Jean Dubuffet

Galerie Beyeler, Basel

Waddington Gallery, London

Private Collection, New York

James Goodman Gallery, New York

Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1980)

Sotheby’s, New York, Contemporary Art Day Sale, 13 May 2010, Lot 131 (consigned by the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

London, Waddington Gallery, Jean Dubuffet: Paintings, Gouaches, Assemblages, Sculpture, Monuments, Practicables, Works on Paper, 1972, p. 49, no. 61, illustrated in colour

Seoul, Shinsegae Gallery; Busan, Shinsegae; and Gwangju, Shinsegae, Jean Dubuffet and World of Hourloupe, 2010-11, p. 8, illustrated in colour 

Max Loreau, Ed., Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet: Coucou Bazar, Fascicule XXVII: Coucou Bazar, Lausanne 1976, p. 41, no. 47, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the red is slightly lighter in the original. Condition: This work is in good condition. Extremely close inspection reveals a small number of unobtrusive hairline cracks throughout, notably to the figure's right foot in the signature and to the right of the figure's neck. There is evidence of a repaired crack to the figure's right arm, which fluoresces darkly under ultraviolet light, and which is also visible on the reverse. There are some spots of inpainting to the white pigment throughout, notably to the left leg and foot, which fluoresce brightly when examined under ultraviolet light. Examination under ultra-violet also reveals a few spots of inpainting in the black pigment to the figures left wrist and left shoulder.
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Striking in scale, significant in historical import, and brimming with a sense of individual personality, Jean Dubuffet’s Le Sergent is a work of exceptional impact. It should be considered not only as a fascinating artefact from an extraordinary moment in this artist’s oeuvre – the Coucou Bazar – but also as a prime example of the celebrated Hourloupe cycle. It is playful, vivacious, and engaging; executed in perhaps the most recognisable artistic language of the Twentieth Century.

The Coucou Bazar was a unique project of almost unrivalled ambition, even within an oeuvre as varied and outlandish as that of Jean Dubuffet. While the artist referred to it as an animated painting, it is best understood as a performance. Lasting an hour, it featured paintings, actors, dancers in Hourloupe costumes, and specially composed background music. It was a riotous festival of Dubuffet’s outsider-art style that was performed on three separate occasions: first for Dubuffet’s Guggenheim retrospective in New York in 1973, then in Paris for his Grand Palais exhibition in the same year, and finally in Turin in 1978. Its unbridled energy now survives only through the costumes, and the 175 Praticables that Dubuffet created for the set, of which the present work is one (half of the Praticables presently reside with the Dubuffet Foundation). Other examples now reside in such prestigious museum collections as the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Extending his idiosyncratic visual language into the realms of performance and narrative was a seminal moment for Dubuffet. In this context, we can understand why Le Sergent appears so theatrical. Not only does it take the physical form of a stand-alone stage set, but it also has a very specific sense of individual character. Bolt upright, with muscular shoulders and clenched fists, our Sergeant adopts an almost comical stand-to-attention pose. Meanwhile, his jocular beret and jutting jaw evoke a mood of polished pomp and military grandeur. He appears every inch the heroic soldier, even if his interior is bedecked in the fluid brevity of Dubuffet’s idiosyncratic ornament. 

Indeed, while the present work is contextually significant for its role in the Coucou Bazar, it also merits further aesthetic consideration as a worthy example of the Hourloupe cycle. This wider series, begun in 1962, occupied Dubuffet for more than a decade and represented a marked shift in his dialogue. The recurrent subjects of his lifelong activity – the human figure, landscape, and the mundane object – coalesced in these works, spreading and flowing into one another, contoured by black outlines and populated with a predominance of primary red and blue zones on a white ground. The result is, as maintained by Gaëton Picon, “a true system, a net in which everything is caught, a grille through which everything is seen, in fact an alphabet… with which everything is said: a set of preconditions for imaginative perception, within which it is possible to see everything, and outside which it is not possible to see anything” (Gaëton Picon in: Exh. Cat., London, Waddington Galleries, Jean Dubuffet, 1972, p. 39). The Coucou Bazar, exemplified by the present work, represented the apex of the Hourloupe cycle; the moment when it’s trademark energy and dynamism reached new, performative heights.