The Art Brut Man

I booked myself a ticket to the Jean Dubuffet exhibition at the Barbican for the day after museums and galleries opened up again. It felt good to be in a dark, quiet space and to be able to look at art - in real life. As soon as I saw this smoking lady I knew I was going to like it. Dubuffet was a French artist and sculptor who, as a teenager studied painting at Académie Julian in Paris only to quit after six months, ‘believing that traditional easel painting was a sterile language unable to articulate the texture of real life’. He was greatly inspired by the work of those ‘untouched by artistic culture’ and self-taught artists in psychiatric hospitals in Switzerland and France.

Dubuffet was born into a wine merchant family and after having sold the business off when he was 41 he could dedicate himself full time to art. He also started the Art Brut movement, collecting thousands of artefacts by outsider artists, some of which were included in the exhibition, which is a separate blog post of itself.

This portrait was one of many that he made of the guests who’d attend a weekly literary salon of a wealthy American lady in Paris. He would look at the attendants carefully for hours and then go back to the studio and only work from memory. I’d love a portrait of myself in this style, wouldn’t you (ha, or maybe you wouldn't)?

In the early 1950’s he spent some time in Algeria and began creating landscapes of the Saharan desert. Some of his work reminds a me a lot of phone doodles (do you still do them? I hardly ever do them anymore; I think they happened more when we only had landlines and had loooong phone conversations. Not really 21st century, what with FaceTime and Zoom and everything) - you’ll see what I mean further down in this post.

He wasn’t afraid of using unusual materials in his work, and in this collage series he used butterfly and moth wings. He found the colours of them too subtle and added watercolour to them to make them more lustrous.

Dubuffet experimented with all sorts of materials, and would deliberately mess with them to get different effects. This painting was amazing close up.

Who makes a sculpture out of the remnants of a burnt car? Dubuffet.

Who makes a sculpture out of tin foil? Dubuffet.

But he didn’t stop there. Inspired by Jackson Pollock and looking really closely at rocks, he made large drip paintings that replicated rock surfaces, which in turn, more than a half a century later, made a certain blogger think “Hmm, I should really start looking closely at rocks again, because rocks are crazy amazing.”

Took a step back to show the whole painting.

I loved this painting, which I’ve cropped here to show his cars, which I thought were so cool. I love how seeing art like this reminds me that art doesn’t have to be ‘classic’ at all.

So, back to phone doodles. This period of Dubuffets work from the 60’s and 70’s was actually based on a phone doodle he made using one of those four-colour ballpoint pens (he skipped using green), that were all the rage many moons ago. He found the doodle fascinating and developed it further into paintings…

… and walk-through installations and architectural environments, with people wearing costumes designed by him walking around inside them. He called it Coucou Bazar, made some music to go with it, and it looked a lot like this.

I really liked these posters from that era from different galleries. I think my fave is the Pace Gallery one (middle, first row).

From Coucou Bazar he progressed to just black and white work.

I wouldn’t mind a couple of these in our house.

Quick! The gallery attendant looks really cool silhouetted like that. Click.

He painted his last series of paintings in his early 80’s, in the 1980’s, and two young artists seeing his work in a gallery in New York became hugely inspired by him: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. You can see it, can’t you? I’m so glad this exhibition opened, as I’d never heard of Jean Dubuffet before, which is ridiculous, seeing as I went to see an Art Brut exhibition in Paris two years ago. You live and you learn my friends, you live and you learn.

Present from the past

Yo. How goes it? I’m still in hibernation mode, which kind of makes sense seeing as it’s still officially winter for another week. Maybe I’ll feel better, and have more of a SPRING in my step then?! Needless to say I’ve ignored my camera for weeks, so it’s fortunate that I still have pics that I haven’t posted yet. Back in September me and my friend M went down to the V&A and this reflection caught my eye while we were queueing to get in.

As is now custom in Covid times we began our visit in the courtyard with our packed lunches. Much warmer and sunnier than the last time I was there at the beginning of December…

This guy on the left was dressed in some sort of pink suit and shorts combo with red knee high socks, and I overheard him getting into lots of conversations throughout the museum as people complimented him on his outfit. I was just talking with a friend yesterday of how we, both in our mid to late forties, don’t wear colourful clothes like we used to when we were younger, as if the last thing you want to do as a middle aged woman is to stand out. I did say that once we get to our fifties/sixties/seventies we’ll stop giving a monkeys and hopefully go bananas with what we wear like the ladies captured on the Advanced Style blog.

Anyway, as usual, I digress. Never have I ever… paid any attention to stained glass windows. But we sought it out this time. The V&A has a great collection of Gothic Revival stained glass, which is much more modern in style, and piqued our interest.

I’ve copied and pasted this from the V&A website: “In Victorian England, society was dominated by industrialisation. The country underwent two seismic changes during this period: the rapid replacement of craft manufacture with mass production, and the depopulation of the countryside, as people flocked to the cities to take up work in the new factories. Many reformers, writers, artists and designers began to publicly question the impact of this form of 'progress', and to search for alternatives. This interest in developing a different kind of social and aesthetic template had its roots in the 18th century. In that period, new styles of writing and architecture had begun to focus on the idealisation of nature and an interest in returning to the simpler and more 'honest' values of the past.”

In a post Covid-19 pandemic world it feels like something similar will shift, but some of it in reverse. Less mass production, more crafts, less living in cities and more living in the countryside, more appreciation and care for nature and hopefully a return to a simpler life. I’m so curious to see what is going to happen in London over the next few years. It’s definitely going to be different. Apparently 700 000 people have left London for good in the past 12 months. Two of my close (and local) friends have moved to the countryside since the pandemic, and M, who lives around the corner, is moving back to Sweden next year, so my social life is for sure going to change 😔.

Anyway - again. Check out this very cool piece. So clean.

Some nice sunbeams on the floor in the space where the stained glass are hung up against the window.

Had a look through the Print Rooms as well, and I really liked this linocut.

And I love Paul Peter Piech’s linocuts so much. His style is amazing.

You know what else is amazing? Tapestries. In an alternative universe I make linocuts and tapestries - I’m really good with my hands there.

The light is always so good in this spot. Must be north facing or not get any direct light as it always looks the same.

I never really twigged that there is a paintings section in the museum, and this one kind of broke my heart. I’ll take more pictures in this room next time I go.

We then continued to the Photography room - of course - and I really liked this circular passpartout. Must remember it next time I frame something.

I wrote about Mark Cohen’s pictures in my last post from the V&A, but I didn’t show this picture close up. So good, isn’t it? One glove is better than none. Or maybe her right hand feels the cold more than the left.

M, perfectly framed by a beautiful view and window.

I wanted to show her this amazing staircase on our way out. Pretty special, huh?

And finally, an autumnal looking me, and with such short hair! I’m growing it out now, but last year I was very grateful for Mr Famapa’s haircutting skills. I might need them again if we find ourselves in lockdown in a year’s time. Time will tell.

Among the trees

Flashback exhibition time! Took the Oomster to see the Among the Trees exhibition at the Hayward Gallery back in August last year, where the linking theme between all the artworks was trees. As you entered you were met by this amazing diorama-type installation made out of cardboard. In hindsight I wish I’d spent longer looking at this, but with social distancing rules and a son that walks through exhibitions faster than I do, there wasn’t much time for taking my time, haha.

You know how I’m drawn to silhouettes, right? I spotted this silhouetted couple in front of Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s filmed spruce portrait, and somehow instinctively knew that they would kiss - even though they were wearing face masks. In my excitement of watching it happen and getting ready to take the picture, I managed to wobble the camera. After it happened I took another picture - this time pin sharp, but of course, no face mask kiss. It has made me think of how unaccepting we’ve become of less than perfect pictures in the digital age; if I had shot this on film I would’ve been really pleased to have caught it at all (with the right exposure too - wow!). Pre-digital photography, less than perfect images were part of the visual language, and now they’ve been erased for ever. So, rather than posting the sharp photo I’m posting this as a reminder that as life definitely isn’t perfect, photographs needn’t be either.

I won’t be able to give you all the background info or tell you who made what, so you’re just going to have to take these at face value, and just go with the tree theme of all of them. This was my favourite and my take-home piece. Big it was too.

Loved the colours in this one.

And this tree, made out of typewriter type and sheets of paper put together was pretty impressive.

Cool, right?

These wooden posts had been carved back into trees. Bloody brilliant.

And this photo ticked many boxes for me. Tree, window, each window pane a picture frame? Noice.

These little guys were such a bright matt red. My VSCO filter choice here doesn’t do them any justice at all.

A foggy forest in a box?! Yes please. Makes me wonder where all the foggy winter mornings have gone. Is that just a December thing - and very passé by February?

Check out the Oomster. Such a dude now.

If this was a tree how old would it be? Very. Is this picture out of focus? I can’t tell on my screen. If it is I did it on purpose. Ha. Ha.

Let’s go in closer. Hand drawn directly on the wall?! Very cool.

I really liked this painting, painted solely by making textures. In fact, this is the one I’d like to have as my take home piece now, thank you please.

This installation, glowing like a forest fire had just passed through, was Oomoo’s fave. I wince when I think of how this is what our/his future looks like, becoming more widely spread than it is now I mean. Considering life is such a shit show right now due to you-know-what, it feels a bit too intense to think of the massive turd fest that we’ve created that is hanging over the world, forgotten about for the moment, but still very much there. But I’m hopeful, as seeing how quickly science has reacted to Covid, and how we’ve basically all accepted to more or less stay at home for nearly a year to do our bit to help, fighting climate change should be doable in time we have left to avert most of it, and should be far less painful than 2020/21 has been.

Didn't mean to get all serious like that - soz. But you can’t really go to an exhibition about trees without thinking of the environment, innit. Anyway. This tree trunk had been sliced through like pages of a book. You can see it more at the top of the trunk in this picture.

I wonder what the world would have been like had plastic not been invented? We kind of managed ok without it before, right? Hmmmmmm.

So there you have it, a bit of art for you, from the in-between-lockdown-times in 2020. I also want to share a link to the Mauritshaus Museum in the Hague today, where you can walk around virtually in the world’s first online giga pixel museum. For the past week I’ve dipped in and out walking around it (want to eke it out so it lasts longer), and it’s been mind blowing to be able to zoom in such detail on the paintings. To see the actual brush strokes of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and the cracks in the paint up close is quite something. It’s felt like the best kind of food for my soul in these endless dark and grey days that’s been hitting us more often than I think is necessary. Like, we get it weather gods - enough already.

It's a wrap

Saw these at the V&A too, and thought they deserved their own little post. The hall they’re standing in is being redecorated, and I’m sure there’d be hell to pay if any grey paint went on any of the sculptures. Either that or they’re in full PPE.