
Jean Dubuffet
Logogriph of Blades
1969
Jean Dubuffet
August 1951
Jean Dubuffet was attracted to the surfaces of dilapidated walls, pitted roads, and the natural crusts of earth and rock, and during the 1940s and 1950s he sought to create an equivalent texture in his art. He experimented with a variety of materials to produce thick, ruggedly tactile surfaces that constitute deliberately awkward, vulgar, and abbreviated imagery, often of grotesque faces or female nudes. Dubuffet made the present work with an oil-based “mortar,” applying it with a palette knife, allowing areas to dry partially, then scraping, gouging, raking, slicing, or wiping them before applying more medium. The resulting surface is so thick that incisions providing the contours and delineating features seem to model form in relief. Dubuffet’s aggressively anticultural, antiaesthetic attitude and spontaneity of expression provided an example for members of the COBRA group in Europe, and New York artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jim Dine.
Artist | Jean Dubuffet |
Original Title | Châtaine aux hautes chairs |
Date | August 1951 |
Medium | Oil-based mixed-media on Masonite |
Dimensions | 64.9 x 54 cm |
Credit line | Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York) |
Accession | 76.2553 PG 121 |
Collection | Peggy Guggenheim Collection |
Type | Mixed media |
Copy caption
Jean Dubuffet
1969
Jean Dubuffet
1966
Jean Dubuffet
1967
Jean Dubuffet
1979