Dubuffet Quotes

#1. Anyway, for whatever interest is to be derived therefrom. Bacon, Balthus, and Magritte are my three favourite painters, along with Dubuffet, of the whole post-impressionist period, by which I mean that before them Bonnard, Vuillard, & Seurat are my favourite painters of that time.

Edward Gorey

#2. Art is the most frenzied orgy man is capable of.

Jean Dubuffet

#3. I would like people to see my work as a rehabilitation of scorned values and, in any case, make no mistake about it, a work of ardent celebration.

Jean Dubuffet

#4. Art must make you laugh a little and make you a little afraid. Anything as long as it doesn't bore,

Jean Dubuffet

#5. Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.

Jean Dubuffet

#6. A work of art is only of interest, in my opinion, when it is an immediate and direct projection of what is happening in the depth of a person's being ... It is my belief that only in this Art Brut can we find the natural and normal processes of artistic creation in their pure and elementary state.

Jean Dubuffet

#7. Dancing is the last word in life. In dancing one draws nearer to oneself.

Jean Dubuffet

#8. Mud, rubbish and dirt are man's companions all his life; shouldn't they be precious to him, and isn't one doing man's service to remind him of their beauty?

Jean Dubuffet

#9. Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.

Jean Dubuffet

#10. Man's need for art is absolutely primordial, as strong as, and perhaps stronger than, our need for bread. Without bread, we die of hunger, but without art we die of boredom.

Jean Dubuffet

#11. Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes. It has always been considered in this way by primitive peoples, and they are right.

Jean Dubuffet

#12. I have tried to draw the human effigy (and all the other subjects dealt with in my paintings) in an immediate and effective way without any reference to the aesthetic.

Jean Dubuffet

#13. Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.

Jean Dubuffet

#14. The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State's ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.

Jean Dubuffet

#15. When I want to draw a camel I no longer limit myself, as I once did, to looking only at camels.

Jean Dubuffet

#16. For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.

Jean Dubuffet

#17. There is no such thing as abstract art, or else all art is abstract, which amounts tot the same thing. Abstract art no more exists than does curved art yellow art or green art.

Jean Dubuffet

#18. What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.

Jean Dubuffet

#19. I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist ... ..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure.

Jean Dubuffet

#20. What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.

Jean Dubuffet

#21. I have always been haunted by the feeling that the painter has much to gain from making use of the forces that tend to work against his action

Jean Dubuffet

#22. Art should be born from the materials.

Jean Dubuffet

#23. Normal means lack of imagination and creativity.

Jean Dubuffet

#24. Our culture is like a garment that does not fit us, or in any case no longer fits us. This culture is like a dead language that no longer has anything in common with the language of the street. It is increasingly alien to our lives.

Jean Dubuffet

#25. What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages.

Jean Dubuffet

#26. (Jean) Fautrier's exhibition (in Paris 1945,fh) made an extremely strong impression on me. Art had never before appeared so fully realised in its pure state. The word 'art' had never before been so loaded with meaning for me.

Jean Dubuffet

#27. Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.

Jean Dubuffet

#28. The real function of art is to change mental patterns ... making new thought possible.

Jean Dubuffet

#29. Art is a language, an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of communication.

Jean Dubuffet

#30. Painting is ... a richer language than words ... Painting operates through signs which are not abstract and incorporeal like words. The signs of painting are much closer to the objects themselves.

Jean Dubuffet