JEAN DUBUFFET | Paysage aux Griffures

Galerie René Drouin, Paris
Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, Paris
Galerie Ariel, Paris
Eiteljorg Family Collection, Indianapolis
Sotheby's, London, 5 February 2004, Lot 36
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Paris, Cercle Volney, Exposition de Peintures, Dessins et Divers Travaux Executés de 1942 à 1954 par Jean Dubuffet, March - April 1954, n.p., no. 116 (text)

Max Loreau, Catalogue Intégral des Travaux de Jean Dubuffet, Fascicule VIII: Lieux Momantanés, Pâtes Battues, Paris 1989, p. 59, no. 64, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the whites are brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals some minor undulation to the top right hand quadrant of the painting. Extremely close inspection reveals some minute specks of loss to the extreme edges. Very close inspection under raking light reveals some tiny, faint and hairline cracks and some compressed impasto peaks in isolated places. 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."

Frenetic, lyrical, and charged with latent potential, Paysages aux Griffures is a visceral engagement with the medium and materials of painting by the revolutionary French artist Jean Dubuffet. Like geological strata, layers of paint are applied to a vast expanse of ‘ground’ or earth, then whipped up into a thick impasto, left to dry, and coated over. With care and conscientiousness at dramatic odds with the resultant aesthetic, Dubuffet scratches (griffe), scrapes, sands and marks the layers with the stub of his paintbrush and the blade of a palette knife; recording the type and extent of these gestures meticulously in his studio log. Rich and redemptive colour appears to swell from under the surface, creating an impression of untapped possibility and unexplored worlds. In a bathetic shift typical of Dubuffet’s conference of the sublime to the prosaic, the deep brown of the ‘sky’ evokes a raw, primordial tree bark. Intimated is a tenet of Dubuffet’s metaphysics: any object – even the most unrefined – houses the seeds of a delicate beauty. While Paysage aux Griffures exemplifies many of the qualities of Dubuffet’s Paysages du mental series of 1950 to 1952, the present work is exceptionally exuberant and colourful. This formal activity serves a purpose justified on theoretical grounds. Convinced of the superiority of painting over language as both intrinsic material and communicatory tool, the series implements the artist’s visual topography of human consciousness. Just as the physical world we inhabit is for Dubuffet indissociable from the personal vicissitudes we project onto it, these landscapes are corporeal vessels for emotion, paint, and colour. And just as we have no experience of the present – our thoughts and emotions consigned to the immediate past once recognised – the forms configured by the canvas are ephemeral “beginnings of images, of fading images…in a turmoil, tatters borrowed from memories of the outside world” (Jean Dubuffet cited in: Exh. Cat., Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Jean Dubuffet: Metamorphoses of Landscape, 2016, p. 15). Swallowed by the ground of the landscape, the engulfed canvas intimates the psychoanalytical principle that the majority of the mental is unconscious. The present work becomes, then, a kind of psychological excavation of physical space. Part of this space has been fashioned to appear passionately defaced; creating marks reminiscent of the primitive, haunting Parisian graffiti photographed by Dubuffet’s close friend Brassaï.

First exhibited in 1954 at the Cercle Volney exhibition in Paris, the present work, and the Paysages du mental series as a wider whole, sent progressive shockwaves through the art world. In a similar vein, the Pâtes Battues contain incised and churned layers of paint, but conceal strange humanoid forms merged with the creamy impasto. The present work foreshadows too the Topographies series of the late 1950s. An aesthetic extension, the organic materials represented by the media of the present work – bark, dirt, vegetation and blossom – become in Topographies the media themselves: radiating that strange equivocality of symbols that constitute what they are arranged to represent.