Jean Dubuffet
Paysage avec 2 personnages, 1980
Signed with the initials 'J.D.' and dated '80' (upper left)
Black ink on paper with collage
34.9 by 25.4 cm (13¾ by 10 in.)
69675
© 2023 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Further images
Executed on May 21, 1980. In this gestural drawing from Jean Dubuffet’s mature period, two figures float within a frenzied, abstract field of hatched black lines. These simplified and expressive...
Executed on May 21, 1980.
In this gestural drawing from Jean Dubuffet’s mature period, two figures float within a frenzied, abstract field of hatched black lines. These simplified and expressive figures appear to alternately emerge from and blend in with their surroundings, creating a dynamic yet ambiguous space. The present drawing belongs to the artist’s Psycho-sites series, in which these abstract spaces he called “sites” were constructed from his imagination, rather than conceptualized from specific locales. In speaking of the series, Dubuffet acknowledged that the consistent theme “of a site, in which appear varying numbers of standing characters, one could call it a place — that is undetermined, very general… [is where] the equivocal reigns supreme; a confusion is instituted between the vertical and horizontal planes…”[1]. Therefore, the series may be seen as a culmination of his lifelong artistic exploration — in its restrained emphasis on simplistic forms juxtaposed with his spontaneous scrawled lines, Dubuffet removes all sense of traditional perspective which points to a specific time or place. The drawing represents a visual and immediate landscape of one’s mind or dreams, rather than a measured depiction of reality.
In this gestural drawing from Jean Dubuffet’s mature period, two figures float within a frenzied, abstract field of hatched black lines. These simplified and expressive figures appear to alternately emerge from and blend in with their surroundings, creating a dynamic yet ambiguous space. The present drawing belongs to the artist’s Psycho-sites series, in which these abstract spaces he called “sites” were constructed from his imagination, rather than conceptualized from specific locales. In speaking of the series, Dubuffet acknowledged that the consistent theme “of a site, in which appear varying numbers of standing characters, one could call it a place — that is undetermined, very general… [is where] the equivocal reigns supreme; a confusion is instituted between the vertical and horizontal planes…”[1]. Therefore, the series may be seen as a culmination of his lifelong artistic exploration — in its restrained emphasis on simplistic forms juxtaposed with his spontaneous scrawled lines, Dubuffet removes all sense of traditional perspective which points to a specific time or place. The drawing represents a visual and immediate landscape of one’s mind or dreams, rather than a measured depiction of reality.