Dubuffet or the Permanent Revolution. Studiolo.
the Contemporary Workshop| N° d'inventaire | 25661 |
| Format | 11.5 x 16 |
| Détails | 288 p., illustrated, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2022 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782850350795 |
Perhaps it is this providential adequacy of an individual idiosyncrasy and a sociocultural situation, making one the magnifying paradigm of the other, which would explain the complete enlistment of the most singular traits of the individual Dubuffet in a work recurrently invested by the collective sensibility like the surfacing of a sort of historical unconscious. Everything happens as if Dubuffet had been able to metabolize the totality of the constitutive traits of his person for the greater vitality of his work, which leaves no psychological or biographical residue. Since 1942, the date of his definitive entry into painting, Jean Dubuffet has been literally absorbed, or saturated body and soul by his own production.
In all his works, Dubuffet remains paradoxical: he is no more an artist in the conventional sense of the term than he is an author of Art Brut. Nor is he in an intermediary position. Rather, he should be defined in strategic terms as an enemy within, who uses the cultural instruments and institutions—which circumstances have decreed he has at his disposal—against culture itself.
His pictorial conceptions and the new scientific spirit: Dubuffet undoubtedly went much further in this direction than any other artist of his generation. It even appears that the rejection of artistic heritage was reinforced by the inverse attraction of intuitions inspired in particular by new physical and biological theories.
Having read the parts of this work written before his death and marking such convergences, Dubuffet strongly approved them and encouraged us to continue our analysis in this direction. Certainly, in his writings, he made only very allusive reference to the new scientific imagination.
But we know that he assiduously practiced works accessible to laymen such as those of Jacques Monod, François Jacob, Edgar Morin and Henri Atlan. Moreover, there is no need for erudition in this field for a man as hypersensitive as he was to the waves of time. Dubuffet was aware that artistic creation had to respond to the challenge of submicroscopic events (radioactivity, pollution, genetic manipulation, etc.) which now challenge us in our daily lives, while our sensory representation is only adapted to macroscopic reality.
Perhaps it is this providential adequacy of an individual idiosyncrasy and a sociocultural situation, making one the magnifying paradigm of the other, which would explain the complete enlistment of the most singular traits of the individual Dubuffet in a work recurrently invested by the collective sensibility like the surfacing of a sort of historical unconscious. Everything happens as if Dubuffet had been able to metabolize the totality of the constitutive traits of his person for the greater vitality of his work, which leaves no psychological or biographical residue. Since 1942, the date of his definitive entry into painting, Jean Dubuffet has been literally absorbed, or saturated body and soul by his own production.
In all his works, Dubuffet remains paradoxical: he is no more an artist in the conventional sense of the term than he is an author of Art Brut. Nor is he in an intermediary position. Rather, he should be defined in strategic terms as an enemy within, who uses the cultural instruments and institutions—which circumstances have decreed he has at his disposal—against culture itself.
His pictorial conceptions and the new scientific spirit: Dubuffet undoubtedly went much further in this direction than any other artist of his generation. It even appears that the rejection of artistic heritage was reinforced by the inverse attraction of intuitions inspired in particular by new physical and biological theories.
Having read the parts of this work written before his death and marking such convergences, Dubuffet strongly approved them and encouraged us to continue our analysis in this direction. Certainly, in his writings, he made only very allusive reference to the new scientific imagination.
But we know that he assiduously practiced works accessible to laymen such as those of Jacques Monod, François Jacob, Edgar Morin and Henri Atlan. Moreover, there is no need for erudition in this field for a man as hypersensitive as he was to the waves of time. Dubuffet was aware that artistic creation had to respond to the challenge of submicroscopic events (radioactivity, pollution, genetic manipulation, etc.) which now challenge us in our daily lives, while our sensory representation is only adapted to macroscopic reality.