Page 15 - Studio International - May 1966

Dubuffet and the myth of innocence

by Robert Hughes
Of all the painters who have emerged in France since the look calmly at those personages composed of excrement
war, only two have made a substantial impact on English and butterfly wings, those graffiti and thick pastes and
art. These were Nicholas de Stael and Jean Dubuffet. crude little turnip-men. Dubuffet's thick paste prepared
This Spring has given English audiences an exceptional the way for Tapies, and his 'personages' have multiplied
chance to assess Dubuffet's work, what with the INSTITUTE all over la nouvelle figuration— just as the tradition of humeur
OF CONTEMPORARY ART exhibition of seventy-six drawings, noire should have prepared the French critics. His pictures
covering the painter's development from 1935 to 1965, now look like pictures. They have altogether lost their
the big Dubuffet retrospective at THE TATE and the show power to shock, and most of them are now drained of their
of fifteen new canvases, images of kitchen equipment, power even to surprise us. (Except that it's not the pic-
books, beds, and taps, which Dubuffet has entitled Usten- ture that leaks, but the audience that gets to know what
siles Utopiques, at the ROBERT FRASER GALLERY. to expect.) Some look ornamental to the point of sleek-
Enough time—ten years, in fact—has passed since Du- ness. To an extent which nobody would have predicted a
buffet was first shown in England to make a cool re- decade ago, they have entered the canon of belle peinture.
assessment of him possible. The flurry and scandals have Somehow or other, Dubuffet has managed to make even
died. Impossible to think of any critic greeting Dubuffet brutality look sweet, like a very good cook performing
as Emily Genauer did when he showed in New York in miracles with horsemeat.
Grand Jazz Band
(New Orleans) 1944 1948. Whatever he may have done, Dubuffet no longer Dubuffet's art still awaits, and should receive, a long
Oil on canvas seems to be 'debasing and perverting the very nature of analysis in English. This is not the place for it, but there
44 7/8 x 57 1/4 in. art.' are certain points about Dubuffet's painting which should
Courtesy Dubuffet
Secretariat, Paris Instead, he has expanded its vocabulary. We can now be clarified before this analysis can take place. Some of