Jean DUBUFFET
Ler dla canpane
L'art brut, Paris 1948, 13,5x19cm, agrafé sous coffret-étui.
DUBUFFET Jean Ler dla canpane L'Art Brut, Paris 1948, 135 x 190 mm (5 5/16 x 7 1/2 ”), stapled, custom slipcase
The rare first edition of 165 copies, the author's calligraphic text throughout, illustrated with 6 original engravings by Jean Dubuffet.
With an exceptional and very rare inscription from Jean Dubuffet to Hans Bellmer: “à Hans Bellmer amitiés Jean Dubuffet”.This copy is housed within a folding box in full ochre calf lined with velvet, reproducing the calligraphy of the upper cover. Covers and spine lightly and marginally sunned as usual, discreet, skillful restoration to margins at head and foot of plates.
The first work by Jean Dubuffet, being calligraphic phonetically-spelled words stenciled (with linocut illustrations) on wood from crates and the bottom of camembert boxes, then hand-printed by the author on newspaper with 6 engravings in a run of 150 copies, plus 15 copies with 2 further plates, spattered with ink for “le samatere detrase etdanprinte”.
Those ‘lovers of marks and spots', however, should bear in mind that as far as we know Dubuffet only inscribed “ordinary” copies to his friends, in keeping with the very concept that dominates this founding work of Art Brut.
In his 1962 preface to
Vignettes lorgnettes, which reproduces the engravings from
Ler dla Campagne, Dubuffet recalled the origins of his first book: “with their makeshift printing methods, these little works were the exact opposite of the received wisdom of bibliophilia. They were as far as possible from the frigid solemnity of the thick and costly paper of luxury printing, the typography of the great publishers, the full margins and the profusion of endpapers and blank pages; they were printed in very humble circumstances with scant resources, in small format on the cheapest sort of newspaper. It seemed to us (it seems to me still) that even so they were just as attractive as the books usually sold to book collectors.”
This copy, inscribed to Hans Bellmer, is rare and precious testimony to the major influence of the Surrealists on Dubuffet's thinking and the emergence of Art Brut. Though both art historians and biographers are in agreement in highlighting this link unambiguously, there are in fact few actual traces of the interaction between Dubuffet and the Surrealists. It was nonetheless under the aegis, and with the full collaboration, of André Breton that he founded the Compagnie de l'Art Brut in 1948. “The part laid out for you, as you say, in this Compagnie de l'Art Brut, is yours by absolute right, since your ideas, your temperament, your impulses definitely played a big part in guiding our spirit in all this; and it's absolutely right and proper that a place should be set for you at our table – had you not wanted to take it, it would have stayed empty, like the seat reserved for the angel,” (letter of the 28 May 1948). This relationship, the first we know of between Dubuffet and a Surrealist (not an ex-Surrealist or a Surrealist to be) gave rise to an immediate warmth between the two artists, who developed several projects together (among them an
Almanach de l'Art Brut). But from 1951 onwards, their relationship cooled and Breton stopped supporting the Compagnie; the
Almanach, although finished, was never actually published. The failure of this project and of the budding friendship between the two artists contributed to the definitive rupture between the two movements and to a growing mutual mistrust. In branding Art Brut the “art of madmen,” and trying thus to maintain the supremacy of Surrealism over this ‘offshoot', Breton undoubtedly betrayed Dubuffet's hopes of a natural affiliation between the two movements.
Nonetheless, it was a price Dubuffet had to pay to become one of the major artists of the second half of the 20th century, while Surrealism only barely survived the war and the intransigent behavior of its founder.
The idea of Art Brut as Dubuffet put it from 1948 on could not really locate itself in any theoretical continuum, nor accept any artistic basis:
“Art works...owe nothing (or as little as possible) to the imitation of the works of art we see in the museums, salons and galleries; rather, they call out to the very depths of human experience and the most spontaneous and personal creativity possible. These are works that their creator has taken entirely...from their own depths,” (Jean Dubuffet,
Notice sur la Compagnie de l'Art Brut [September 1948], in
Prospectus...volume I, p. 489).
This (necessary) distancing and the frequently anti-Surrealist positions that served to highlight the lack of historical elements linking the two movements have constrained writers and biographers to broad guesswork, based on the obvious similarities in the movements' artists and ideas. Aside from this short friendship with Breton, the Surrealists barely appear in biographies of Dubuffet. But this friendly inscription to one of the most important Surrealist artists on this earliest of pieces is testimony to Dubuffet's proximity to other members of the movement – a proximity that nonetheless remains a mystery, since Dubuffet deliberately ‘forgot' his links to Surrealism, of which he is, despite everything, one of the most important heirs and successors.
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