Dubuffet. Architecte / As architect (EN)

EN:
« Dubuffet as architect ». Such an expression may seem surprising, even provocative. Although Dubuffet is acknowledged by all as one of the most important painters from the second half of the 20th century, few are aware of “his musical experience”, or the architectural to his work, developed during the Hourloupe period (1962-1974) and for which he was awarded an honorary medal by the American Institute for Architects in 1982.
This book tracks the evolution in Dubuffet’s work from 1965 when he received a commission from André Malraux, then Minister of Cultural Affairs in France, for two monumental paintings for the University of Paris in Nanterre, to the building of Villa Falbala, his move from painting to relief, then to sculpture and this unique architecture whose hollows and protrusions with their black outlines defy any surface reading, teaching us that all reality – whether  physically present as with the Groupe de quatre arbres at the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and the Villa Falbala, or virtual as in painting – is an illusion.
In Dubuffet’s words, anyone attempting to decipher it is like “a fish that decides to secrete for itself the water it swims in and that provides it with food, thus making its habitat and nourishment out of its own secretion”.