Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective
Category: Books
Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective Details
Some think Jean Dubuffet was a typical artist, but in his own words he was not. He was not looking for accolades, or painting famous objects or places for notoriety. As a matter of fact, he was interested in the complete opposite, the everyday man, the mundane and the simplest of spectacles. This book outlines the many interesting facets of his life, his art, his voice. Read more
Reviews
As my own paintings have evolved from a highly detailed Neo-Gothic bentto a more graphic and expressionistic approach I have become more interested inthe work of matter-of-fact artist such as Egon Schiele, Mario Sironi and am alsofinding inspiration from such "Primitives" as Bill Traylor, Carlo, and theArt Brut painters. Dubuffet is the founder of the Art Brut movement and I have recently rekindledmy interest in his deceptively childlike works. I think what moves me about hispaintings are the surfaces he created along with the "character" evoked by the "punchy" images he arrived at. Also the assemblages and sculptures he put together were perhaps more influential to later art styles than his paintings. This book, to it's credit, has a decent informative text and a large number of reproductions, the problem lies in the scant number of color plates and thepoor quality of the black and white repros, especially the paintings. Perhaps it is the nature of his paintings, relying heavily on surface texture, that does notreproduce well or just the age of the technology that created this book. This book was inexpensive and good books on Dubuffet are hard to find withoutpaying $150+ so I do not feel to bad about my purchase. I would recommend the book- Jean Dubuffet 1943-63, Paintings, Sculptures, and Assemblages edited by Dubuffet himself (on the third page of Amazon's Dubuffet book listings w/ theimage of a group of people on a city street on the cover) as it is fairly inexpensive (so far) and has ample reproductions in color, I can't remember if the text is in French or English but as an artist I am more interested in studying good repros than text anyway.