JEAN DUBUFFET | Paysage aux 3 arbres

Galerie Rive Droite, Paris
Private Collection, Paris
Stephen Hahn Gallery, New York
Judith Riklis, New York
Sotheby's, New York, 12 November 2008, Lot 107
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Paris, Galerie Rive Droite, Jean Dubuffet tableaux d'assemblages, April - May 1957, n.p., no. 5 (text)
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Giacometti & Dubuffet, November 1968, n.p., no. 56 (text)

Max Loreau, Ed., Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet: Fascicule XII: Tableaux d'Assemblages, Paris 1969, p. 31, no. 19, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although they fail to fully convey the textural nature of the work. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are artist's pinholes in places to the collaged elements. Very close inspection reveals some light wear to the extreme edges with some minute specks of associated loss in isolated places. All the collaged elements are stable, although there is some slight delamination to the extreme edges of a few and some evidence of adhesive residue, which has discoloured slightly. Further very close inspection reveals some tiny hairline cracks with some associated paint flaking, which is integral to the artist's working process. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Presenting an anarchic and striking Art Brut transmutation of Rembrandt’s etching Les 3 Arbres (1643), Paysage aux 3 arbres belongs to Jean Dubuffet’s seminal Tableaux d’assemblages series: a pioneering body of work that succeeds in transporting us to a phantasmagorical and absurd hinterland of abounding activity. Like the setting of a Samuel Beckett play elaborated in dreamscape by one of its own characters, entangled textural and narrative threads marshal forms out of formlessness; suggesting the effervescence of unseen mysteries under the surface. Extending the hypnotic chromatic patterns of Dubuffet’s Butterfly Wings series, Paysage aux 3 arbres configures a proliferating tapestry of barely individuated gardens, terrains, iridescent currents, disorderly paths and disorienting, amorphous faces that seem simultaneously to emerge from and dissolve into the landscape. Like the figures of the Assemblages d’Empreintes, the figure of Paysage aux 3 arbres exists rigidly in a nameless state between day and night, sleep and waking life, neither standing, seated nor lying down, neither identical to nor distinct from the patchwork of forms around him. The year 1956 saw the replacement of innocuous, clown-like figures in Dubuffet’s figuration with characters bearing a quality of latent and rising menace. The figure’s scarecrow-evocative fixity in Paysage aux 3 arbres induces a tension not unlike the uncanny aura emitted from the actors in a theatrical tableau vivant, propelling the viewer’s imagination into a hypnagogic fantasy that destroys the rationalist Kantian categories of quantity, quality, relation and modality. Dubuffet’s process with the Tableaux d’assemblages vigorously enacts the liberations of Art Brut. Beginning by preparing fresh, figure-free canvases, Dubuffet then generously drenches them in rich, oil-based hues of purples, browns, blues and greens. He then marks the canvas with his hands and multiple tools before scratching off the resultant impressions and pasting fragments of paper and cloth onto fresh oil paint; resulting in a four-dimensional mélange of lived experience and tangible media. Evoking an otherworldly coral reef of alien life, the surface of the work is subsequently worked by the artist with scissors. Dubuffet embraces his aleatory impulses, incising the canvas to produce combinations of shape and colour ignored or marginalised by contingent aesthetic conventions. As Max Loreau explains, “the fragment is incised with generous cuts of the scissors, obeying no deliberate injunction on the part of the artist. How, then, could they pass for anything other than formless, since they resemble no prior form?” (Max Loreau, Ed., Catalogue des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet: Fascicule XII: Tableaux d'Assemblages, Paris 1969, p. 7). For Loreau, the fragments that result from the indeterminacy of this process are veritable éclats de hasard, it is the artist’s very investment in chance that excites the viewer’s active creativity; filling in the gulf between the producer and the consumer of the artwork: “[Dubuffet’s] energetic stimulation of interacting accidents brings our thought to its very limit and forces us to invent” (Ibid., p. 7).

Famously, Dubuffet did away with the upright easel and frame for the composition of the Tableaux d’assemblages, opting instead for rolls of canvas laid out on the floor. Freed from the artificial restrictions of border, Dubuffet was able to develop textures and forms of a potentially limitless nature; placing instinct and caprice at the forefront of his method. Permitting as they do an infinite expansion – the iterative metamorphosis of what was formerly a complete collage into the component of a larger one – it is natural that some of the Tableaux d’assemblages ended up monumental in scale. This was the first time Dubuffet employed this technique, which he went on to employ extensively in his Routes et Chaussées and Texturologies. Endlessly engaging and utterly pioneering, Paysage aux 3 arbes is an utter tour de force of Dubuffet’s iconic style.