Page 16 - Studio International - May 1966

Dubuffet's earliest supporters, flushed with enthusiasm, of history by one absolute act. 'It's not what an artist
have obscured them. I am thinking of the excited, windy does, but what he is . . .'
jargon of Michel Tapie—but the first issue that interests With Jean Dubuffet, the problem is more intricate. To
me about Dubuffet was expressed, succinctly, by the classify a style involves relating it to another style. It
French critic Georges Limbour in his introduction to the implies awareness of history. Picasso was acutely con-
ICA show. Noting the complexities of Dubuffet's work and scious of his mask as culture-hero—that is to say, as the
its 'contradictions of mood', Limbour nevertheless dis- interpreter who rewired the silent past for sound with
covered a 'unifying purpose', which was : every homage he paid to Velasquez, Delacroix or Ingres.
... a dedication to total liberty from all rules and conventions But Dubuffet rejects that role. He would like to escape
of representation and a deliberate, anarchistic determination European history altogether. The past oppresses him.
Right to reject all previous knowledge—in short, to re-invert his Originality means innocence. And yet his paintings are no
Halte et répit (Stop and take art and his methods for every new production. less eclectic than Picasso's. They are full of rules, conven-
breath) 1956 This phantom, the Artist as Noble Savage, is the form tions and accepted signs taken over from other art forms:
Indian ink with collage of
prints under which Dubuffet nearly always appears. Let us look child art, madmen's art, graffiti, primitive art.
41 x 261 in. at it. This word 'eclecticism' usually sounds disparaging. I
don't mean it to, but then I do not see why one should
Below
Astravagale 1956 Some painters resist classification. Picasso, obviously: the continue to believe in the mystique of a perpetual avant-
Oil on canvas, collage protean eclectic, obsessed equally with his own creative garde. It is fatuously optimistic to believe that a painter,
28 1/4 x 16 3/4 in.
Pierre Matisse Gallery, powers and the myth of them, flailing through the past especially a shrewd intellectual like Dubuffet, can shed
New York in order to prove that he can break down all the categories himself of 'all previous knowledge' — Limbour's phrase—