尚·杜布菲

Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist in 1953)
Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Maremont, Winnetka, Illinois (acquired from the above)
Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
Donald Morris Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan
Acquired by the present owner from the above in December 1983

Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design, Crown Hall, The Maremont Collection at the Institute of Design, April 1961, no. 23
Birmingham, Michigan, Donald Morris Gallery, Jean Dubuffet: Two Decades: 1943-1962, November - December 1983, cat. no. 22, p. 29, illustrated in color

Max Loreau, ed., Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet, Fascicule VIII: Lieux momentanés, pâtes battues, Paris, 1967, cat. no. 9, p. 19, illustrated

This painting is in excellent condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 for the condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon. The canvas is framed in a wood strip frame with gold facing and a small float.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Executed in the fall of 1952, L’Homme aux Cocardes marvellously illustrates Dubuffet’s revolutionary artistic philosophy and highlights his great deployment of wit to upend traditional and outworn artistic traditions. Its title effects a play on words: “cocardes” may in English mean “rosette”, “cockade” as in the tricolour roundels emblazoned upon France’s First World War fighter planes, or it could denote a specific kind of lesion, after the French expression lésion en cocardes, which describes sores of the skin. Ambiguous references to all three interpretations are evinced by the red, blue, white, and purple patches colouring the present figure. Grinning broadly and waving jauntily, L’Homme aux Cocardes - seemingly accessorised by a bicorne hat like Napoleon - exudes levity and pleasure over his own intermingling of high and low cultural signifiers. Epitomizing Dubuffet’s proclivity to render everyday citizens and worthies alike as grotesque caricatures, L’Homme aux Cocardes spectacularly realizes the aims first articulated in Anticultural Positions, a lecture the artist delivered at the Arts Club in Chicago in 1951. During this address, Dubuffet outlined his rejection of the two basic tenets of Western culture, dismissing both the value of categorical thought as well as traditional notions of beauty.  "I believe beauty is nowhere.  I consider this notion of beauty as completely false.  I refuse to assent to this idea that there are ugly persons and ugly objects.  This idea is for me stifling and revolting." (Jean Dubuffet, Anticultural Positions, Point 6, Chicago, 1951)

Rigorous two-dimensional flatness, which Max Loreau notes drove Dubuffet’s shift away from highly textured relief beginning in 1952, was paramount according to Anticultural Positions. L’Homme aux Cocardes shows that Dubuffet began to rely increasingly on graphic, expressive lines and vibrant highlights to create form. In 1951, he said: "The objective of painting is to animate a surface which is by definition two-dimensional and without depth. One does not enrich it in seeking effects of relief or trompe-l'oeil through shading; one denatures and adulterates it...Let us seek instead ingenious ways to flatten objects on the surface; and let the surface speak its own language and not an artificial language of three-dimensional space which is not proper to it." (the artist cited in Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jean Dubuffet, A Retrospective, 1973, p. 24)  Proceeding literally - and perhaps again not without humour - the present figure appears flattened by a press, the outline of his body constructing a ridiculous discrepancy between dainty limbs and a outsized, bulbous head. In style and content, the present work thus maintains the anti-establishment and 'primitivist' cultural project that Dubuffet pursued in his painting, writing and collecting following the end of World War II. 

Dubuffet's commitment to art stripped of affectation was catalysed in 1923 when he was given the book Artistry of the Mentally Ill, written by Dr. Hans Prinzhorn. One of the first people to compare the art of the mentally ill, the art of children and the art of primitive cultures, Dr. Prinzhorn asserted that these three groups should be granted serious aesthetic consideration for the very fact that they exist beyond the reach of society's repressive hold.  Dubuffet concurred with Dr. Prinzhorn's analysis, becoming increasingly intrigued with the art of groups that inhabited a realm removed from the mainstream, seeing in them a freedom of expression, an unfettered individuality and a purity that he believed to be stifled in others by the structured and mimetic approach to art in civilized society.  The intensely personal and solitary need of the mentally ill to create art disassociated from the desire to communicate with others through conventional art channels, impressed Dubuffet to such an extent that he became involved in creating a collection of what he came to term Art Brut, with the help of André Breton as well as the leading authority on primitive art in Paris, Charles Ratton.  While the artist acknowledged that his immersion within society disallowed his art to be Art Brut, his exposure to the creations of the mentally ill did, however, strengthen his resolve to work towards the production of an art that shows no precedents; learning from Art Brut the importance of learning no lesson at all.

Dubuffet's radical step towards something other than the intellectualized methodology on which functional modernism was built was not taken alone, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s the artist became an increasingly influential proponent of Tachism.  Frequently associated with artists in this movement such as Jean Fautrier, Wols, Alberto Burri and Antoni Tàpies, among others, these artists had no one definitive style, technique or medium.  Rather, the connection between these artists materialized in their emotional and physical engagement with the creative process that they hoped would result in more spontaneous and authentic works of art.  Their preoccupation with materiality is tangible in the wavering, uneven application of paint in L’Homme aux Cocardes, creating a compellingly expressive image that continues to challenge artistic boundaries six decades after its creation.