PASSION & SPORT

JEAN DUBUFFET

A critical artist 

Jean Dubuffet, Fiston la filoche (1966-1967), Renault Collection

Jean Dubuffet (1901 – 1985) was a French painter, sculptor and visual artist. He was the first theoretician of Art Brut,  a movement bringing together a miscellany of works by non-professional artists.

 

Dubuffet was a committed artist, who wrote extensively on the place of art in contemporary society. His works featured a strongly critical note. In his 1968 essay Asphyxiante culture (Suffocating culture), for example, he attacked the supremacy of a dominant culture.

The Hourloupe cycle, a raw, industrial art form 

The artistic works of Dubuffet can be split into a number of cycles or periods named by the artist himself. In 1962, Dubuffet started a series of pen drawings produced almost automatically. “The author’s hand cannot be seen here. All we have is impersonal lines with cursory touches of flat color.” This marked the start of the Hourloupe cycle. This was Dubuffet’s best known and longest cycle, lasting until 1974.

 

For Dubuffet, the Hourloupe expressed a bold approach. He deliberately limited himself to three colors: red, blue and black. And while limiting his color range, he extended his artistic vocabulary to include industrial materials: polystyrene, expanded polyester, synthetic resins. The partnership suggested by Renault in 1973 therefore fitted the focus of Dubuffet’s work.

A prolific and eventful partnership 

When talking about the partnership between Dubuffet and Renault, people tend only to remember the eight-year court battle that followed Renault’s cancelling an order from the artist in 1975.

However, this episode should not overshadow the extensive work carried out by Dubuffet for and with Renault. Using Renault’s technology and engineering, the artist produced bold works of art. To prepare the mock-ups for his huge habitable sculptures, he used the Delta 3D, a machine designed by Renault to increase the size of scale model vehicles. The Roman burlesque (a series of 18 pictures) and  Paysages castillans are true masterpieces that reaped the benefits of Dubuffet’s genius and Renault’s technology.

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