”

Jean Dubuffet

PARIS POLKA, 1961

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 189.9 × 219.7 cm

Christie's

PLACE AND NON - PLACE IN THE LATE WORK: THE ‘’ THEATRES DE MEMOIRE ‘’, THE ‘’ MIRES ‘’ AND THE ‘’ NON – LIEUX ‘’

The last decade of Dubuffet’s career is exceptionally productive, with groups of works succeeding one another at regular intervals. One of the most important cycles is Théâtres de mémoire (1975-78), inspired by a text by Frances Yates. This series of large assemblages survey the artist’s previous oeuvre in the manner of a retrospective. The Mires and Non - lieux relate not to the outer, concrete world of landscape, but to the inner, abstract realm of the mind and psyche. Dubuffet interprets this non - lieux in terms of a non-event, a cessation of activity, thereby ultimately calling into question his work as an artist.

The potential for transformation shown by landscape in Dubuffet’s work embodies a fundamental challenge to human dominance and cultural convention, and it does so within the framework of total freedom of artistic practice and thought. Hence, when looking back on his oeuvre a few years before his death, Dubuffet stressed the significance of landscape before stating: “I believe that in all my works I have been concerned to represent what makes up our thoughts–to represent not the objective world, but what it becomes in our thoughts.”

The exhibition’s curator is Dr. Raphaël Bouvier.

The exhibition “Jean Dubuffet – Metamorphoses of Landscape” is being supported by: Beyeler-Stiftung Hansjörg Wyss, Wyss Foundation Dr. Christoph M. und Sibylla M. Müller

The Coucou Bazar live performances are generously supported by the Foundation Heinz Spoerli and the Friends of the Fondation Beyeler, in particular by: Heinz Spoerli Dorette Gloor-Krayer Michael und Ursula La Roche

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

CITE FANTOCHE 1963

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 164.5 x 219.4 cm

AUTOMOBILE A LA ROUTE NOIRE, 1963
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 195 x 150 cm
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Peter Schibli, Basel

“ Painting [...] operates with signs that are not abstract and immaterial, as words are. The signs in painting are much closer to the objects themselves. And then painting deals with materials that are themselves living substances. That is what allows them to go much farther than words ever can in approaching objects and their evocation. ”

Jean Dubuffet

LE COURS DES CHOSES ( MIRE G 174, BOLERO ), 1983
Acryl auf Papier auf Leinwand,

Dimensions: 268 x 800 cm
Musée National D'art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Ankauf 1985
Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Philippe Migeat

THE MEAT GUY, 1954
Slag

Dimensions: 36.5 x 16 x 9 cm
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Bequest 1989 of Gerard Bonnier
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Moderna Museet, Stockholm / Albin Dahlström

VERTU VIRTUELLE ( VIRTUAL VIRTUE ) , 1963

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 98 × 131 cm

Photo: Robert Bayer, Basel / © Jean Dubuffet / Artists Rights

Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fondation Beyeler

“ I think portraits and landscapes should resemble each other because they are more or less the same thing. I want portraits in which description makes use of the same mechanisms as those used in a landscape— here wrinkles, there ravines or paths; here a nose, there a tree; here a mouth and there a house. ”

Jean Dubuffet

COW JAR ( BOCAL A VACHE ), 1943
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 92 x 65 cm
Private Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: P. Schälchli, Zurich

FIGURE, LANDSCAPE & CITIES: THE ‘’ MARIONNETTES DE LA VILLE ET DE LA

CAMPAGNE ‘’ AND THE ‘’ MIROBOLUS, MADAME & C ‘’

In 1942, at the age of forty-one, Jean Dubuffet gave up his occupation as a wine merchant and devoted himself exclusively to art. In seeking to create a new, authentic art outside cultural norms and aesthetic conventions, he took his cue initially from the formal vocabulary and narrative style of children’s drawings. The brightly colored figure paintings Gardes du corps (1943), from Marionnettes de la ville et de la campagne , Dubuffet’s first group of works, marks this decisive turning-point in his oeuvre.

Even in his earliest works, Dubuffet addressed landscape in a highly distinctive way. Heralding a central feature of his output, it appears as an excerpt limited to sections of (sub)soil or overgrown land. Large areas are divided up by lines or hatching into pictorial elements that can be read as plots of land, paths and roads, or, vertically, as strata of soil reaching down into the depths of the earth. The white cow in the middle of a green field in Bocal à vache, for instance, seems to have been absorbed by its enclosure; the cow is not just in the field, but also under it.

In Desnudus (1945), on the other hand, the fields and paths seem to be absorbed by a body, with the naked man transmuting into the bearer of a landscape inscribed in his figure. The body becomes landscape; landscape becomes the body.

An interplay between outer shell and inner life also typifies Dubuffet’s early cityscapes, which focus on the façades of buildings, and their windows and doorways. By depicting the buildings and their tiers of stories from the front, Dubuffet discloses the “geology”–the inner life–of an imaginary urban landscape. He returns time and again to the close relationship between the ground and walls in later groups of works. In the first half of the 1940s Dubuffet relied on the traditional technique of oil painting on canvas, applying the color flatly, but in 1945, in the Hautes Pâtes of his group Mirobolus, Macadam & Cie , he began to employ a new material, a kind of paste that he applied thickly to the support and then modeled as in a relief. He intensified this focus on the material properties of paint by mixing sand, clay, tar, coal dust, and gravel into it. In his compellingly tactile Hautes Pâtes , Dubuffet creates material equivalents of textures and structures found in soil and in landscape. Scratching and gouging into the thick layers of paint, he transfers his interest in penetrating the depths of landscape and the human body in direct physical terms to the material substance of his pictures. At the same time, he abandons the bright palette of his early paintings and replaces it by earthy colors.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

VIEILLARD EPLORE

Clinker, Glass and Concrete

Dimensions: 36.8 x 21 x 13.3

BODY GUARDS ( GARDES DU CORPS ), 1943
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 116 x 89 cm
Private Collection, Courtesy Saint Honoré Art Consulting,

Paris and Blondeau & Cie, Geneva
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich
Photo: Saint Honoré Art Consulting, Paris and Blondeau & Cie, Geneva

BODY GUARDS ( DETAIL ), 1943

AUTOBUS GARE MONTPARNASSE, 1961

Gouache Sur Papier

Dimensions: 67 x 67 cm
Photo: Cantz Medienmanagement, Ostfildern

LE CADASTRE, 1960,

Silber- und Goldfolie, Pappmaché, Sand und Kunststoff auf Hartfaserplatte,

Collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL, Foto: Peter Cox, Eindhoven, NL

CORPS DE DAME – PIECE DE BOUCHERIE, 1950
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 116 x 89 cm
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich - Photo: Peter Schibli, Basel

CORPS DE DAME – PIECE DE BOUCHERIE (DETAIL), 1950

BODY LANDSCAPES & LANDSCAPED BODIES: THE ‘’ CORPS DE DAMES ‘’ AND THE

‘’ PAYSAGES DU MENTAL ‘’

Of all subjects, Dubuffet chooses the female nude, which throughout the history of art has been probably the most popular and highly regarded vehicle for depicting beauty, to exemplify his radical break with aesthetic norms and conventions by turning it into a landscape. In his series ‘’ Corps de dames ‘’, landscape and body each has a literally fertilizing effect on the other, uncovering new and unfamiliar levels of meaning. Moreover, the unique female “body landscapes” also allude to ancient creation myths, extending both the visual tradition of the anthropomorphic landscape and the linguistic tradition of the body-as-landscape metaphor. With ‘’ Paysages du mental ‘’, Dubuffet creates a further series of landscape pictures that begin in 1950 with ‘’ Le Géologue ‘’ and occupy the artist until 1952. As the word “mental” in the title of the series indicates, Dubuffet turns his attention away from geology here and instead explores the human mind.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

CORPS DE DAME, LA ROSE INCARNATE, 1950

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 116.8 x 90.2 cm

CORPS DE DAME, LA ROSE INCARNATE (DETAIL), 1950

LANDSCAPE AS STILL LIFE & OBJECT: THE ‘’ TABLES ‘’ AND THE ‘’ PATES BATTUES ‘’

In the Pâtes battues, begun in 1953, Dubuffet devises a method of treating paint as matter that involves using a palette knife to apply a smooth, paste-like layer of paint to a ground that is still wet, partly revealing the layer underneath. Then, with the tip of the palette knife, he swiftly inscribes figures and markings into the creamy impasto. In terms of motif, this group of works is dominated by landscapes and tables which, because of their interaction, Dubuffet had already called Tables paysagées in the case of some earlier pictures.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

CORPS DE DAME, LA ROSE INCARNATE (DETAIL), 1950

TABLE DE BARBE ( BEARD TABLE ), 1959

Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 130 × 97 cm

Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fondation Beyeler

THE RAGMAN, 1954

Slag on Cast Stone Base

Dimensions: 69.4 x 24.2 x 18.6 cm ( Including Base )

Credit: Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest

BODY OF A LADY LANDSCAPED RUDDY AND GARNET, 1950

Red Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 138 x 87 cm

BODY OF A LADY LANDSCAPED RUDDY AND GARNET (DETAIL), 1950

FACADES D’IMMEUBLES, 1946
Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 151 x 202 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Stephen Hahn Family Collection, 1995.30.3
© 2015, ProLitteris, Zurich

A CELEBRATION OF THE SOIL: THE ‘’ TOPOGRAPHIES ‘’ AND ‘’ TEXTUROLOGIES ‘’ AND THE ‘’ ELEMENTS BOTANIQUES AND MATERIOLOGIES ‘’

Beginning in the mid-1950s, Dubuffet focuses intensely on structures that evoke a wide range of landscapes. Avoiding monumental views of nature, he prefers completely prosaic ones. In the series entitled ‘’ Topographies ‘’, he turns to his unique form of collage again to depict unremarkable landscapes that “celebrate the ground”. His canvases emulate boundless natural surfaces in the ‘’ Texturologies ‘’ , made through successive steps of spraying, scratching, sanding, scraping, and so on. His

‘’ Matériologies ‘’ move beyond organic substances to incorporate synthetic or artificial materials like silver paper and gold foil.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

FACADES D’IMMEUBLES (DETAIL), 1946

MADAME J’ORDONNE, 1954

FUMEUR AU MUR, 1945
Oil on Canvas

MAQUETTE FOR PERSONNAGE AU CHAPEAU

Printed Paper Collage and Ink on Acetate Mounted on Paper

Christie's

PAYSAGE AUX ARGUS, 1955
Collage With Butterfly Wings

CURSED GOSSIP, 1954

Charcoal on Cast Stone Base

Dimensions: 33.2 x 9 x 9 cm ( including Base )

CONVERGENCES, 1976

Vinyl Paint and Pasted Paper Mounted on Canvas

Dimensions: 135.4 x 356.3 cm

LE CIRCULUS II (L 53), 1984
Acrylic and Collage on Paper Mounted on Canvas

JEAN DUBUFFET, SWITZERLAND, BASEL & THE BEYELER COLLECTION

In 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, Jean Dubuffet spent a number of weeks in Switzerland, where he came across powerful works by a number of patients in psychiatric clinics in Berne and Geneva. He later coined the term Art Brut to describe this kind of work, which had previously been marginalized. His discoveries included sculptures by Joseph Giavarini, the so-called “prisoner of Basel”, who had died in 1934. Dubuffet acquired many of the works concerned for his celebrated collection of Art Brut, which he donated to the city of Lausanne in 1971, where it has been given a worthy home in the Collection de l’Art Brut. Ernst Beyeler was deeply impressed by Dubuffet’s innovative art. His long-standing agent Jean Planque introduced him to the artist in the late 1950s and, once a certain mutual wariness had been overcome, close collaboration between Beyeler and Dubuffet ensued. From 1964 to 1971, that collaboration resulted in an exclusive agreement concerning new works in Dubuffet’s L’Hourloupe cycle that was shared between the Galerie Beyeler and the Galerie Jeanne-Bucher in Paris. Significantly, Dubuffet was the only artist whom Ernst Beyeler represented in this way, and the Basel gallerist played an important part in gaining a footing in Europe for an artist whose work had hitherto attracted attention principally in the USA, owing to promotion by Pierre Matisse’s New York gallery. In all, the Galerie Beyeler sold more than 750 works by Dubuffet over the decades, mounted six solo exhibitions devoted to him between 1965 and 2009, including a retrospective, and made him the subject of special displays at its stand at the Art Basel fair. The tone of the correspondence between the artist and his representative indicates that they remained on formal terms, but cordial relations developed between them in the course of their intensive business dealings. It was, in fact, not least owing to Dubuffet’s trust in Beyeler that the Kunstmuseum and the Kunsthalle in Basel were able to organize a double exhibition of Dubuffet’s work in 1970. Beyeler’s own collection reflects his long collaboration with Dubuffet to a special degree. Twelve major works dating from the 1940s to the 1970s offer a compelling overview of Dubuffet’s seemingly boundless creativity and the sheer variety of his oeuvre. Landscapes by Dubuffet occupy a prominent position in the Beyeler Collection. Its already fine set of works received some valuable additions with the donation of the Collection Renard in 2011.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/introduction

JEAN DUBUFFET

BIOGRAPHY

1901: Jean Dubuffet is born on July 31 to a family of wine merchants in Le Havre, Normandy.

1908: He attends lycée in Le Havre.

1914: His sister, Suzanne, is born. 1918 Gains his baccalauréat and moves to Paris. Attends courses in painting at the Académie Julian, but soon abandons them in favor of working independently.

1924: Having come to doubt the value of cultural activity, he stops painting and will not take it up again until eight years later.

1925: Returns to Le Havre and enters his father’s wine-selling business.

1927: Marries Paulette Bret. His father dies. Two years later, his daughter Isalmina is born.

1930 - 1932: Opens a wholesale wine business in Paris.

1933 - 1936: Rents a studio in Paris and works there regularly. Separates from his wife. Puts his wine-selling business under the control of a board of directors so as to be able to devote himself to painting. Makes the acquaintance of Emilie Carlu, known as Lili, whom he will marry in December 1937.

1937 - 1940: Reassuming control of his business to save it from bankruptcy, he again abandons painting. Enters the military on the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Demobilized in 1940, he returns to Paris and attends to his wine-selling business.

1942: Decides to devote himself exclusively to painting. Leases his business and becomes financially independent. Begins his first series of works, the ‘’ Marionnettes de la ville et de la campagne. ‘’

1943: Moves in artistic and literary circles and gets to know art dealer René Drouin.

1944: Has his first solo exhibition, at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris, which will show his work regularly until 1947. The exhibition causes a scandal. He produces his first lithographs.

1945: Travels to Switzerland, where he studies the art of the mentally ill in psychiatric hospitals. He coins the term ‘’ art brut ‘’ to describe this work.

1946: Produces a group of titled ‘’ Mirobolus, Macadam & C ‘’ and publishes his first theoretical texts.

1947: Has his first solo exhibition in the U.S.A., at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, which will show his work on a regular basis until 1959. Sells his wine merchant’s business. Stays for the first time in the Sahara, at the oasis town of El Goléa in Algeria. The Galerie René Drouin exhibits his series of portraits ‘’ Plus beaux qu’ils croient. ‘’

1949: Produces the series ‘’ Paysages grotesques ‘’ and publishes the manifesto ‘’ L’Art brut préféré aux arts culturels ‘’.

1950: Creates the series ‘’ Corps de dames ‘’.

1951: Receives his first retrospective exhibition, at the Galerie Rive Gauche in Paris. Produces the series ‘’ Sols et terrains ‘’, ‘’ Tables paysagées ‘’, and ‘’ Paysages du mental ‘’. In November he travels with Lili to New York and stays there for six months.

1952- 1953: Returns to Paris. Works on ‘’ pâtes battues ‘’ and begins creating collages with butterfly wings.

1954: Produces his first series of sculptures, the ‘’ Petites Statues de la vie précaire ‘’ and creates the series ‘’ Vaches ‘’.

1955: Settles in Vence in southern France and builds large studios there. Produces the series ‘’ Tableaux d’assemblages ‘’.

1956 – 1957: Lives and works alternately in Vence and Paris. Creates the series

‘’ Topographies ‘’ and ‘’ Texturologies ‘’.

1959 – 1960: Produces the series ‘’ Barbes ‘’, ‘’ Eléments botaniques ‘’, and ‘’ Matériologies ‘’. A retrospective exhibition of his work is shown at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris.

1961: Experiments with music and begins working on the series ‘’ Paris Circus ‘’.

1962 - 1963: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, devotes a retrospective exhibition to him. He starts work on the cycle ‘’ L’Hourloupe ‘’.

1964: Volume One of the catalogue raisonné of his work appears. Thirty-eight volumes have been published to date.

1965: Has his first exhibition at the Galerie Beyeler in Basel, where he will exhibit regularly until 1976.

1966: Begins work on an extensive series of painted polystyrene sculptures.

1967: The first two volumes of his collected writings, ‘’ Prospectus et tous écrits suivants ‘’, are published.

1969: Receives a commission for the monumental sculpture ‘’ Groupe de quatre arbres ‘’ for the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York. Builds new studios at Périgny-sur-Yerres, near Paris.

1970: Construction of the large-scale sculptural installation ‘’ Closerie Falbala ‘’ begins at Périgny-sur-Yerres. Two exhibitions of his work are mounted in Basel, at the Kunstmuseum and the Kunsthalle.

1971: Works on the multi-media theater piece ‘’ Coucou Bazar ‘’, which requires setting up a large studio in a former gun cartridge factory at Vincennes, near Paris.

1973: ‘’ Coucou Bazar ‘’ is premiered on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Further performances are given at the Grand Palais in Paris and, in 1978, in Turin.

1974: Brings his ‘’ Hourloupe ‘’ cycle to a close after twelve years. The Fondation Dubuffet is recognized as an institution serving the public interest.

1975 - 1976: Produces the series ‘’ Théâtres de mémoire ‘’. The Collection de l’Art Brut opens in Lausanne to house his collection of art brut, which he has donated to the city.

1980 Retrospective exhibitions of his art are held in Berlin, Vienna, and Cologne.

1981: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, mount exhibitions marking his eightieth birthday.

1983: Works on the series ‘’ Mires ‘’.

1984: Starts work on his last series, the ‘’ Non-lieux ‘2.

1985: In just a few weeks he writes his autobiography, Biographie au pas de course. Dies in Paris on May 12, aged eighty-four.

http://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/jean-dubuffet/biography

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February 21, 2016

JEAN DUBUFFET: METAMORPHOSES OF LANDSCAPE AT FONDATION BEYELER