ART CITIES:Basel-Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet is one of the defining artists of the 2nd half of the 20th Century. In 1942, at the age of 41, he gave up his occupation as a wine merchant and devoted himself exclusively to art. Inspired by the work of artistic outsiders as well as by the formal vocabulary and narrative style of childrens and the mentally ill drawings, and did much to promote their work, collecting it and promulgating the notion of Art Brut. Dubuffet’s influence can still be felt today in contemporary art and street art, for example in the work of David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Ugo Rondinone.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Fondation Beyeler Archive
The exhibition “Metamorphoses of Landscape” focuses on Dubuffet’s fascinating idea of landscape, which in his hands can transform itself into a body, a face or an object. Innovatively and at times humorously, Dubuffet seems to turn painting’s laws and genres upside down. Portraits, female nudes and still lifes turn into vibrant landscapes. In his works, Dubuffet experimented with new techniques and materials such as sand, butterfly wings, sponges and slag, using them to create a unique visual universe that was entirely his own. The Swiss Art Dealer and Collector Ernst Beyeler was deeply impressed by Dubuffet’s innovative art. His long-standing agent Jean Planque introduced him to the artist in the late ‘50s and, once a certain mutual wariness had been overcome, close collaboration between Beyeler and Dubuffet ensued. More than 750 of Dubuffet’s works were sold through the Galerie Beyeler over the decades. Ernst Beyeler’s great interest in Dubuffet is also reflected in the Beyeler Collection, which contains numerous major works by the artist. Dubuffet has often been quoted to the effect that “Everything is landscape”, and landscape does indeed dominate his artistic practice and ideas, in both, anything can metamorphose into landscape at any time. It is this special capacity for metamorphosis, together with an intense delight in experimentation, that singles out the multi-faceted character of Dubuffet’s work. In his paintings, the shapes and textures of landscape can emerge even from bodies and faces. His art is governed by a unique interaction between nature and creatures that can even transform objects into landscape. With Dubuffet a landscape is not, therefore, a faithful depiction of actual appearances but their translation into mental images: landscape gives visible form to the immaterial world inhabited by the human mind. Instead of seeking beautiful idyllic landscapes, Dubuffet explores raw, naked earth, occasionally reaching down into its geological substructure. Sometimes he will fashion his landscapes and figures from actual natural elements, such as sand and gravel, making them the real material of his pictures. Natural landscape becomes a free and open field for artistic practice. Alongside important paintings and sculptures from all the major phases of the artist’s oeuvre, the exhibition is also showing Dubuffet’s spectacular “Coucou Bazar”, a multimedia work of art combining painting, sculpture, theatre, dance and music. Some of these works have never been seen in public, others are being shown to a wide audience for the first time in several decades. The latter include the painting “Gardes du corps”, a key work dating from 1943 that for more than 40 years was thought lost and that attests in unique fashion to the groundbreaking aesthetic embodied in the fresh start on which Dubuffet embarked at that stage in his career.
Info: Curator: Dr. Raphaël Bouvier, Fondation Beyeler, Baselstrasse 101, Basel, Duration: 31/1-8/5/16, Days & Hours:Thu-Tue 10:00-18:00, Wed 10:00-20:00, www.fondationbeyeler.ch
