Paysage Aux Végétations
Jean Dubuffet
JEAN DUBUFFET, 1952. OIL ON MASONITE
Jean Dubuffet was well into middle age when his life’s work began. An occasional artist, winemaker and scholar, Dubuffet rejected anything that confined him as he strove for knowledge and traveled the world. He immersed himself in the study of noise music, of ancient languages, lost wisdom and poetry, picking up and putting down the paintbrush every decade or so. The eventual progenitor of the art brut (raw art) movement finally found his calling in painting for the first time at the age of 41. Experimenting with non-traditional new materials, he incorporated mud, sand, gravel, and, notably, plant matter into his compositions. He became a geologist of sorts, studying the vegetable/mineral representations of the organic landscapes he would have simply painted ten years earlier. From these experiments eventually came art brut; a movement born of Dubuffet's embracing of the art of children and the mentally ill. He argued that the concept of ‘culture’ both assimilated and subsequently disempowered each successive evolution in art. The only outcome could be the death of true expression, but not for art brut — only they could resist culture, because the artists themselves were unable to be assimilated.