French artist Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut, meaning “raw art”, to describe unconventional art made outside of established art institutions by artists without formal artistic education, “where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere”. Despite briefly attending art school as a teenager, he adopted an artistic style inspired by this “outsider art” (as it is now often known), employing both abstraction and a direct, simplistic form of representation. This exhibition presents Théâtres de mémoire, a series of enormous works that Dubuffet produced towards the end of his life in the mid-1970s. In Les commentaires (1978), for example, a chaotic canvas comprises many different sections, ranging from apparently random patches of colour, slapdash patterns, and Picasso-like figures.
Jean Dubuffet (b. 1901, Le Havre, France; d. 1985, Paris) began painting at the age of seventeen and studied briefly at the Académie Julian, Paris. After seven years, he abandoned painting and became a wine merchant. During the thirties, he painted again for a short time, but it was not until 1942 that he began the work which has distinguished him as an outstanding innovator in postwar European painting. Dubuffet's interest in art brut, the art of the insane, and that of the untrained person, whether a caveman or the originator of contemporary graffiti, led him to emulate this directly expressive and untutored style in his own work. His paintings from the early forties in brightly colored oils were soon followed by works in which he employed such unorthodox materials as cement, plaster, tar, and asphalt-scraped, carved and cut and drawn upon with a rudimentary, spontaneous line.
Jean Dubuffet: Théâtres de mémoire. Pace Gallery, London, 13 September – 21 October.
