Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality

by Jean Dubuffet

Passionately believing that 'everyone could be a painter. painting is like speaking or walking', Dubuffet looked to non-traditional sources - art by prisoners, psychics, and the insane - and to unusual materials - tar, sand, butterfly wings - to liberate his own creativity. The extraordinarily imaginative and varied results are viewed in this survey of his career. Insatiably curious about new ideas, fiercely skeptical about conventional ones, Dubuffet probed unexplored territory through his prose as well as his art - many appearing here for the first time. Dubuffet made several false starts as an artist before committing himself to painting full time in 1943. This book proceeds from the heavily impastoed portraits of the forties, through the well-known Hourloupe Cycle of the sixties, and onto the last works of Dubuffet the Non-lieux (No-ground). Dubuffet also experimented with lithographs, gouaches, assemblages and large scale public sculpture. As artist, writer, collector of more than 5000 examples of Art Brut, Dubuffet had a formidable impact on international postwar art. Refusing to conform to any one style, he dazzled with an inexhaustible inventiveness that continued nearly to his death at age eighty-three. This book captures the unique spirit of this remarkable artist.

Genres: Art

310 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1987

About the author

Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet (31 July 1901 – 12 May 1985) was a French painter and sculptor of the École de Paris.
His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favour of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. He is perhaps best known for founding the art brut movement.