Customer Reviews

Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality

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This challenging to find and impossible to own ($150.00 used) book about French artist Jean Dubuffet is an exemplary conduit for his talent for both art and writing. The color plates are well executed and Dubuffet's writing is included as proof of his insight and revolutionary mindset.

Dubuffet's belief in the intrinsic value of "non-art" is exemplified in this statement:

True art exists only where the word art is not uttered, not yet uttered. Especially not with those connotations of praiseworthiness, stuffiness, and venerability that we insist on attaching to it, and which are so contrary to the spirit of licentious, if not criminal, play from which art is inseparable.

Dubuffet's abilities as an artist and sculptor were, at times, overshadowed by his deep-seated (and sometimes ridiculed) belief that conventional art had less merit than artwork free from fame. Dubuffet collected art by psychiatric patients - work he called l'Art Brut or "raw art" - and extolled its virtues as: "works executed by people free from artistic culture [who] draw up everything from their own depths and not from the stereotypes of classical art or modish art."

Paying tribute to the work of artists like Scottie Wilson, Anna Zemánková or Madge Gill Dubuffet described Art Brut as unwilling to "lie down on the bed that is made for it" and began to imitate the style himself. His goal was to produce paintings and sculptures free from stilted logical and technique, instead concentrating on the organic impulses he felt were stifled by excessive training.

The Dubuffet and Glimcher collaboration is vivid and exciting. Dubuffet's desire to separate himself from the work of his contemporaries isn't the barely disguised sour grapes attitude of the unskilled. Rather Dubuffet is reaching for his own genuine or less contrived vision, one he discovered by being able to set ego aside and truly SEE what was happening in the work of the marginal creatives he encountered in psychiatric settings. He was contentious without being completely discordant (a rare talent) and wasn't bothered by deviating from the so-called norm - something that can so easily backfire for any artist. Through this exchange of traditional valuation for one more deeply liminal, Dubuffet explodes into being for me and is easily among the large group of artists (and smaller group of human beings) I can admire.

Of all the books I have looked at on Jean Dubuffet, this one, in my opinion, is the best. There is a good combination of his writings and speeches as well as plates of his work. Dubuffet's writings are just as important as his artwork itself. This book combines the two. ... . I check it out of my library on a regular basis- that's the closest I can get to owning it. I would rather spend ... on art supplies than buy a book.

This is THE book to have on Dubuffet. It's a great showcase of his art and writing. Just reading his short vignettes about art will inspire you. The art is reproduced well. I bought this book back in the late 80's and it's still one of the most important books in my collection. It's worth the money.