Word: dubuffet
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...currently exhibiting the prints of Jean Dubuffet (no, Virginia, he is not the same as Bernard Buffet). The word "important" is probably the most over-used term in the art dealer's vocabulary; yet it is safe to apply it to Dubuffet, who seems one of the three or four most significant artists to emerge since World War II. Incidentally, his recent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was accompanied by an excellent illustrated catalogue, which may still be had from Mandrake...
...nine of which represent single figures in various stages of confusion with the world. The tenth is an excellent piece, Loisirs, where two living bodies float over a landscape. It is apparent from the briefest description that this artist's main concern is the bewilderment of modern man. Dubuffet believes that his images are truly realistic, and that prettier views are insane (a term which some critics have applied to him). His art is unique, both in its imagination and in the technical skills he brings...
Having said this, let me add that these are not Dubuffet's greatest prints. This series seems decorative beside the simple force of his war-time work or when compared to his lithographic masterpieces in the 1953 Series. Also missing is his recent virtuoso performance, Saturday Afternoon 1964. Still, we are lucky to get any Dubuffets at all. They are most reasonably priced, and have frames by Bill Richardson (more on him in the next article...
...gypsy and former nightclub performer, Thea Ekström is also well known as an artist in her native Sweden, and her works are in the collections of French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou and Painter Jean Dubuffet. This is New York's first chance to inspect her unusual talent. In silverpoint on oil-and-canvas, she draws tiny signs and symbols around the edges of lonely landscapes that are guarded by a pale sun and filled with little animals, intertwining snakes, and under the earth's surface, a strange, subterranean life...
...Although the French congratulate themselves on carrying the torch of civilization, there is a lack of interest in art," says Lawrence Alloway, curator of the Guggenheim Museum. "The attendance for the entire run of the recent Dubuffet show in Paris-granted that it was not at the height of the season-was 8,000 to 9,000. Here at the Guggenheim, we have that many people on a single Sunday." Alloway believes that "schools of painting flourish under anxiety and affluence," and New York has both. But Manhattan Critic Harold Rosenberg argues that on balance, "the concept of a world...