Dubuffet: the prototype of the modern artist

Although he was well-educated, Jean Dubuffet came to reject his studies. Preferring to teach himself, the artist would base much of his artistic career on the readings of Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, who drew comparisons between the art of asylum inmates and that of children. Prinzhorn believed that it was savagery, or base animal instinct, that lead to universal harmony, arguing that it was the primal instinct, not intellectual theory or analysis, that connected all living things. 

Prinzhorn’s theories spoke directly to Jean Dubuffet who disliked authority and found mainstream culture to be “asphyxiating.” Frustrated by intellectual approaches to art, Dubuffet admired and collected the artwork of outsiders. He would champion the movements of Art Brut (meaning “raw”) and Art Informel (informal), aesthetics contrary to traditional standards, much to the dismay of the art-world elite. He sought to create an art free from scholarly concerns, and as a result, his work had a tendency to look like it was made by an amateur. Despite the child-like style of his works and his general disdain for the intellectual class, he was, early-on in his career, identified as “the most original painter to have come out of the Paris School since Miró.” 

It was certainly the paradox of Dubuffet’s career that he opposed the art establishment more forcefully than any artist, yet became one of the most esteemed visual innovators of the 20th century. 

In the early 1960s, he developed a radically new, graphic style, which he called “Hourloupe,” from which, this week’s Work of the Week! WOW! Arborescences I & II stem. 

The “Hourloupe” series began in 1962 and would preoccupy the artist until his death in 1985. The inspiration came from a chance doodle Dubuffet created while on the telephone. The style was composed of black fluid lines, tangles forming cells, some of which were filled with unmixed color which he limited to red, white, black and blue. 

Ever true to his dismissal of idealistic art, the Arborescence works are marked by a rebellious attitude toward the at-the-time dominant notions of high culture and beauty. Dubuffet’s embrace of so-called “low art,” and abandonment of traditional standards lead to what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to creating images. 

Dubuffet also departed from the use of traditional medium in his works. He placed an emphasis on texture and materiality which can be seen as an insistence on reality. The two Arborescences artworks are unique in that they are 3-dimensional works, screenprinted on vacuum-formed plastic. Vacuum forming was patented in 1950 as an industrial technology. It is a version of thermoforming where a sheet is heated to form and stretch against a mold by vacuum. At the time of the creation of these artworks, this process was still new and complex. 

In the History of Art, the 20th century marked a period of dramatic and fast-paced change. Invention, innovation and rupture of inherited models allowed for profound aesthetic revolutions of which Dubuffet was a leader and pioneer.