Jean Dubuffet and Venice. The history of a bond

Linda Kaiser, Artribune, May 31, 2019

PALAZZO FRANCHETTI, VENICE - UNTIL OCTOBER 20, 2019. THE LINK BETWEEN JEAN DUBUFFET AND VENICE REVIVES IN THE EXHIBITION AT PALAZZO FRANCHETTI. THE EQUIVALENT OF A MUSICAL WORK IN THREE MOVEMENTS AND THREE PERIODS, MADE IN A CONTEXT OF GREAT BEAUTY.

Palazzzo Franchetti overlooks the Grand Canal at the height of the bridge leading to the Academy. On the occasion of this year's Art Biennale, it hosts one of the most interesting exhibitions among those set up in the Lagoon. Jean Dubuffet and Venice appears to be an almost simplistic title for the solo exhibition curated by Sophie Webel and Frédéric Jaeger, with the collaboration of the Dubuffet Foundation. On closer inspection, however, the two subjects related by the simple conjunction - an artist and a city - conceal a rather complex relationship.

 

1949: DUBUFFET'S REFUSAL

The path of Jean Dubuffet (Le Havre, 1901-Paris, 1985) was marked in three key moments in his life by a bond of rejection and attraction for Venice. The first contact (missed) took place in 1949, when the artist was proposed to organize an exhibition by the Venetian publisher Bruno Alfieri.

Dubuffet responds by defending his own antithetical positions to the system of the time, made according to him of false art and ignoble aesthetic theories, of Biennials, cultural academies, critics and merchants on whom he has declared war for years. He even hopes, in a letter dated 11 November 1949, that the "healthy elements" of the city will set fire to the Doge's Palace and the Bridge of Sighs, throwing out "all those tourists organizing congresses".

 

1964: THE HOURLOUPE AND THE CELEBRATION OF DUBUFFET

Fifteen years pass and Dubuffet changes his attitude, reserving the preview of his most recent works for Venice, made between 1963 and 1964. The L'Hourloupe cycle gives the title to the "painting exhibition" which was inaugurated on June 14, 1964 in the new space of the Teatro di Palazzo Grassi. The artist had been invited by Paolo Marinotti, director of the same building to present over one hundred works, simultaneously at the Biennale. These pieces have a great critical success and are clearly detached from the material ones of the previous decade, of the Sol et terrains (Sun and grounds) cycle.

Dubuffet enjoys the moment, attends his parties in honor of him and is portrayed in a light suit, bow tie and cigar while, surrounded by elegant ladies, he signs his catalogs. The term he coined, "hourloupe", seems to echo a likely (en) "tourlouper", which alludes to that wandering, scamming, deceiving, scored by the figures that fill the spaces of his canvases.

In rooms 2, 3 and 4 of the noble floor of Palazzo Franchetti we can admire seventeen paintings (1962-67) from that period, in which the very fine interplay of colored strokes gives shape to a bizarre world, regenerating images. Guided by the titles, it is easier to read in the cellular textures, aesthetically valid and extremely current in themselves, stories of invention stuck like pieces of a puzzle. Beautiful works such as Virtual virtue or Fantastic village, acquire an even greater charge, if we think that we are observing them overlooking the Grand Canal, in conditions similar to the public of the time and, moreover, while a new Biennale is taking place.
Returning to history, from 5 July 1964, on the first floor of Palazzo Grassi, an exhibition complementary to that of Dubuffet was set up, which thus had the opportunity to exhibit for the first time also the complete series of 324 lithographs of Phénomènes, together with the latest works related to soil research, such as Texturologies and Matérialogies. These are works from the late 1950s, a nucleus of which - 28 lithographs and 8 works - can be seen in room 1 of Palazzo Franchetti, which suggests interesting comparisons.

1984: THE MIRES AND THE CONSECRATION OF DUBUFFET

Another twenty years pass and Dubuffet even represents France, in the pavilion curated by Daniel Abadie, at the 1984 Venice Biennale. The artist, born in Le Havre in 1901, is already 83 years old (he will die the following year in Paris), but his great creative energy and his "youthful freshness" allow him to present 34 unpublished paintings. They are the Mires (he will come to compose 204, in total) - made on 67 x 100 cm sheets of paper, assembled in different formats and then glued - which already in the title reveal the artist's fascination for the gaze and the structures of perception.

Here the eye is lost in an intricate jungle of lines, on a yellow background (Kowloon) or made up of only blue and red colors (Boléros), a sort of abstract movement and acceleration of rhythm with respect to the Hourloupe (The foul language).

The whole, as can still be seen today in rooms 5, 6 and 7 of Palazzo Franchetti - which contain about fifteen paintings plus various lithographs, serigraphs and markers on paper from the Eighties - gives account of a great illusion. Everything that we seem to see in the works, in a perennial chromatic short circuit, it is erroreno, the result of the humanist interpretation, as an increasingly iconoclastic Dubuffet explained, since "in the world there is a great tumult of movements".

The circular route, at Palazzo Franchetti, ends with rooms 8, 9 and 10, equipped with photographic, documentary and film supports (Autoportrait), without forgetting the two sculptures on the stairs and in the garden. For the exhibition the case "Dubuffet and Venice" ends like this. The metamorphosis of vision, on the other hand, continues out there.