Painting: Shock Treatment

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In what is a wry commentary on the flagging pace of Paris painting, the most sensational artist at the moment is Jean Dubuffet, who frankly prefers a drawing by a lunatic to one by Leonardo, patterns his painting on the world of children, wall scratchers, psychopaths, the self-taught and simpletons. Already past 40 when he had his first one-man show 21 years ago, he has since turned out close to 2,000 oils plus countless gouaches, drawings, collages and assemblages that incorporate every material from butterfly wings to actual dirt.

Unhealthy Convention. Critics who praise him—and there are those, including British Critic Alan Bowness, who would rank him as "the greatest living French painter"—see Dubuffet as a major innovator, one who has drilled through to a largely ignored stratum of human consciousness: the images of psychotic art. Furthermore, his work is gaining admirers. This week, for instance, there are three major exhibitions in London, including a full-scale retrospective at the Tate, as well as a show in Paris.

Of his art brut (raw art), Dubuffet says: "I would like people to look at my work as an enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values." To break down the "unhealthy convention" of differentiating ugliness from beauty, he has turned out mudpie paintings covered with coarse scratchings and reduced the traditional ideal of feminine beauty to scarifying yet powerful grotesques. In other series, called Texturologies and Topographies, he has exalted the artistic possibilities of ordinary dirt. His latest works, titled L'Hourloupes (opposite)—probably a pun on entourlouper, "to deceive, to misguide"—dip even further into the mad world to find images that he hopes will produce "a strong exaltation and a disturbing shock."

Bulging Eye. What seems like doodling at first sight soon appears to have its own peculiar, illogical order, a system of delusions. His shock treatment is conveyed by a line that is like a delirium tremor; once snared, the eye lopes along in a crazy rhythm, here surprised by a prominent nose, there by a bulging eye, now tripping over a clodhopper of a shoe, now stumbling onto a wretchedly knobby knee, all in a never-never land of ambiguity. Having attacked the canons of classical art, he now seems intent on undercutting the distinctions between normalcy and abnormality. The unsettling results seem to totter between a sinister vision and a deceptive festivity. Such ambivalent reactions suit Dubuffet fine. He long ago stated his own criterion: "Art should always make us laugh a little and frighten us a little, but never bore us."