Dubuffet’s early, earthy works exhibitions

We in New York have been lucky to have had ample opportunities to get to know the work of Jean Dubuffet.

The French artist’s monumental sculptures have been on public display many times throughout the city. Chase Manhattan Plaza, downtown, is home to Four Trees, a permanent exhibit of an enormous black and white representation of abstracted trees that give the sense of almost drawings or paper cut-outs. Late in his career, starting in the 1960’s, Dubuffet created a series of works he titled “L’Hourloupe.” They’re distinctive, flattened, cartoonish visions of an imagined reality. Comprised of black outlined shapes, filled with white and sometimes patches of red or blue, they’re bright and bold.

The Museum of Modern Art is presenting a whole different view of Dubuffet, and it’s one that may surprise many visitors. Dubuffet’s earlier work was quite different. Senior curator of prints and drawings, Jodi Hauptman, and associate curator, Sarah Suzuki, have drawn together a fascinating group from the museum’s own collection that show the depth and complexity of Dubuffet’s vision, focusing on works from the 1940s and 50s. In these paintings, drawings, lithographs and sculptures one senses tremendous energy, creativity and imagination, along with a good sized dose of irreverence and humor. Perhaps the most striking thing, though, is to witness the artist’s incredibly inventive use of materials.

Dubuffet experimented relentlessly. He pushed the envelope on how to make art. In the works in Soul of the Underground, Dubuffet gave new meaning to the word “earthy.” He made pictures built of leaves and dirt, sand and gravel, crumpled aluminum foil and lots of other unidentifiable bits of detritus. The truly astonishing thing, though, is how beautifully they compose into serious works of art.

Soil Ornamented with Vegetation, Dead Leaves, Pebbles, Diverse Debris, a 1956 work of oil and all of the above on canvas, is a complex and lyrical abstraction, on par with works being done by contemporaries like Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey, or Cy Twombly. It’s a classic example of all-over painting, in which foreground, background and perspective are abandoned, and a calligraphic, flattened abstraction fills the frame. It’s worth putting your nose as close as you can to see what went into the making of these uniquely creative works.

Dubuffet wrote, “Art must be born from the material,” and his materials were integral to his art. He mixed dirt and sand into his paints and then gouged into them with palette knives and brush handles, as did Rembrandt a few hundred years earlier. But, where Rembrandt sought to create a perfect image of reality, Dubuffet was after the thing, itself. His landscapes are created from pieces of land. They’re plowed and planted with the very elements they depict – soil, twigs and leaves.

Dubuffet’s art was constantly challenging notions of beauty. His portraits, of which there are several in the exhibition, are filled with exaggerations, grotesqueness, and wit. Portrait of Henri Michaux, made of oil, putty, pebbles, and sand on canvas, shows the face of a man dwarfed by his ears. His buttons define his body and arms and hands swerve wildly about him. Another portrait, Carrot Nose, is even funnier than it sounds.

In a series of lithographs, in which Dubuffet also introduced astonishing innovations in material, a charming little bird perches atop a wall of massive squares, and hilarious faces peek out from behind beards run amok. They show the artist’s interest in both surrealism and naïve art, or as he termed it, “Art Brut.”

The pieces in the exhibition have a an undeniable roughness to them, as Dubuffet tried to bring across his vision through the materials he thought best expressed it. “Mud, rubbish and dirt are man’s companions all his life; shouldn’t they be precious to him, and isn’t one doing man a service to remind him of their beauty?” he once asked. It was through these rough elements that Dubuffet created remarkable things.

In Soul of the Underground, MoMA’s exquisite exhibition, Hauptman and Suzuki have revealed the soul of the artist. He was constantly challenging, questioning, and, they point out, provoking. But it was always a kind eye, one feels, that he turned on his subjects. They may be rough, but they’re lovingly presented and always with warmth and humor.

The exhibition runs through April 5th. See it by yourself or with an adult and you may see a wrinkled brow, as schools and influences and materiality all raise questions. But a child, through whose language the works seem to speak—or the child within you—is more likely to react with a smile.