Jean Dubuffet: Transitions
19 October 2012 - 13 February 2013
Pallant House Gallery
A part of Pallant House Gallery's 'Art from the Margins' season, and accompanying the Outside In: National exhibition, is a display of works from Jean Dubuffet's L' Hourloupe series. Dubuffet is best known for coining the term Art Brut in 1945 prior to publishing Notice sur la Compagnie de l'Art Brut in 1948. Dubuffet's aim with this manifesto was perhaps to undermine the authority of the 'professional' art world, whilst championing artists he considered to be outside and untouched by 'the system'; undoubtedly, his own work was very much influenced by the non-professional and self-taught artists whose raw expression he ardently sought out.
Organised with the assistance of the Fondation Dubuffet in Paris, the exhibition features key paintings, drawings and sculptures by this highly influential artist. Dubuffet began his L' Hourloupe sequence in 1962, gaining inspiration for the title of the series from a contemporary book which featured drawings in red and blue ball point pens. The pieces in the exhibition seem to take a lesson from the naive work championed by Dubuffet himself; they are an illustration of the badly founded distinction we as humans make between the real and the imaginary.
As one of the original and avid supporters of 'art from the margins', it seems incredibly apt for Pallant House Gallery to be exhibiting Dubuffet's work; the first time for fifty years that his has been shown in a British museum. Accompanying his paintings are a collection of posters and catalogues from previous Dubuffet exhibitions held in Britain, at the Tate, ICA and the pioneering Robert Fraser Gallery who first showed Dubuffet's work in London in the 1960s.
Organised with the assistance of the Fondation Dubuffet in Paris, the exhibition features key paintings, drawings and sculptures by this highly influential artist. Dubuffet began his L' Hourloupe sequence in 1962, gaining inspiration for the title of the series from a contemporary book which featured drawings in red and blue ball point pens. The pieces in the exhibition seem to take a lesson from the naive work championed by Dubuffet himself; they are an illustration of the badly founded distinction we as humans make between the real and the imaginary.
As one of the original and avid supporters of 'art from the margins', it seems incredibly apt for Pallant House Gallery to be exhibiting Dubuffet's work; the first time for fifty years that his has been shown in a British museum. Accompanying his paintings are a collection of posters and catalogues from previous Dubuffet exhibitions held in Britain, at the Tate, ICA and the pioneering Robert Fraser Gallery who first showed Dubuffet's work in London in the 1960s.