Jean Dubuffet - A Barbarian in Europe - Preview the 97th issue of Tribal Art magazine - Autumn 2020

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JEAN DUBUFFET A Barbarian in Europe Interview by Elena Martínez-Jacquet

FIG. 1 (top): Photo of Jean Dubuffet with an accordion in front of his painting Le Violoniste.

Luc Fournol, Paris, 1954. © Archives Fondation Dubuffet, Paris/ photo by Luc Fournol.

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FIG. 2 (above): Jean Dubuffet and a wall of graffiti.

John Craven, France, Alpes-Maritimes, Vence, 1959.

Contemporary print. © Archives Fondation Dubuffet, Paris/ photo by John Craven.

FIG. 3 (left): Jean Dubuffet in his studio with the “Barbes.”

John Craven, France, Alpes-Maritimes, Vence, 1959. © Archives Fondation Dubuffet, Paris/ photo by John Craven.

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Since its reopening in 2014, the MEG has been adventurous in its programming, and it is continuing down that path with its presentation of Jean Dubuffet, un barbare en Europe (Jean Dubuffet, a Barbarian in Europe), on view September 8, 2020, through February 28, 2021. This major artist’s thinking and work critiqued the art of his time and reexamined the very notion of culture. After having opened at the MUCEM (The Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations) in Marseille and then being presented at the IVAM (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern) in Spain, the exhibition will have its final showing in Geneva—delayed by a few months due to the COVID crisis—in a version that will highlight the artist’s visit to Switzerland in 1945.

Over the course of his stay there, Dubuffet made what would turn out to be the pivotal acquaintance of Eugène Pittard, director of the MEG at the time, and of Marguerite Lobsiger-Dellenbach. They introduced him to Genevan psychiatrist Charles Ladame, and then to Walter Morgenthaler in Bern, as well as to artworks from a wide variety of cultures and areas in the small country. Among the 300 very diverse works that make up the show, it should come as no surprise that the arts of Africa and Oceania should have a prominent place. All the artworks in the installation attest to Dubuffet’s multiple interests and are drawn from some of the most prestigious public and private collections, including the Centre Pompidou/Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, the Dubuffet Foundation in Paris, the Gandur Foundation for Art, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the LAM in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, the MUCEM in Marseille, and the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva, to name but a few.

A few weeks before the opening of Jean Dubuffet, a Barbarian in Europe, we had the opportunity to speak with Baptiste Brun, the exhibition’s curator and an art historian, researcher, and instructor at Université Rennes 2. During our fascinating conversation, he shed new light on the story of Dubuffet’s connections with non-European art and with art in general.

FIGS. 4 and 5 (right and screened below): Inauguration of the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève, on Boulevard Carl-Vogt.

Photographer unknown, 12 July 1941.

Contemporary print.

Geneva city archives.

FIG. 6 (below): The small museum of Dr. Charles Ladame.

Photographer unknown, Bel-Air clinical psychiatry office, Chêne-Bourg, Geneva, Switzerland, 1925.

Contemporary print. © Archives de la Collection de l’art brut, Lausanne.

encounters with the “otherness” that so influenced his trajectory took place must be very satisfying to you. Could you briefly outline to us the different phases through which this project went as it took shape?

Baptiste Brun: Absolutely. Having Jean Dubuffet, a Barbarian in Europe here in Geneva is certainly a symbolically charged event! At the same time, the truth is that the project was really born at the MUCEM because of Dubuffet’s frequent visits to the Musée National des Arts et des Traditions Populaires (ATP) in Paris, the holdings of which are now in Marseille. While doing my doctoral research on Dubuffet, I found a list the artist had made of the objects in the ATP that he found interesting. With the historical and factual evidence that this list provided close at hand, it seemed to me along with Isabelle Marquette that the time was right to produce an exhibition in which art and anthropology intersected in a museum like the MUCEM. I quickly realized that I would also need to involve the MEG, although I had not yet thought of traveling the exhibition that I had in mind, much less of having it presented at that museum.

That was all the more the case because at the time the institution was in the throes of major renovations and its collection was being moved,

Tribal Art magazine: The fact that the show’s final stop will be in the very place that Dubuffet’s

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but it seemed important to me to involve it because I knew that Dubuffet had seen works there that particularly influenced him, such as those of Congolese painter Albert Lubaki, the incised New Caledonian bamboo objects studied

by Marguerite Lobsiger-Dellenbach, as well as the Swiss masks from the Lötschental area.

When I contacted the MEG, I was promptly given permission to borrow several works. The information then reached Boris Wastiau, the director of the museum, who took a closer look at the project. He not only found it interesting but, in light of the intrinsic connection between Dubuffet and the MEG, he felt it would be desirable for the museum to be associated with

the venture and to host a slightly modified version of it that would include a special part devoted to the artist’s visit in 1945 titled “une promenade au musée d’ethnographie” (“an excursion to the ethnographic museum”), as well as some adaptations to the installation that would be handled by exhibition designer Maciej Fiszer.

Before the MEG, the show was presented at the IVAM in Valencia, a classical fine arts museum where Dubuffet is represented as one of the major modern artists in its collection. Because of the specific qualities of the three exhibition venues, each showing allowed us to highlight how Dubuffet and the arts he championed related to different disciplines and practices.

T. A. M.: You mention a list on which Dubuffet noted his favorites at the ATP. Doesn’t that approach bring to mind what one might expect from a student rather than a successful artist?

What connection did the list have with his art?

B. B.: Dubuffet was a bit maniacal. He was

FIG. 7 (below left): Jean Dubuffet, Bon courage, May 24, 1982.

Acrylic on paper with four glued inserts. 100 x 134 cm.

Fondation Dubuffet collection, Paris. © Fondation Dubuffet/2020, ADAGP, Paris.

extremely rigorous and demanding, and his process borrowed both from the social sciences as well as from business—remember, he was originally in the wine trade. He had a habit of classifying things, which is a bit ironic since he himself rejected classifications in art history.

This predilection for archiving has been a gift for us because it has allowed us to identify, and indeed to include in the exhibition, the specific works that Dubuffet had seen and admired. In this respect, our project has a special historical dimension that attests to the artist’s abundant curiosity.

Visitors will quickly observe that what interested him was the quality of what is maligned

FIG. 8 (above): Jean Dubuffet, Ontogénèse, 1975.

Vinyl paint on laminate panel.

251 x 316 cm.

Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux, MuMa, Le Havre. Donated by the artist in 1977.

Photo © IVAM, Juan García Rosell, 2020, ADAGP, Paris.

FIG. 9 (above right): Somuk, Untitled (native in a canoe), 1935–1936.

Graphite, ink, chalk on paper.

23.2 x 21.4 cm.

Collection de l’art brut, Lausanne, inv. ni-9416.

Photo © Olivier Laffely, Atelier de numérisation, Ville de Lausanne.

FIG. 10 (right): Jean Dubuffet, Le triomphateur, costume pour Coucou Bazar, September 1973.

Starched tarlatan, Bristol board, epoxy, latex. 260 x 145 x 55 cm.

Fondation Dubuffet collection, Paris. © Fondation Dubuffet/2020, ADAGP, Paris.

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or despised. His eye was drawn to the beauty of that which seemed to him to be unique and inventive, whether it was what would come to be known as “art brut” or non-European art. He had a predilection for atypical objects that one would not really imagine would be of interest to a modern artist. Remaining on the periphery of “classical” African and Oceanic arts, Dubuffet was really more interested in folk art, drawing inspiration from works such as those of Lubaki and Bougainville artist Somuk, although he did at one point own several African masks.

T. A. M.: Related to this, did Dubuffet put together a personal collection or have a particularly intimate connection with what has been called “arts from other places”?

B. B.: That’s quite a complicated issue. It’s difficult to determine what he actually owned in the way of non-European artworks. As I just mentioned, we do know that for a time he did have some African masks that he had gotten through trade with author Jean Paulhan and dealer Charles Ratton, although he quickly got rid of them. We have not been able to locate these pieces.

In truth, even if his interest in African and Oceanic art was strong and clearly present, his real and first love was the art brut that he began to collect assiduously to add to the holdings of his Compagnie de l’Art Brut. In other words, the act of collecting was not a private endeavor for Dubuffet but rather expressed a desire to provoke and confront bourgeois taste. It was not something intimate in the sense that the intimate is always at odds with the public.

T. A. M.: Another unique thing about the exhibition, you do not suggest direct influences, despite the fact that non-European art clearly had an important place in Dubuffet’s life and artistic interests.

B. B.: Indeed. For us it was essential to show that a commonality of forms was at work here. The question of influences has been much discussed since the 1984 Primitivism exhibition at MoMA in New York. It seems to me that the approach has been a bit simplistic insofar as it has been limited to making formal connections rather than investigating the mechanisms that drove the creators of modernism. As far as Dubuffet

is concerned, I like the idea that his curiosity brought him to see things—African, Oceanic, folk art, etc.—the artistic qualities of which confirmed his own artistic intuitions. In the end, it is this confirmation that creates a commonality and also validates the formal solutions that Dubuffet employed and that were deemed scandalous. We must remember that in the middle of the 1940s, he was far from being a universally appreciated artist, even though he had the support of many important figures in the art world.

An example of this relationship is Somuk’s work. Dubuffet first discovered this in 1945.

Somuk’s graphic treatment of vegetation, in particular, shows a strong resemblance to the way Dubuffet began to represent it two years earlier. The principle of confirmation is at work here. In keeping with this, we weren’t so much interested in producing an exhibition on what had influenced Dubuffet as much as on how he developed his eye. This also takes into account the impact of culture or, in Dubuffet’s particular case, the impact of doubting and mistrusting culture. For him, culture was the enemy, the opposite of invention.

FIG. 11 (top): Jean Dubuffet, Raisons complexes, March 1952.

Oil on Masonite. 68 x 33 cm.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Jean Dubuffet, 1968. © MAD, Paris/Jean Tholance; © 2020, ADAGP, Paris.

FIG. 12 (above): Jean Dubuffet, Pisseur à droite VD 43, August 27, 1961.

China ink on paper. 50 x 33.5 cm.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Jean Dubuffet, 1968. © MAD, Paris/2020, ADAGP, Paris.

T. A. M.: These questions about the imbalance between art and the dominant culture, the confining borders of which needed to be shattered, are omnipresent themes that run through Dubuffet’s thought and work. This seems incredibly relevant to our times. What does looking at Dubuffet today tell us?

B. B.: I think that Dubuffet still speaks to us, and the positive reception with which the exhibition was met at the MUCEM and the IVAM certainly confirms this. Dubuffet’s critique of culture has a powerful resonance today, at a time when issues of the blending of global cultures on an unprecedented scale faces us more starkly than ever before. In the sort of horizontal manner in which his eye worked, Dubuffet allows us to consider a new connection with anthropology, with otherness, with the idea of commonality— all the issues that are so hotly debated today.

The questions Dubuffet raised have relevance in the present. Within the context of post-colonial issues that are now being addressed in which

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unequivocal discourse is maligned, Dubuffet denies the single and inflexible perspective. I think his cacophony reflects his time—but also ours. It enjoins us to expand our point of view and to go beyond what is accepted.

Dubuffet really pushed this approach, going so far as to suggest that the systematic critique of cultural values, indeed the critique of the value of having values, at some point becomes vertiginous. One no longer knows what to believe. On the one hand, Dubuffet espoused a positive idea of pushing aside conventions and enlarging the scope of the possible, while on the other there is a kind of nihilistic dimension that became particularly apparent toward the end of his life. Absolute relativism can lead in

the end to a kind of “joyous nihilism,” to use an expression by philosopher Christophe David, one of the authors of the catalog, and this raises questions too. I felt it was important to present this philosophical questioning to the exhibition’s visitors as well.

T. A. M.: The questioning is constantly renewed, but without any real will to find any kind of answer. It’s about living in doubt and celebrating the need to doubt.

B. B.: Yes, that’s it exactly—and it’s essential.

The whole third part of the exhibition, which is very dear to me, addresses this topic. There is an ensemble of modalities of the critique of culture that Dubuffet puts into place for language, music, art (with a section devoted to art brut and to the objects of that sort that he collected), for point of view, for matter itself, and for the questions of animism and beliefs. There is a whole group

FIG. 13 (below left): Jean Dubuffet, Trémolo sur l’œil.

Photolithograph. 21.5 x 17.2 cm.

Published by Gaston Puel, Lavaur, France, 1963.

Fondation Dubuffet collection, Paris. © Fondation Dubuffet/2020, ADAGP, Paris.

FIG. 14 (below): “Dubuffet, culture et subversion,” in L’Arc, no. 35, June 1968.

Dr. Bâton Collection, Paris. © Fondation Dubuffet/2020, ADAGP, Paris.

FIG. 15 (above right): Jean Dubuffet, L’Art brut préféré aux arts culturels, October 1949.

Catalog for the exhibition L’Art brut, Galerie René Drouin, Paris.

Archives de la Collection de l’art brut, Lausanne. © Fondation Dubuffet/2020, ADAGP, Paris.

of things that one needs to question in order to situate oneself.

I am really delighted that the MEG was receptive enough to this critical approach to host the show.

I salute the audacity and courage that its directors and its staff displayed by giving a modern artist such a prominent position in the museum’s programming. It thrills me all the more because I’ve long championed the idea that sometimes artists need to be taken out of the Beaux-Arts context, since they also come from backgrounds other than art. It is important for the public to understand why and to what extent Dubuffet deserves a place in an ethnographic museum, and that in turn takes on even more meaning as the MEG continues to consider the question of what a

museum of ethnology needs to be in the twentyfirst century.

Jean Dubuffet, a Barbarian in Europe September 8, 2020–February 28, 2021 MEG, Geneva ville-ge.ch/meg For Further Reading Jean Dubuffet, un Barbare en Europe Exhibition catalog edited by Baptiste Brun and Isabelle Marquette Published by Éditions Hazan, Vanves, and Mucem, Marseille, 2019 224 pages, fully illustrated ISBN: 978-2-7541-1095-2 39 CHF Jean Dubuffet et la besogne de l’Art brut—critique du primitivisme

By Baptiste Brun Published by Les Presses du Réel, Paris, 2019 560 pages, illustrated ISBN-13: 978-2-8406-6754-4 32 euros

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FIG. 19 (above): Albert Lubaki, Femme Ndalamumba, eastern Kasaï, DR Congo, 1939.

FIG. 16 (top left): Mask, bwoom. Part of a triad of masks associated with royalty.

Kuba kingdom, Kasaï or Central Kasaï Province, DR Congo. First half of the 20th century.

Wood, metal, cowries, glass beads, cotton.

H: 36 cm.

Collected by the Brussels trader Edmond Morlet, 1937.

MEG, inv. ETHAF 024453.

Photo © MEG, J. Watts.

FIG. 17 (top right): Bähaylu Gäbrä Maryam, hunting scenes, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, c. 1920.

Paint on cotton toile. 80 x 152 cm.

Acquired in Addis Ababa from the artist.

Donated by Émile William Molly in 1926.

MEG, inv. ETHAF 010704.

Photo © MEG, Johnathan Watts.

FIG. 18 (above): Albert Lubaki, untitled, Kabinda, eastern Kasaï, DR Congo, 1939.

Mixed media (watercolor and pastels).

49 x 64 cm.

Commissioned in 1939 by Eugène Pittard through E. Verhegge, commissaire of the Sankuru District, Belgian Congo.

MEG, inv. ETHAF 017955.

Photo © MEG, Johnathan Watts.

Mixed media (watercolor, pastels).

49 x 64 cm.

Commissioned in 1939 by Eugène Pittard through E. Verhegge, commissaire of the Sankuru District, Belgian Congo.

MEG, inv. ETHAF 017959.

Photo © MEG, J. Watts.

FIG. 20 (left): Mask, tatanua.

New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Late 19th–early 20th century.

Wood (Alstonia scholaris), coconut, bamboo, reed, vegetal fibers, tapa, hair, insect casings, Turbo petholatus shells, lime, red ocher, black and blue pigments. H: 35 cm.

Ex Arthur Speyer, 1924.

MEG, inv. ETHOC 009949.

Photo © MEG, J. Watts.

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FIG. 21 (left): Ceremonial dance mask. Inuit; Angmagssalik, east coast of Greenland. Before 1936.

Wood. H: 42 cm.

Acquired in 1936 for MEG by Michel Perez during the Expédition française transgroenland led by Paul-Émile Victor.

MEG, inv. ETHAM 015202.

Photo © MEG, J. Watts.

FIG. 22 (right): Figure, uli.

New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Early 20th century.

Wood, vegetal fibers, mastic adhesive, Turbo petholatus shells, shells, lime, red ocher, black pigment. H: 130 cm.

Ex Arthur Speyer, 1922.

MEG, inv. ETHOC 009156.

Photo © MEG, J. Watts.

FIG. 23 (bottom right): Antoine Rabany, “Barbu Müller” figure. Early 20th century.

Stone. H: 31.5 cm.

Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France, inv. 2010.0.24.

Photo © Pierre-Olivier Deschamps – Agence VU’.

mediation and communication. Secondly, we want to diversify our audiences and to find new ones, and one way to do this is to move outside the limits of the culturally monographic shows our audiences have come to expect from us in the past. Here we invite not only those with an interest in non-European art but also those with an interest in modern art and art brut to explore the connections that Dubuffet himself saw between these areas as he searched for the common ground they shared and rejected any notion that they were opposed. Thirdly, the MEG strives to be a place that can provide inspiration for creative processes. This exhibition both shows our museum as it is today, while in the section of the show devoted to Dubuffet’s visit to the MEG in 1945, reminds us of how it became a place of encounter, dialog, and discovery that profoundly influenced the development of Dubuffet’s thought and creativity.

How was the content of the exhibition adapted for presentation at the MEG? First of all, the diversity and the importance of the connections with the MEG, Geneva, and Switzerland are given more prominence here than in the prior presentations in Marseille and Valencia. Dubuffet

Three Questions for Boris Wastiau Jean Dubuffet, a Barbarian in Europe is the first temporary exhibition since the release last November of the MEG’s new strategic five-year plan. How does this show square with that?

This exhibition answers all three of the objectives we set for ourselves. First of all, we wanted to strengthen collaborations, especially international ones, as we have done here with the MUCEM in Marseille and the IVAM in Valencia. In the process, we share experiences insofar as the conception and development of the exhibition are concerned, of course, but we also learn from each other about good practices in the fields of

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was accompanied by Jean Paulhan and Le Corbusier on his trip to Switzerland in the summer of 1945.

They began at the MEG and through its director, Eugène Pittard, Dubuffet was introduced to two alienist physicians, Charles Ladame and Walther Morgenthaler, who in turn led him to discover art brut. There were many other connections as well.

Dubuffet came to the MEG because he was interested in all art and especially that of non-European cultures, which he refused to refer to as “primitive.”

He was also on the anti-colonial side at the time.

The creative forms that interested him the most were those that were the most radically at odds with the Western academic approach. Along with the so-called “ethnographic” objects he admired, his attention was particularly drawn to the works of the African folk art painters that Eugène Pittard had collected, such as Albert Lubaki of the Congo and Gäbrä Maryam of Ethiopia. He also admired Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with whom he shared a disdain for elitist arts.

Since we had enough space to do so, we were able to opt for a more “spread out” installation and also utilize the height of some of our walls to advantage for showing some of Dubuffet’s visual archives. We also enlarged the selection of objects from the MEG that the painter had seen while he was in Geneva, as well as the section devoted to his travels in the Sahara. Lastly, we used a large space for the presentation of a sinusoidal bench and kites in his l’hourloupe graphic style, as well as for a large projection. We engaged Maciej Fiszer, the same exhibition designer who did the presentation at the MUCEM, to arrange the space.

If Dubuffet were to enter the new MEG today, what would you be especially proud to show him?

That he would find a combination of things, objects, images, craft, and artworks, past and present, in each and every temporary exhibition, assembled together in support of a common purpose and presented without any expression of hierarchy. That the creators who succeed one another in the preparation of museum presentations each bring their own part of imagination and innovation to share as they enable the museum to nurture its vision of the world as a place of perpetual renewal rather than allow it to become immobilized by the straitjacket of its own traditions.

FIG. 24 (above): Pascal-Désir Maisonneuve, Queen Victoria, Gironde, Bordeaux, France. Before 1925.

Seashell, paint, plaster, nails on wood. W: 37 cm.

Ex André Breton; preempted at auction in 2003.

Lille Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne, d’Art Contemporain et d’Art Brut, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, inv. : 2003.7.2.

Photo © LaM/Nicolas Dewitte.

FIG. 25 (left): Tschäggättä mask. Lötschental, Valais, Switzerland. 1940.

Carved, burnished, and partially stained pinewood. H: 43.5 cm.

Donated by Eugène Pittard, 1944.

MEG, inv. ETHEU 108874.

Photo © MEG, J. Watts.

FIG. 26 (lower left): Patient-made figurine known as a “protective fetish.” Bel-Air clinical psychiatry office, ChêneBourg, Geneva, Switzerland.

1935–1940.

Wood, vegetal fiber. H: 3.5 cm.

Donated by Dr. Charles Ladame, 1946.

MEG, inv. ETHEU 021010.

Photo © MEG, J. Watts.

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