Bernard Buffet

Galerie David et Garnier, Paris
Wally Findlay Gallery, New York
Private collection (acquired from the above)
Thence by descent to the present owner

The medium is oil on canvas, the canvas is not lined. The work is in very good overall condition. There is nice impasto retained. There is some minor craquelure in the greens of the clown's shirt. There is some fluorescence associated with the artist's technique, but there is no apparent inpainting when viewed under UV light. The colors are bright and fresh and the work presents very well.
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Throughout Western history, the figure of the clown has represented the various masks we have chosen to wear as we make our paths through life. The theatrical clown’s roots lie both in classical Greek theater and with the medieval court jester, who, under the guise of entertainment, could safely make fun of the lord and thus reveal the fallible man behind the regal mask. Shakespeare drew on this tradition in his plays, endowing his jesters both with scenes of high buffoonery and richly profound observations of the complexities and truths of human existence. Picasso also used such figures to the same purpose, employing actors from the Commedia dell’arte as surrogates for himself and his circle of immediate friends.

Bernard Buffet was only eighteen years old when he exhibited his first work, a self-portrait, at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The show set Buffet in the spotlight, where he would remain for the rest of his life.  For an artist who would spend the next fifty-three years in the public eye, entertaining his public not only with his artwork but with his exterior persona of a brilliant and complex artiste, this self-portrait would be the first of many until about 1960 when self-portraits practically cease.

Around 1955, paintings of clowns appear in Buffet’s work.  Arguably the most important subject for the artist, the clown remains a constant preoccupation throughout all decades of his career, even painted in the last year of his life. The present work, from 1966, is a striking example from his most protean and important period of work.  Here the portrait is of a clown, a portrait that could just as easily be Buffet as it could be us. The clown, like the artist, must always wear his mask; it is the mask which permits him to speak the truth without fear of repercussion from those in the audience. The clown can show his full range of emotions, often thoughtful, sometimes sad or even verging on exhaustion, but like us and life—for the clown the show must go on.

The artist and the clown hold a mirror of truth to society and theirs is not a negligible burden, because like the court jester who’s every joke may displease the lord, so too the artist’s livelihood depends on pleasing their audience. In the face of Clown—Chapeau noir we glimpse the artist who created him, and share the psychic strain – and precariousness –of Buffet’s position:  by the time the present work was painted Buffet had been an internationally renowned artist for twenty years. During that time he had both been lauded as the great French painter of the post-war era, and criticized with the special distain reserved for those who achieve a certain level of success. And yet, he remained strong. His passion to create, to demonstrate the world to itself, remained strong.

The scope of Buffet’s work spans decades, and genres, but from his Toreros, to his harlequins, to his clowns, Buffet always returned to the idea of performance, costume and masks, and the real people who hide beneath them. In so doing he has the viewer look deeply into themselves and consider the masks that they, too, wear, all life long.