Image XIV

Image XIV comes from a small series of only twenty drawings that Dubuffet completed between 10th January and 1st February 1984. Each produced with blue and red felt-tip pen on 27 x 21cm. letter paper; they carry the vitality and appetite for anti-establishmentarianism that typifies the artist’s work.

`I, personally, have a very high regard for the values of primitive peoples: instinct, passion, caprice, violence, madness... Nor do I feel that these values are in any way lacking in our Western world. On the contrary! But the values celebrated by our culture do not strike me as corresponding to the true dynamics of our minds... I aim at an art that is directly plugged into our current life, that immediately emanates from our real life and our real moods’ (Dubuffet, Anticultural Positions, Chicago Arts Club, December 1951).

The heralded father of Art Brut, Jean Dubuffet made varied work that was both instinctual and conceptual. His exhaustive use of diverse mediums is a common thread throughout his relentless quest to push the boundaries of art to its limits of both theory and practice. Oil paint, collage, coal dust, glass, and pen in turn were all utilised by the artist as tools to challenge the accepted ideas of structure and form in art. A collector and champion of “outsider art,” Dubuffet firmly believed that the most powerful, authentic art was made out with classical artistic training and historical convention.