Jean Dubuffet

Featuring newly commissioned essays and photography of rarely exhibited works, this book highlights the radicalism of Jean Dubuffet, who was one of the most provocative voices of the postwar avant-garde. In 1940s occupied Paris, Jean Dubuffet began to champion a progressive vision for art; one that rejected classical notions of beauty in favor of a more visceral aesthetic. Taking a pioneering approach to materiality and technique, the artist variously blended paint with sand, glass, tar, coal dust, and string. At the same time, he began to assemble a collection of Art Brut--work that was made outside the academic tradition of fine art--even visiting psychiatric wards from 1945 to collect work by patients. This book features texts from leading scholars and is accompanied by images that illuminate Dubuffet's attempts to move beyond the artistic expectations of his time. The works are grouped into six thematic sections that focus on specific series, from his graffiti-inspired "Walls" and his notorious portrait series, "People are Much More Beautiful Than They Think" to the "Corps de dames," a controversial series of "female" landscapes, and his anthropomorphic sculptures, "Little Statues of Precarious Life." Exquisitely produced, this celebration of Dubuffet's work embraces his world view that art is for everyone, not just the elite.

Dubuffet and the City. People, Place and Urban Space,? written and edited by renowned scholar Dr. Sophie Berrebi (University of Amsterdam), is the first in-depth study to address the work of Jean Dubuffet (1901-1984) in relation to the theme of the city. The book examines how the city plays a role in the formation and unfolding of Dubuffet?s practice and imagination as a material, a source, and a vehicle for ideas. It analyses works in which the artist depicts city dwellers, sites and urban spaces, and discusses his architectural projects from the 1960s and 1970s against the background of heated debates in the field of urbanism. The book accompanies and extends an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Zurich (June?Sept 2018). Along with full color reproductions of art works the book reproduces little-known archival material from the archives of the Fondation Dubuffet. It also includes several texts by Dubuffet that are translated here in English for the first time.00Exhibition: Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, Switzerland (10.06.-01.09.2018).

Dubuffet was one of the most remarkable artists of the 20th century. An enemy of culture and of the art of museums, he was an anarchist and an atheist, and anti military and unpatriotic in his attitudes. As such, he was a rebel who rejected all labels or categories, asserting there is no such thing as abstract art, either that or art is always abstract. 130 illustrations

With his pioneering visual language, not least inspired by children and the mentally ill, Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) succeeded in disengaging himself from traditions and reinventing art, so to speak. Dubuffet's influence can also still be felt in contemporary art and Street Art, for example in work by David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring.The point of departure for this presentation of the artist's multilayered oeuvre is Dubuffet's fascinating notion of landscape, which can also change into a body, a face, an object. He experimented with new techniques and materials, such as sand, butterfly wings, sponges, and slag, creating a unique pictorial universe. Besides important paintings and sculptures from all of the artist's creative phases, the volume also features Dubuffet's spectacular Coucou Bazar, a synthesis of the arts in which painting, sculpture, theater, dance, and music converge. (English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-4099-9)Exhibition: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel 31.1.-8.4.2016

One of the most prolific and influential artists of the 20th century, Jean Dubuffet has featured in a multitude of exhibitions and catalogues. Yet he remains one of the most misunderstood-and least interrogated-postwar French artists. Celebrating Art Brut (the art of ostensible outsiders) while posing as an outsider himself, Dubuffet mingled with many great artists, writers, and theorists, developing an elaborate and nuanced stream of conceptual resources to reconfigure painting and reframe postwar anticultural discourses. This book reexamines Dubuffet's art through the lens of these portraits (a veritable who's who of the Parisian art and intellectual scene) in tandem with his writings and the art and writings of his Surrealist sitters. Investigating Dubuffet's painting as bricolage, this book reveals his reliance upon an anticulture culture and the appropriation of motifs from Surrealism to the South Pacific to explore the themes of multivalence, performativity, and multifaceted identity in his portraits.

One of the most important sculptors of this century, Richard Serra has been a spokesman on the nature and status of art in our day. Best known for site-specific works in steel, Serra has much to say about the relation of sculpture to place, whether urban, natural, or architectural, and about the nature of art itself, whether political, decorative, or personal. In interviews with writers including Douglas and Davis Sylvester, he discusses specific installations and offers insights into his approach to the problem each presents. Interviews by Peter Eisenman and Alan Colquhoun elicit Serra's thoughts on the relation of architecture to contemporary sculpture, a primary component in his own work. From essays like "Extended Notes from Sight Point Road" to Serra's extended commentary on the Tilted Arc fiasco, the pieces in this volume comprise a document of one artist's engagement with the practical, philosophical, and political problems of art.

In celebration of Jean Dubuffet's eightieth birthday, this exhibition brings together two collections--that of Morton and Linda Janklow as well as of the Guggenheim's own holdings. Dubuffet was a key exponent of Art Brut (Raw art), a movement that eschewed conventional notions of beauty in favor of a heightened, raw, and primitive aesthetic. This catalogue offers an insight into the artist's development through to 1981. Several included canvases display Dubuffet's trademark aesthetic, typified by richly textured surfaces and the addition of found materials. Alongside these pieces are sculptures, watercolors, and prints. The introduction is written by Thomas M. Messer and is followed by Morton L. Janklow's essay entitled?Notes on Collecting and Friendship: A Tribute to Jean Dubuffet.? Revealing quotes from Dubuffet are interspersed amid black-and-white images of his work, followed by a list of showcased pieces, as well as a short biography.