Jean Dubuffet at the Barbican (July 2021)

Exhibitions of Jean Dubuffet are, it seems, rare. This seems surprising given that Dubuffet offers what appears to be a genuine outsider, someone who did not form part of the mainstream of the artistic development of his time, but who nonetheless made significant statements through his art.

Most importantly is the idea of Art Brut: that so-called naïve art, lacking correct perspective and very close at times to caricature, can be a valid art form in its own right. Of course, it is common knowledge that Picasso and early 20th-century painters looked to early African art to give their paintings an immediacy that the official art of the day lacked. But Dubuffet takes it much further than that. Picasso, for all his modernism, retains throughout a reassuring classicism which makes the viewer feel comfortable: it’s not quite right, thinks the observer, but I can still see the talent of the line drawing and the composition.

With Dubuffet, you see the full “primitivism” of the image. Its not primitive, because Dubuffet knows exactly what he is doing, but it is still a shock to see the human body without any beautification (which is, after all, what most art has been doing since prehistoric times).

That rawness, observed from the art of the severely disturbed, has a haunting quality to it. It breaks the Western myth of the beautiful image. Not surprisingly, Dubuffet diverges from the tradition of painting beautiful images of women. His female figures are equally devoid of attractiveness, just a lump (or several lumps) of flesh presented bluntly to the viewer. 

Dubuffet’s art has a hit-or-miss quality, undoubtedly. It seems he would go off on the trail of an idea or theme and pursue it for some months with a passion, then change tack entirely. Some of these themes were covered in the Barbican Dubuffet exhibition, but it would appear there were several others as well – Dubuffet was amazingly prolific. But you forgive him the occasional lapse because of the compensation: an engagement with the immediate, the full force of the moment. Some of his best works, for me, were those done in the 1960s when he was depicting everyday reality on the Paris streets and in restaurants:

 

This is just a picture of people on a bus. But for some reason, the image of a crowded urban landscape is powerfully present. The painting is two-dimensional, so the pedestrians appear upside down at the top.

Most disturbing is the kind of manic smile, again, taken from children’s art and the art of the disturbed, that can be seen on the faces of the people on the bus. This fixed grin is a frightening reminder of the need to keep up appearances in the city. Don’t, whatever you do, give the impression that you are not enjoying yourself and in control.

If Dubuffet were to paint your portrait, you would not expect him to do a full likeness, but the painter, who it seems was very skilled at making controversial statements, said that his aim when portraying someone not to make any sketches from life, but to deliberately wait and then try to compose an effective portrait from memory of how that person appeared to them. Whatever the technique, the result is compelling: here is a drawing of Antonin Artaud: 

 

With paintings like these, who needs an art academy?