The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Dubuffet, Lévi-Strauss, and the Idea of Art Brut
Author(s): Kent Minturn
Source: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 46, Polemical Objects (Autumn, 2004), pp. 247258
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeThe President and Fellows of Harvard CollegeThe
President and Fellows of Harvard College acting through the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
EthnologyPeabody Museum of Archaeology and EthnologyPeabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20167651
Accessed: 30/11/2010 11:54
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pfhc.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The President and Fellows of Harvard College and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics.
http://www.jstor.org
Dubuffet,
L?vi-Strauss, and the idea of art brut
KENTMINTURN
In early 1945, just months after the Liberation, the
French artist and writer Jean Dubuffet
(1901-1985)
art
of
his
search
for
or, as he
brut,
examples
began
would come to define it, art produced by untrained,
isolated, or illiterate individuals "unscathed by artistic
culture."1 In June of 1948, Dubuffet,
along with five
Paulhan (awriter,
others?Jean
linguist, and Editor of the
Revue Fran?aise), Andr? Breton, Charles
La Nouvelle
Ration (a Parisian dealer inAfrican art), Michel Tapi? (an
art critic), and Henri-Pierre
Roch? (a translator,
in Paris
established
and
novelist)?officially
journalist,
to
dedicated
La Compagnie
de l'art brut, an association
and exhibition of art brut.
the discovery, documentation,
Later that summer the Compagnie^
"Foyer de l'Art
was
or
from the
transferred
exhibition
Brut,"
space,
located on the
basement of the Galerie Ren? Drouin,
to a pavilion
in the garden area behind
Place Vend?me,
the offices of the ?ditions Gallimard publishing
house,
17 rue de l'Universit?. The relocated Foyer de l'Art Brut
was opened
to the public on September 7, 1948, and a
little over two months
later, Claude L?vi-Strauss attended
to the work of Joachim
the opening of a show dedicated
an autodidact Catalonian
artist who
Vicens Gironella,
in a French internment
had spent a year (1939-1940)
near
camp
Braum.2
letters with
Shortly thereafter Dubuffet exchanged
L?vi-Strauss. Here, courtesy of the Fondation Dubuffet,
Paris, and the Mus?e de l'Art Brut, Lausanne, they are
for the first time, along with a translation of
published
"Honneur aux valeurs sauvages
Dubuffet's
[In Honor of
Iwould
Director
of the Fondation
like to thank Sophie Webel,
at the
in Paris, and Lucienne
Peiry and Vincent Monod
for making
this
Collection
de l'Art Brut, Lausanne,
Switzerland,
to publish
and giving me permission
material
available
it; Francesco
Dubuffet
and
Banai at Res for their enthusiasm,
guidance,
and
Denis Hollier, Adam
Jolies, Laurence Gobin,
expertise;
on earlier versions
of my
Gini Alhadeff
for reading and commenting
students of
and finally, the faculty and graduate
essay and translations;
Pellizzi
and Nuit
editorial
the Department
to present
me
for inviting
of Art History at Northwestern
University
in the form of a lecture at the "Art
of this material
some
2004.
Image" Symposium,
April 23-24,
to the Cultural Arts,"
1. Jean Dubuffet,
"Art Brut in Preference
trans. Paul Foss and Allen S.Weiss,
ArtandText27
(1988):31-33.
on November
9 and ran through
2. The Gironella
show opened
which
short text for the exhibition,
December
3, 1948. Dubuffet's
and
in a small, handmade
catalogue,
appeared
originally
collected
first tome of Dubuffet's
Prospectus
writings,
vols.
(Paris: Gallimard,
suivants, ed. Hubert Damisch
III-IV, 1995):184-186.
in the
is reprinted
et tous ?crits
I-II, 1967,
vols.
to "La Facult? de
Savage Values]," a lecture delivered
Lettres de Lille" [Faculty of Literature, University of Lille,
of the
France], January 10, 1951, on the occasion
inventeurs
de la
of
the
exhibition,
"Cinq petits
opening
[Five Little Inventors of Painting] (Paul End/
peinture
at the Marcel
Evrard
Alcide/Liber/Gasduf/Sylvocq),"
7 Place de B?thune.3 The letters mark an
bookstore,
intersection between one of
important but overlooked
the key figures of the postwar avant-garde and the
Read in conjunction
founder of structural anthropology.
with Dubuffet's
Values,"
they can help us better
"Savage
the idea o? art brut, its relation to the rise of
understand
Structuralism, and its place within the broader spectrum
of postwar French thought.
L?vi-Strauss was a
At the time of their meeting,
at
the Institut d'Ethnologie
recently appointed professor
de l'Universit? de Paris, and a research associate at the
National Science Research Center, Paris. He returned to
Paris for good at the end of 1947 after spending the war
years teaching at the New School for Social Research,
and then briefly serving as
New York (1942-1945),
cultural advisor to the French Embassy inWashington,
L?vi-Strauss's experiences
D.C. By his own admission,
in New York had an immense influence on the
The
of his groundbreaking
methodology.
development
Roman
structural
linguist
similarly dispossessed
Jakobson inspired L?vi-Strauss to approach art and
not in real
and look for meaning
myths diacritically
of
world referents, but rather in the appearance
structures within a "limited set of conceptual
differential
landed in New
The ?migr? Surrealists, who
oppositions."
L?vi-Strauss's
York around the same time, bolstered
in the productive
role of authorial passivity and
in the creative process. And
implausible juxtapositions
Franz Boas,
from the German-American
anthropologist
of the Northwest
via his installation and organization
belief
3. These five individuals were patients of Dr. Paul Bernard at the
in Saint-Andr?-lez-Lille.
Their full names are as follows:
hospital
Lib
Stanislas
Gaston Dufour
(Gasduf), Paul End, Sylvian Lee (Sylvocq),
on
other major pronouncements
Unlike Dubuffet's
(Liber), and Alcide.
art brut, "In Honor of Savage Values" was not immediately
published.
I (Paris: Gallimard,
in Prospectus
It eventually
appeared
this should not be taken as a sign of
1967):203-224.
However,
toward the text. He went out of his way to
Dubuffet's
indifference
it in a later, more condensed
anthology
? l'ouvrage,
du commun
ed. Jacques
The text of the lecture has been
1973):93-118.
include
L'homme
of his
literary corpus,
(Paris: Gallimard,
here.
slightly abridged
Berne
248
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
Coast
Natural
in the American Museum
Indian Gallery
of
a
new
L?vi-Strauss
History,
appreciation
gained
for the synchronie,
non-hierarchical
arrangement
data.4
ethnographic
Also, during his stay in New York L?vi-Strauss
contact Mr. Putrot d'Alleaume,
secretary general of the
International Congress of Criminology,
Raris. In his
seems
in the idea, but
Dubuffet
interested
response
very
of
as far as we
can assume,
disassociate
lost interest in "so-called professional
art,"
to collect objects which might conceivably
fall under Dubuffet's
rubric of art brut. In a short
article entitled "New York in 1941"
autobiographical
putatively
and began
forms of marginalized
art, including the art of criminals,
children's art, na?ve art, primitive art, folk art, and the art
of the insane.7 Art brut, by definition,
is art without
recounts the hours he spent
(1943), L?vi-Strauss warmly
with Max Ernst, Andr? Breton (whom he had befriended
in 1940, on the boat from Marseilles
to Fort-de-France,
and
Duthuit
Martinique),
Georges
wandering
through
New York's heterogeneous
in search of
neighborhoods
treasures.
In
and overlooked
masterpieces
"a
L?vi-Strauss
recalls
small
antique shop on
particular,
in response to our demand became
Third Avenue which,
Ali Baba's cave."5 In terms similar to those employed
by
in "Savage Values," L?vi-Strauss emphasizes
Dubuffet
the auratic power of art untouched
by the demands of
the market and the encroachments
of what T.W. Adorno
neglected
would call "the culture industry." Such works, L?vi
Strauss contends,
received notions about taste,
challenge
value, and beauty: "One surrounds oneself with these
objects not because
they are beautiful, but because,
to all but the very
since beauty has become
inaccessible
a
in
its
sacred
character?and
rich, they offer,
place,
thus one is, by the way, led to wonder
about the
ultimate nature of aesthetic emotion."6 By 1948, as the
suggests, L?vi-Strauss had also taken an
correspondence
interest in art made by prisoners. He advises Dubuffet,
in his expanding
search for examples of art brut, to
Unfortunately,
concomitant
and
theorization,
conceptualization,
art
been
of
brut
has
promulgation
neglected
by art
historians.9 During his second trip to North Africa
Dubuffet
notebooks)
"New York
From Afar, trans. Joachim Neugroschel
Basic Books,
The same
1985):258-267.
Baba's
treasures"?was
to art brut which
responses
in Lucienne
1948), as cited
in 1941," (1943)
and Phoebe Hoss
the so
Giavarini,
in the art brut
of Basle]
a short entry on the
and with Louis Lambelet
he co-wrote
collection,
Iof ?Art Brut (1964), but this seems to have been an
artist for Fascicule
case.
In "Savage Values" Dubuffet
na?ve art and
dismisses
exceptional
as art made by people
the art of "Sunday painters"
influenced
"totally
art . . . [who] imitate it the best that they can." In an
by classical
in Raw Vision 7
interview with John M. MacGregor
published
art] is completely
(Summer
"[children's
declared,
1993), Dubuffet
to what
interests me, because
it's an effort to assimilate
that art brut
felt very strongly
(p. 42). And, of course, Dubuffet
not the same thing as the art of the insane. This conviction
led to
see
his untimely
break with Andr? Breton. For more on their dispute,
I, pp. 491-498.
Prospectus
15
8. Dubuffet's
first sojourn was to El Gol?a, Algeria,
February
and Tamanrasset,
April 7, 1947; his second was to El Golea
Algeria,
November
p. 263.
16, 1947-April
and El Gol?a,
Timimoun,
1949.
visits
in relation
there
1948; and his third, to B?ni-Abb?s,
from the end of February to April
Algeria,
21,
is a growing
to North
Africa,
to art brut. See,
to
body of literature devoted
have failed to discuss
scholars
Max Loreau,
for example,
des travaux de Jean Dubuffet,
(New York:
in Le Catalogue
"Pr?sentation,"
IV: Roses dAllah,
clowns du d?sert
(Raris: Flammarion,
2001),
some of the objects
to his friend, Dr. Jacques
in his collection
New York, p. 194). Dubuffet was also a
Lacan (Mehlman,
?migr?
at
of Lacan's, and visited him frequently
personal
acquaintance
Raris, in order to look at works of art created
l'H?pital Sainte-Anne,
of Giovanni
[The Prisoner
trips
and Arabicizing
exoticizing
used in one of the first critical
in 1941,"
the work
de Bale"
in The View
(Raris: Jean-Jacques
"Roses d'Allah,
clowns
du d?sert
Genevi?ve
Bonnefoi,
ou une
sur l'illimit?,"
(1953) Lettres Nouvelles
?chapp?
in Paru (January
appeared
anonymously
of Art Brut
Peiry's Art Brut: The Origins
p. 82. Upon
returning to Raris, L?vi-Strauss
"New York
included
"Prisonnier
9. While
28,
these
fascicule
Rauvert,
1967);
(1947-1948),
(September
im Sand Jean Dubuffet
als 'Orientalist'
"Spuren
Ernst
54 (1993):315-343;
Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch
1947-1949,"
inAfrika,"
in Andreas
Franzke and Ernst
Gerhard G?se,
"Dubuffet
1967); Werner
sold
his patients.
6. L?vi-Strauss,
carried several Carnets de croquis (small, ruled
inwhich he took notes, drew pictures of the
7. Dubuffet
called
Dubuffet's
2000):181-196.
L?vi-Strauss,
overtones.
replete with ethnographic
the relation of these trips to Dubuffet's
exiles
imposed
was
inWartime
New York: French Intellectuals
Manhattan
?migr?
(Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins
Press,
University
phrase?"Ali
precedent.
Five months prior to his rendezvous with L?vi-Strauss
at the Foyer de l'Art Brut, Dubuffet
returned from the
second of three trips he would
take to Algeria between
in effect self
1947-19498
(fig. 1 ). These voyages were
opposed
culture"
in L?vi-Strauss's
4. For more on this period
life see Thomas Crow,
"A Forest of Symbols
inWartime
New York," in The Intelligence
of Art
and
of North Carolina
Press, 1999):25-50;
(Raleigh, N.C.: University
in
"L?vi-Strauss
and the Birth of Structuralism,"
Jeffrey Mehlman,
5. Claude
know, he never followed up on it.This, we
had to do with Dubuffet's ongoing efforts to
art brut from other previously
"discovered"
Schnell,
(Berlin: Hatje
G?se,
eds., Jean Dubuffet:
Figuren und K?pfe
of the Artist as a
1999):39-43;
Verlag,
R?gis Durand,
"Glimpses
in Sahara (Raris: Baudoin
Lebon Galerie,
of the Desert,"
Clown
au
1991 ):7-17; and the exhibition
Jean Dubuffet,
voyages
catalogue,
Gerhard
Cantz
by
Sahara
(Paris: Gallimard,
1995).
Minturn: Dubuffet,
L?vi-Strauss, and the idea of art brut
249
Photo
Figure 1. Photograph of Jean Dubuffet with camel at ElGol?a, Sahara Desert,1947-1948.
credit listed as "DR" on p. 459 of the retrospective catalogue DUBUFFET, ed. Daniel Abadie,
Raris:Centre Pompidou, 2001.
in keeping with a longstanding
to learn local dialects
attempted
ethnographic
and expressions
by phonetically
transcribing them in his
to look at
mother tongue.10 This experience
led Dubuffet
to
his own language in a new light, and consequently,
write his "Textes en jargon"?a
series of short, whimsical
in a French so orthographically
r?cits composed
local
inhabitants,
and
practice,
incorrect they must be read aloud
(the first of these, 1er dla canpane
to be understood
[The Air of the
was published by
Countryside,
spelled phonetically]
Dubuffet and his wife, Lili, under the auspices of les
of 1948). As
de VArt Brut, in December
publications
to Raymond Queneau:
Dubuffet
later explained
For three years I studied very assiduously an Arabic dialect
spoken by the Bedouins of the Sahara, and Ibegan by
writing this language phonetically in Latin characters; the
which
has the
large portion of one of these notebooks,
a
of
"Navigateur"
[Navigator]
?mage
sailing ship and the word
on its cover, has been reproduced
in the exhibition
embossed
au Sahara (Raris: Gallimard,
1995).
yean Dubuffet,
voyages
catalogue,
10. A
An example
into phonetic
of Dubuffet's
of Arabic
transcription
can be found in the hors-s?rie
Beaux Arts Collection
dedicated
Dubuffet
(Paris, 2001),
p. 15.
French
to
very strange appearance of the grammatical forms which
resulted from itcaused me to see that our spoken language
is as remote from written language as this Saharan dialect
can be from literaryArabic, and that our language written
phonetically by a foreigner in the same way as Iwrote the
spoken language in ElGolea, presented grammatical forms
as strange (and as fascinating) as my Arabic jargon. It is
then that the idea came to me to try to draft a small text
written phonetically. Ihad the feeling that by becoming
accustomed to writing (and thinking) in this way, one would
be compelled to discover a very interesting species of art,
and Iam completely passionate about this undertaking.11
These experimental writings demonstrate
the
in Dubuffet's mind, of art brut and ?criture
proximity,
brute. Dubuffet never tired of reminding his readers that
"the wind of art brut blows on writing as well as on
other avenues of artistic creation."12
11. Jean Dubuffet,
letter to Raymond Queneau,
dated October
in Prospectus
For more on Ler dla canpane
1950,
I, pp. 481-483.
sur les gravures
"Notice
its relation to art brut see Dubuffet's
30,
and
cet album,"
?n Prospectus
I, pp. 476-478.
Jean Dubuffet,
"Project pour un petit texte liminaire
in Le
introduisant
les publications
de 'L'art brut dans
l'?crire' (1969),"
de France,
1978),
Langage de la rupture (Raris: Presses Universitaires
constituant
12.
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
250
story is an old one; he
respects Dubuffet's
not the first French modernist
to travel to North
In going there he
Africa in search of artistic inspiration.
was consciously
in
the
footsteps of the
following
At other times Dubuffet's mindset
is closer to Roland
as revealed
in The Empire of Signs (1970), a
account of his travels in Japan.18 Dubuffet,
semiological
like Barthes, frequently finds himself confronted with
letters, signs, or inscriptions that are inaccessible,
or meaningless
to him. For example,
in
indecipherable,
a letter to Jacques Berne mailed
from Algeria, Dubuffet
filled with
marvels at the desert as a chaotic palimpsest,
In some
was
Barthes's
and the
Fromentin, and Matisse,
Delacroix,
brothers,
literary luminaries Flaubert, the Goncourt
and Gide. Yet, at the same time, Dubuffet's
Maupassant,
there
visits to Algeria and the art he produced while
painters
and signs "like an immense notebook
a notebook of improvisation
disorganization,
remain historically
insofar as they relate to the
specific
in the
status
of
postwar French ethnology
paradoxical
At certain points in his travels
face of decolonization.
marks
is
the Saharan Bedouins
reminiscent of L?vi-Strauss's treatment of the Nambikwara
in "AWriting
Indians in Brazil, as described
Lesson,"
marks and signs,
that these unintelligible
emphasizes
"are
not
like the Bedouins'
preserved very
footprints,
long." Above all, Dubuffet was fascinated by what he
to be the Bedouin's nomadic nature, the
perceived
of their existence,
and their inability to
impermanence
traces. Transitory
leave permanent
lives, ephemeral
Dubuffet's
attitude
elementary
toward
like
(1955).13 Dubuffet,
chapter 28 of Tristes Tropiques
"natives"
with
the
L?vi-Strauss, apparently provided
them to draw. In one
pencils and paper and encouraged
there are
travel notebooks,
of Dubuffet's aforementioned
two examples of drawings "made by an Arab"14 (fig. 2).
Ben Yahia, the individual who created these drawings
style. Yahia's drawings
clearly tried to imitate Dubuffet's
are, in effect, imitations of imitations, given that
was to
Dubuffet's goal while
traveling in North Africa
can
as
an
be
These
Arab."15
"paint
images
thought of as
of what Homi K. Bhabha calls
the "recognizable Other"
"mimicry," wherein
that is almost the
"a subject of a difference
becomes
same, but not quite."16 Again, one is immediately
concrete
school
blackboard
full of scribbles
of
...
an
. . ."19He
seemed to offer
short, the Bedouins
inscriptions?in
one
of
Dubuffet's pet ideas: "Man Writes
living proof of
on Sand"20 (fig. 3).
of the ideal art brut
Initially, Dubuffet's conception
l'homme commun
artist equated to a heroicized
[common man] or l'homme dans la rue [man in the
street].21 However,
during his stays in North Africa this
examples
colonial
account of the Nambikwara
actions of the ethnographer,
the
by mimicking
tale which,
imitation
Jacques
writing?a
produces
Derrida claims, smacks of "ethnocentrism
thinking itself
reminded
of Levi-Strauss's
chief who,
as
anti-ethnocentrism."17
18. Roland Barthes, The Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard
In 1947, at precisely
the same time
1982).
(New York: Hill and Wang,
for "writing degree zero," Dubuffet was
Barthes was searching
looking
In a letter to Jacques Berne dated October
for its artistic equivalent.
his interest in the idea of "art-zero." See
14, 1947, Dubuffet
expresses
Lettres ? J.B., 1946-1985
(Hermann:
Raris, 1991):31.
Jean Dubuffet:
19. Jean Dubuffet,
Lettres ? J.B., p. 35.
aux amateurs de
20. Dubuffet
first sets forth this idea in Prospectus
tout genre
ed.,
(Raris: Gallimard,
Towards
Jean Dubuffet:
inMildred
1946), translated
Glimcher,
an Alternative
(New York:
Reality
Abbeville Press 1987).
an
and edited by
of ?crits bruts collected
pp. 229-230,
anthology
one of Dubuffet's
most astute
intellectual
Michel
Th?voz,
disciples,
For
of L'Art Brut, Lausanne
and director of the Collection
(1975-2001).
"L'?criture
more on the concept
of ?criture brute see Pierre Dhainaut,
Litt?raire 285 (September
que c'est?" La Quinzaine
qu'est-ce
Tauxe "Les ?crits bruts," 24 Heures
Henri-Charles
1978):10;
ne parviens
pointement
(February 16, 1979), and Pierre Enkell, "Je
Nouvelles
litt?raires
1979).
(March
29,
m'exprimer,"
1
brute,
15,
?
Tristes Tropiques
(1955) trans. John and
L?vi-Strauss,
Press, 1973):294-304.
(London: Chaucer
Weightman
are
in the exhibition
14. These drawings
catalogue,
reproduced
13. Claude
Doreen
Jean Dubuffet,
25.
voyages
au Sahara
(Raris: Gallimard,
1995),
pp.
18 and
of the Artist as a
in R?gis Durand,
15. Dubuffet,
"Glimpses
quoted
Lebon Galerie,
of the Desert,"
Sahara
1991):14.
(Raris: Baudoin
of
and Man: The Ambivalence
"Of Mimicry
16. Homi K. Bhabha,
Clown
Colonial
17.
The
Discourse,"
Jacques
28 (Spring 1984)126.
Of Grammatology
(Baltimore
Press, 1976):120.
University
October
Derrida,
Johns Hopkins
and London:
man and the
is
interest in the common
quotidian
a
In 1938 the
to
in
French
shift
larger
ethnology.
perhaps
at the Trocad?ro
in Raris changed
its name to
of Ethnography
Museum
the shift from
the Museum
of Man. Michel
Leiris, who enacted
an important
wrote
and quotidian,
proper to the common
ethnography
au mus?e
"Du Mus?e
but short article on this entitled,
d'Ethnographie
La Nouvelle
Revue Fran?aise
de l'Homme,"
(August 1938):344-345.
sans honneur:
notes pour le sacr? dans la vie
See also Leiris's L'homme
21.
Dubuffet's
related
Place
ed. Jean Jamin (Paris: ?ditions
Jean-Michel
1994),
quotidienne,
in his preface
to an
of the "quotidian marvelous"
and his celebration
of paintings
exhibition
(Galerie de la Pl?iade,
June 29
by Elie Lascaux
as "Elie Lascaux,"
in Broken Branches
(San
July 20, 1945), translated
For more on Dubuffet
and
Francisco:
North Point Press, 1989):82-83.
man" see Pierre Seghers,
L'Homme du
ou Jean Dubuffet
(Raris: Po?sie 44, 1944); Ren? Lew, "Jean
Portrait du brut en h?ros," La Part de L'Oeil 5 (1989):132
Dubuffet,
"Penser Dubuffet:
139; Steven Ungar,
Propos sur l'ordinaire et le
the
idea of the "common
commun
quotidien,"
d'?crivain,
inMonique
Chefdor
and Dalton
Krauss, eds., Regard
de
Editions joca seria, 1994): 47-61
(Nates:
peintre
parole
;
Minturn: Dubuffet,
L?vi-Strauss, and the idea of art brut
Figure 2. Jean Dubuffet, Carnet de Croquis ElGol?a III,March 1948, Inkon paper, 22 x 17 cm (the size of the
notebook), with a pencil and henna drawing by Ben Yahia glued on page 18. Private collection.
251
252
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
Figure 3. Jean Dubuffet, Arabs and Footprints, January-April, 1948, gouache on paper, 42 x 32 cm. Private
collection.
Minturn: Dubuffet,
Figure 4. Photograph of Jean Dubuffet and local musicians
L?vi-Strauss, and the idea of art brut
253
in the Sahara Desert, ca. 1948. Private
collection.
ideal merged with an exoticization
of the "clowns of the
name Dubuffet
desert"?the
gave to the
shamelessly
Sahara's indigenous
inhabitants. These two ideals, the
in
"common man" and the "desert clown," coalesced
an artist, writer, and shoe
the figure of Gaston Chaissac,
France. In
repairman of Arab descent
living inVend?e,
in
of
while
still
Dubuffet
1947,
July
Algeria,
penned a
of
for
Chaissac's
exhibition
drawings at the
preface
"L'Arc-en-Ciel" Gallery, Paris (June 11-July 5, 1947). In
to Yahia, a Bedouin flute player
it he compares Chaissac
is as illegible
art, Dubuffet contends,
(fig. 4). Chaissac's
to "our excellent missionaries
of art" as Yahia's music
is
toWestern musicographers.22
the
end
of
his
final
By
trip
in 1949, Dubuffet's exoticization
of North Africa and its
inhabitants begins to wane. At first Dubuffet describes
El
as a "bath of simplicities,"
a "refreshing" and
oasis
edenic
inhabited
by men of "grace
"rejuvinating"
and beauty."23 Later, in a letter to Jean Raulhan, he
describes
the desert as a "bath of discomforts
and
Gol?a
and Christian
Dubuffet
l'obscur
Garaud,
et T'homme
"D?shabitude
du commun/"
(Raris: Gallimard,
22.
Jean Dubuffet,
"L'Arc-en-Ciel"
Gallery,
et banalit?:
Jean Raulhan,
Jean
in Jean Paulhan:
le clair et
1999):321-341.
te Chaissac's
introduction
exhibition
at the
in Prospectus
Raris (June 1?July 5, 1947),
II, p.
in Gaston Chaissac
1910-1964
(London:
19, trans, by Sarah Wilson
in 1947 Andr? Breton naively
Fischer Fine Art Ltd., 1986). Similarly,
art brut artist Fatma Haddad,
the work of the Algerian-born
or simply "Baya." For more on this see
Baya Mahieddine,
"Latent Ghosts
and the Manifesto:
Ranjana Khanna,
Baya, Breton and
for the Future," Art History
26:2 (April 2003):238-280.
Reading
23. Jean Dubuffet,
letter to Jacques Berne dated March
17, 1947 in
In the same letter he realizes the
annoyances."
watercolors
he has painted during his stay in the Sahara
are "general and ?deallie," and have nothing to do with
"I have
"the reality of [his] surroundings." He declares,
art of
for the moment
renounced
the descriptive
exoticisms."24 The day after his return to Raris Dubuffet
man is not so
wrote to Jacques Berne: "The Occidental
bad. . . . Not bad at all, the brave Aryan ... I'm not
starts
unhappy to be living with him again."25 Dubuffet
to believe, as he clearly states in "Savage Values," that
one need not go outside of Europe in order to find truly
These savage values to
"savage" individuals: "...
Iattribute more value than all others, appear to
which
in our worlds of Europe and America,
show themselves,
more forcefully and tempestuously
than in all other
worlds.
. . ."
These three versions of Dubuffet's archetypal art brut
common man, the desert clown, and the
artist?the
a common denominator.
To
"savage" European?share
Dubuffet's mind, all three have escaped written history.
Dubuffet's original conception
of art brut, then, was not
and display of
only about the discovery, collection,
or "polemical" objects,
itwas also
obsolete, overlooked,
an attempt to write their makers
into history, a kind of
counter-historical
literary project on par with those
two great unrealized
prewar
attempts
at subverting
celebrated
a.k.a.
Lettres ? J.B., p. 8.
24.
April 3,
585-587.
letters to Jean Raulhan dated March
Jean Dubuffet,
27, and
in Dubuffet
Pau Ihan Correspondence,
1944-1968,
1949,
pp.
25. Jean Dubuffet,
Lettres ? J.B., 47.
letter to Jacques
Berne
dated
April
29,
1949,
in
254
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
traditional
historicism
while
circumstances. There is no difference between an old and
young man. Not the least in any domain. Or if he was from
Burgundy or Auvergne it's the same. And if he is alive or
dead forwho knows how long it is the same to us. Between
and reigning notions of progress
bringing to light the marginal,
simultaneously
remains of bourgeois
culture:
trivial, or "outmoded"
Walter
[Arcades
Project]
Benjamin's Passagen-Werk
and Raymond Queneau's
(1927-1940),
Encyclop?die
a
des sciences
of Inexact
inexactes
[Encyclopedia
In
of
idea
the
Sciences]
(1934).26
fact,
writing a history
of art brut and its creators preceded
the actual collection
of art brut objects. Dubuffet
received approval from the
create a series of journals
to
publisher Gaston Gallimard
the title L'Art Brut before he went searching for art
in July 1945. As he admitted to one
brut in Switzerland
Iwas
in 1976: "I had no idea of collecting.
interviewer
in
the
interested
material."27
Although
only
publishing
Gallimard
eventually
reneged on the contract, Dubuffet
to publish articles on individual art brut
continued
artists. The official Fascicules de l'Art Brut did not see
under
the light of day until the mid-1960s.28
to write
In the 1930s Dubuffet wanted
a series of
of unknown,
average, "non-illustrious"
biographies
this goal
men.29 To a certain degree he accomplished
in
the postwar period with his publication of biographically
based texts on individual art brut artists. Yet, given the
fact that the majority of these artists were homeless,
or amnesic, Dubuffet
(and the other
institutionalized,
to the Fascicules de l'Art brut)
authors who contributed
and
had to give them truncated pseudonyms
imaginatively piece together their biographical
narratives. The end result was a strange genre of art
veritable history of art without
historical writing?a
in his
"names," "dates," or "histories."30 For example,
1947 entry on an anonymous
sculptor associated with
the Swiss collector
O.J. M?ller,
Dubuffet
writes:
Every piece of information about these statues is totally
.
useless. . . What
import is it to us if their author was a
a cowherd, an old man or a young person? It
or
bureaucrat
is very unfounded to pay attention to these meager
26. Walter
The Arcades
Project, ed. RoyTiedmann,
Benjamin,
Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin
(Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University
1999).
Press,
eventually
Raymond Queneau
in the form of a novel,
some of his research for this project
published
Les Enfants du limon (Raris: Gallimard,
1938), trans. Madeleine
Sun and Moon
of
Children
(Los
Press, 1998).
Clay
Velguth,
Angeles:
trans. Howard
in Raw
interview with
John M. MacGregor
Dubuffet,
published
7 (Summer
1993), p. 43.
125-176.
28. For the full story see, Peiry, Art Brut, pp. 35-104,
in Prospectus
have been reprinted
29. A few of these biographies
27.
Vision
III, pp.
30.
175-185.
in Peiry, Art Brut, pp.
"Writing the History of Each Artist,"
Iwill further explore
this topic in "On Art Brut as a Literary
Contre-Histoire:
the third chapter of my doctoral
dissertation,
Project,"
Columbia
The Postwar Art and Writings
of Jean Dubuffet,
University.
152-157.
See
and
contemporary
someone
from
the
or a
last century,
companion of Clovis or the big prehistoric reptiles?no
difference whatsoever. We are completely wrong to take
interest in these details."31
nature of Dubuffet's
The quasi-ethnographic
trips to
he studied
North Africa is not surprising considering
in Raris in the 1920s.32 At the same time,
ethnography
he frequented Andr? Masson's
studio at 45 rue Blomet, a
meeting
ground for the "dissident" surrealists Georges
Leiris, and Georges Bataille, all of whom
Limbour, Michel
were
the avant-garde
later involved inDocuments,
to
dedicated
the
boundaries
among
journal
blurring
(L?vi-Strauss,
"arch?ologie-beaux
arts-ethnographie."33
an article on
while not yet an ethnographer,
contributed
no.
to
Vol. II,
Picasso
Documents,
3, 1930).34 In
"Documents"
for the title of their journal these
choosing
authors announced
their anti-aesthetic
intentions; the
was
not
to
in
other
be another
words,
journal,
going
Gazette des beaux-arts or Gazette des beaux-arts primitifs.35
implied a critique of current
tended to sublimate
practices, which
documents
them from?to
and disassociate
Further, Documents
museological
ethnographic
"ritual value."
paraphrase Walter Benjamin?their
As is evinced
in "Savage Values," Dubuffet's
ideas
about art brut were also inherently critical of the
museum
as a cultural institution.36 He often referred to
31.
Jean Dubuffet,
"Les Barbus M?ller
et Autres
Pi?ces
de
la
Statuaire
in Prospectus
I, pp. 498-499.
Provinciale"(1947),
32. See Dubuffet's
"Plus Modest"
(1945), Prospectus
I, pp. 89-93,
as "More Modest,"
in Tracks: A Journal of Artists' Writings
translated
1:2 (Spring 1975):26-29.
was
close to Masson,
Leiris, and Limbour.
especially
this, see his letter to Jacques Berne dated February 8,
in Lettres ? J.B., pp. 6-8. See also, Andr? Masson,
"45, rue
1947,
in Rebelle
du surr?alisme
1968):76-84.
(Paris: Hermann,
Blomet,"
34. Levi-Strauss
the piece for his then boss, Georges
ghost-wrote
33.
Dubuffet
For more
Monnet.
on
The article
has been
translated
as "Picasso
and Cubism,"
in
October 60 (Spring 1992):51-52.
35.
Denis
Leave:
Without
Mass.:
"The Use Value of the Impossible,"
Hollier,
French Literature under the Threat of War
Harvard
36.
For more
in Absent
(Cambridge,
Press, 1997):125-144.
University
see the
on Dubuffet's
critique of the museum
au Mus?e"
in Prospectus
IV: "Dubuffet
included
texts
(pp.
following
and
letter to Florence Gould
the undated
23-24),
(pp. 542-543),
In
the letter to Paolo Marinotti,
January 1, 1967 (pp. 218-220).
who
criticizes
Culture
Dubuffet
(1968)
Malraux,
overtly
Asphyxiante
of
sin (in Dubuffet's
the ultimate
opinion)
by then had committed
accepting
Asphyxiating
of culture.
of minister
See Dubuffet,
the state position
trans. Carol Volk (New York:
Culture
and Other Writings,
Minturn: Dubuffet,
L?vi-Strauss, and the idea of art brut
255
and likewise wanted
works of art brut as "documents,"
Whereas
to prevent them from being over-aestheticized.
L?vi-Strauss came to anticipate
the day the masks,
country, and birthplace of that other truly international
art movement,
Dada. Moreover,
Dubuffet
refused to
names
art
next to
artists
of
brut
the
and
dates
display
and totem poles of the Indians of the
costumes,
Northwest coast would be "moved from the ethnographic
to fine arts museums,"37
Dubuffet hoped instead to
shield ethnographic
works from the tentacles of "cultural
art" by absorbing some of them into his collection
of art
in so doing he unwittingly answered
their works;
Heinrich W?lfflin's
call for an art history without
"proper
names." And, as was the case with Malraux's mus?e
an important role in the
imaginaire, photography
played
and publication
of art brut.
collection,
documentation,
In an early call for help in finding examples of art brut,
brut. To this end he often searched ethnographic
museums
for examples of art brut. In the summer of
1945, Dubuffet visited Mr. Eug?ne Pittard, curator of the
Mus?e d'Ethnographiede laVille de Gen?ve and asked
for his help in locating examples of art brut.38 In
his
"Savage Values" Dubuffet specifically mentions
admiration
for native American
art, and his recent trip to
of Basle" where he saw "a
"The Ethnographical Museum
and painted wooden
group of decorated
sculptures
from
the
former
German colony of New
coming
now called New
Ireland." He also speaks
Mecklenburg,
art
which cannot be
about his interest in forms of
within the museum,
namely Asiatic dance.
on
in
echo
those expressed
this
subject
thoughts
two works he knew well?Antonin
Artaud's Theater and
ItsDouble
Barbarian In
(1938), and Henri Michaux's
announced
that he would gladly accept either
or
of these works," as if the
works
"original
photographs
two were somehow
Dubuffet's
interchangeable.39
in the sense
of art brut was also "wall-less"
collection
In
that itwas literally nomadic and non-site-specific.
Dubuffet
1951 he packed
estate
and sent
up the collection
in East Hampton,
it to Alfonso
Long Island, New
next
it
where
would
for
the
eleven years
York,
stay
before returning to France in early 1962. Then in 1975
to The Ch?teau de
Dubuffet
transferred the collection
in
it remains to
Beaulieu
Lausanne, Switzerland, where
Ossorio's
contained
this day.40
His
that Jean Raulhan,
Lastly, it should be mentioned
Dubuffet's close friend and mentor, also had a
in ethnography.41
Long before he
background
on
Dubuffet
his
first trip to Switzerland
accompanied
Asia
(1943).
can
To a certain extent Dubuffet's art brut collection
be thought of as a "museum without walls." Significantly,
Andr? Malraux,
the person to whom we owe the
first
contemporaneous
concept, was one of Dubuffet's
a
art
even
of
and
fervent
enthusiast
brut
(he
supporters
reproduced a work by the art brut artist Guillaume
Imaginaire, 1947). As Malraux
Pujolle in LeMus?e
museum
envisioned
the
without walls would, with
it,
assemble
objects from all over the
photography's
help,
nations and
down
between
break
boundaries
world,
time
issues
and
and
diminish
cultures, nullify
space,
art
to
For
brut
also
Dubuffet,
authorship.
relating
It is
and nationalisms.
national boundaries,
transcended
not for nothing that Dubuffet
art
for
brut in
first searched
a
"neutral"
Switzerland,
culturally diverse, politically
Four Walls
commentary
the museum
Eight Windows,
on Dubuffet's
For secondary
to
art brut and its relationship
"Le paradox d'un mus?e
de l'art
1988):109-112.
ideas about
see, Michel
Th?voz,
82 (Autumn 1981):37-39;
Lucienne
International
brut," Opus
Peiry,
"An Anti-Museum,"
in Art Brut, 177-223;
"Note sur
Hubert Damisch,
t. Il (Raris, 1968):508-509;
l'art brut," Encyclopaedia
and
Universalis,
Louis Cummins,
the Museum:
The Rhetorics
of Michael
"Undermining
Asher, Marcel
Daniel
and Louise
Buren, Hans Haacke
Broodthaers,
Ph.D. dissertation
Lawler," unpublished
(CUNY, 2002):89-95.
37. Claude
The Way of the Masks
(Seattle: University
L?vi-Strauss,
of Washington
Press, 1982): 3-4.
38. For more on this visit, see Lucienne
Peiry, Art Brut, p. 46.
search of art brut,42 or became
39.
translated
a member
in
of the
sur la
de l'art brut" (1948),
"Notice
Jean Dubuffet,
Compagnie
as "AWord About
of Raw Art,"
the Company
by Carol Volk
inAsphyxiating Culture and Other Writings (NewYork:FourWalls
EightWindows, 1988):109-112.
or
Itmight be helpful to think of art brut as a "homeless"
art in terms similar to those used by T. J. Demos
in his Ph.D.
The Avant-Garde
Homeless?
and Post
dissertation,
"Duchamp
40.
"exiled"
nationalism,"
groundwork
2000.
Columbia
University,
for this kind of an approach
La Nouvelle
Revue Fran?aise
Claude
Esteban
has
laid the
in his article, "L'art
174 Gune 1967).
d?poss?d?,"
41. See Jean Paulhan et Madagascar
Cahiers Jean
(1908-1910),
et
Paulhan 2 (Raris: Gallimard,
"Les Diff?rences
1982); Mark Auge,
in Jean Paulhan
L'Indiff?rence:
Raulhan ?crivan Ethnologue?"
Le
Souterrain:
de Cerisy
(Raris: Union G?n?rale
D'?ditions,
Colloque
"Slow Progress:
John Culbert,
Jean Raulhan and
83 (Winter 1998):71-95;
"Du
October
Christian Garaud,
Madagascar,"
et Jean Raulhan ?crivains
bon usage des vieillards: Victor Segalen
in Ethnography
in French Literature, ed. Buford Norman
ethnologues,"
1976):
17-40;
(Amsterdam
and Atlanta:
of Ethnography,"
in Defying
1996); Michael
Syrotinski,
"Allegories
in
Interventions
gravity: Jean Paulhan's
Rodopi
French Intellectual History
Twentieth-Century
(Albany: SU NY Press,
and Anna-Louise
"Food for Thought:
1998):25-46;
Milne,
et rh?torique
selon Jean Raulhan,"
Litt?rature 129 (March
ethnographie
2003):107-123.
42. Raulhan
an account
of this trip in the form of an
published
a voyage
to a magical,
exotic
falsely na?ve ethnological
travelogue,
land in the heart of Europe. See Jean Raulhan, "Guide d'un petit voyage
en Suisse au mois de juillet 1945," Cahiers de lapl?iade (April 1946).
256 RES46 AUTUMN2004
l'Art Brut, Raulhan studied under Lucien
research on
L?vy-Bruhl and conducted
ethnographie
eve
"the semantics of the proverb." On the
of World
IIhe was a participant,
War
with
several
members
along
in
of the former Documents
the
brief
but
group,
(1937-1939).
(L?vi
important Coll?ge de la Sociologie
Strauss attended, but did not participate
in, the College's
In 1939 Raulhan rereleased his 1913 study
meetings.)43
a transcription and translation of
of Les hain-tenys,
de
Compagnie
includes
proverbs. The revised version
in
which
self-reflective
he waivers
commentary
between ethnography
and
proper
autobiographical
Leiris's
reflection, and as such is reminiscent of Michel
a
middle
L'Afrique fant?me (1934).44 Both works occupy
the twilight of ethnography
and the
ground between
birth of postcolonialism.
Dubuffet, who had an
Malagasy
Raulhan's
insatiable appetite for Paulhan's writings, was certainly
aware of his early ethnographic
studies. In fact, while
sent
in
Dubuffet
Raulhan examples of
traveling
Algeria,
Arabian proverbs.45 Dubuffet and Raulhan were planning
to travel to Madagascar
together in the spring of 1947.
Even though this trip was eventually
Raulhan
canceled,
did visit Dubuffet in ElGol?a inMarch of 1948.
and L?vi-Strauss's mutual
similar pursuits was apparently
Dubuffet
other's
respect for each
short-lived. We
that L?vi-Strauss, along with forty-eight others
including Henri Michaux, Andr? Malraux, Georges
Henri Rivi?re, and Robert Dauchez,
paid his dues and
became an official subscribing member of the Compagnie
de l'Art Brut in 1949.46 Later that year L?vi-Strauss
attended the "L'Art Brut Pr?f?r? aux arts culturels"
know
at the Galerie Ren? Drouin
(October 1949),
200 works by 63 different artists.47 Yet,
after this date there is little if any evidence
to suggest
Dubuffet and L?vi-Strauss stayed in touch. In a letter to
exhibition
which
included
inOctober
1970, Dubuffet would
Jacques Berne written
L?vi-Strauss
too theoretical:
had
become
complain
on Theory ... it is the
"There are too many cogitations
. . . Into the fire with Levi-Strauss
malady of the epoch.
and Michel
Foucault."48 However,
anyone familiar with
Dubuffet's
life-long love/hate relationship with French
take these comments with a
intelligentsia will wisely
tended to deride only those he
grain of salt. Dubuffet
in
it is clear he had
and
admired,
retrospect
deeply
more
in common with these two great "cogitators of
incessant
Theory," than he cared to admit. Dubuffet's
critique of madness, highlighted in the second half of
the age-old equation of
"Savage Values," undermined
and
infantilism,
primitivism,
insanity, and in so doing
the
movement
for
the
French
way
paved
anti-psychiatric
of the 1960s. Whereas
Foucault chose to champion
to
often referred specifically
Artaud, Gilles Deleuze
even
own
and
his
characterized
Dubuffet,
philosophical
project as a "sort of art brut."49
some writers have jocularly labeled Dubuffet
While
an
or
others, including
anthropologist
ethnologist,50
Michel Th?voz, Gilbert Lascault, Leonard Emmerling,
Cousseau
and Henri-Claude
have sought, in a more
to
draw
direct
manner,
scholarly
parallels between
In very general terms, it is
Dubuffet and L?vi-Strauss.51
to talk about Dubuffet and L?vi-Strauss's similar
possible
47.
43.
L?vi-Strauss's
laudatory
review
fran?aise," which
appeared
du XXe si?cle
(Raris, 1947),
Sociologie
sociologie
of Sociology,
ed., The College
Minnesota
Press, 1988):385-386.
of the College's
activities,
in Georges
La
Gurvitch's
"La
p. 517; trans, in Denis Hollier,
1937-1939
of
(Minneapolis:
University
44. LikeDubuffet, Raulhaneventually disabused himself of his
In 1939 he admitted,
"there's no need to go
pr?tentions.
to experience
See John Culbert's
the proverb."
excellent
of this in "Slow Progress:
Jean Raulhan and Madagascar,"
ethnographic
to Madagascar
discussion
October 83 (Winter 1998), p. 83. Itshould also be noted that Raulhan
was
critical
(Raris: Unesco,
"Col?res de M.
29
in Race et histoire
stance
methodological
1952). See Jean Gu?rin
(one of Raulhan's pseudonyms),
La Nouvelle
Revue Fran?aise
Nouvelle
L?vi-Strauss,"
of L?vi-Strauss's
material
and the contextual
presented
by
in "Quelques
lettres ? propos du relativisme
Jean Raulhan et Ren? de Solier," Gradhiva
Roger Caillois,
(1996):97-114.
in
45. See Dubuffet's
letter te Raulhan dated April 18, 1948,
(May 1955):935;
Massonet
St?phane
culturel.
Dubuffet
Paulhan
1944-1968,
eds.,
Correspondance
and Marianne
2003):509-510.
Jakobi (Paris: Gallimard,
46. Lucienne
Peiry, Art Brut, p. 86.
Julien Dieudonn?
eponymous
To The Cultural
essay
Arts,"
for the show's catalogue,
trans. Raul Foss and Allen
"Art
S.
ArtandText27
(1988):31-33.
Weiss,
48. Letter to Jacques Berne, October
22, 1970, p. 190.
49. Quoted
in John Rajchman's
to Deleuze's
Pure
introduction
Eminence
p. 7.
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002),
50. Giulio-Carlo
"Dubuffet
L'ARC 35 (April
Argan,
anthropologue,"
Jean-Francois
1968):26-29;
Jaeger, "Extrait du rapport de l'ethnologue
and Lutembi,
jeanafosicran
Egreja," L'Herne 22, (1973):336-339;
au Cosmorama
"Terrifiante Anthropologie,"
introductions
Quelques
de Pataphyque,
dossiers
Jean Dubuffet
satrape, Cahiers du coll?ge
de
10/11(1960).
51. Michel
La
Culture et Subversion,"
"Jean Dubuffet:
Th?voz,
Lausanne
Brut
Art
and
1968)
(Geneva:
10,
Skira,
(August
"La Pens?e sauvage en acte," Cahier
L'Herne
1976); Gilbert
Lascault,
22 (1973):218-233;
Henri-Claude
Cousseau,
"L'origine et l'?cart: d'un
Gazette
art
19
See Dubuffet's
in Preference
Brut
de
l'autre," Paris-Paris:
Pompidou,
Deviations:
and
120-122.
en France
193-1957
(Centre Georges
in part as "Origins and
of Art Brut," Art & Text 27 (1988):6-28;
translated
in Die
und L?vi-Strauss,"
"Dubuffet
Emmerling,
Jean Dubuffets
1999):
(Heidelberg: Wunderhorn,
For a more cursory treatment of this subject see Pierre
"Dubuffet
Structuraliste?"
Artpress 272 (October 2001):26-29.
Leonard
Kunsttheorie
Sterckx,
cr?ations
1981):229-254,
A Short History
Minturn: Dubuffet,
on synchronies over diachronics,
and their
anti-Sartrean views of history (even though
decidedly
in contrast to L?vi-Strauss, would never have
Dubuffet,
articulated his position as such). Also, both Dubuffet and
to
L?vi-Strauss rely on the opposition
of categories
emphasis
structure
cultural
Interestingly enough,
were often gustative.
such as his discussion
vitamins
"art brut vs.
Dubuffet's
"nature vs. culture."
these opposing
categories or terms
Parts of Dubuffet's
"Savage Values,"
their arguments?e.g.,
art" and L?vi-Strauss's
of the presence and absence of
in raw and cooked foods, sound as if they
in L?vi-Strauss's The Raw and the Cooked
(1964).
belong
it could be said that Dubuffet and
And, in retrospect,
a
common
L?vi-Strauss share
blind spot?even
though
their works are contemporary with and attuned to the
demise of the empire, they never address the
context as such.52
postcolonial
can be made between
More specific connections
Dubuffet's
theorization of art brut and L?vi-Strauss's
"savage" is retrograde and carries a host of
The title The Savage Mind gives
negative connotations.
the impression that L?vi-Strauss's book is simply the
latest version of L?vy-Bruhl's Primitive Mentality
(La
Mentalit? primitive,
1922), and accordingly
yet another
the inferiority of the "primitive"
attempt at demonstrating
word
vis-?-vis the more advanced Western
"scientific"
In reality nothing could be farther from the truth.
Savage Thought or Untamed Thinking would have been
a more accurate translation of L?vi-Strauss's title.
Savage
"is neither the thought of savages,
thought, he advances,
nor that of primitive or archaic humanity, but
thought in
a wild state, distinct from cultivated or domesticated
. . ,"53Dubuffet's definition of
"sauvagerie"
thought.
likewise revolved around a particular state of mind.
In
the late 1950s and early 1960s Dubuffet
increasingly
began to define art brut as a kind of mental operation or
mind
mind.
In L?vi-Strauss's
terms, Dubuffet
moved
257
brut's "technical plane" to its "intellectual plane." For
in a text dated August 1959 written as a
example,
"Art Brut" presented by
for
the exposition
preface
at
Chave
the
Galerie
les Images, Vence,
Alphonse
Dubuffet describes art brut as a conceptual
"pole" rather
than a specific set of formal characteristics
inherent to
the works
themselves.54
L?vi-Strauss
resuscitates the French verb
has no English equivalent but refers
"bricolage"?which
to the kind of activities performed by a resourceful "do
to further explain his ideas about pens?e
it-yourselfer"?
sauvage. The "bricoleur," in contrast to the engineer,
uses whatever
is "at hand," preexisting
"odds and ends,"
or "leftovers."55 Further, the scientific
engineer differs
from the bricoleur
inasmuch as the former "is always
trying to make his way out of and go beyond the
constraints
imposed by a particular state of civilization,"
the latter "by inclination or necessity always
them."56 Thus, there is an important
inherent to L?vi-Strauss's definition
temporal component
of the bricoleur which coincides with Dubuffet's
definition of the art brut artist?both
figures are
while
The
(1962). Before going into these, however,
Savage Mind
one point should be clarified. Savage Mind, the
English
translation of the original title of Levi-Strauss's La Pens?e
to say, the
is somewhat misleading.
Needless
Sauvage,
activity.
L?vi-Strauss, and the idea of art brut
remains within
to diachronical
antithetical
models of history. Moreover,
both employ mental operations which have remained
the same throughout time, and create things which
reside outside of time, or cannot be placed
in time. It is
not par hasard then that L?vi-Strauss resorts back to the
the process
pantheon of art brut to make his point?in
of defining "bricolage" he specifically mentions The
Postman Cheval, France's most famous art brut artist.57
There is another facet of Levi-Strauss's savage mind
that is closely related to Dubuffet's
theorization of art
brut. The French title of L?vi-Strauss's book contains an
untranslatable
pun. Homophonically,
pens?e sauvage
also means Wild Pansy, the flower. This kind of word
play (along with his fondness for alliteration?e.g.,
Tristes Tropiques, Le Cru et le cuit) is typical of L?vi
Strauss and connects
him to a history of avant-garde
French literature?i.e.,
St?phane Mallarm?, Max Jacob,
Iwould argue, Dubuffet
Roussel?to
which,
Raymond
from art
54.
52.
Denis
Hollier,
Texts and Contexts,
"The Pure and
ed. Denis
Hollier
Impure," in Literary Debate:
and Jeffrey Mehlman
(New York:
the
The New
Hollier makes
this point about L?vi-Strauss,
Press, 1999):14.
but I think it equally
to Dubuffet.
to this
The only exceptions
applies
a few letters Dubuffet wrote
to Raulhan
generalization
might be
in Dubuffet
Paulhan Correspondance
16, 1948,
April 6?April
But even then Dubuffet's
is closer
1944-1968,
pp. 502-508.
position
to Andr? Gide's
in Voyage
to the Congo
(1925) than it is to say, Franz
in Black Skin, White Masks
Fanon's
(1952).
53. Claude
The Savage Mind
of
L?vi-Strauss,
(Chicago: University
between
Chicago
Press,
1966):219.
See Jean Dubuffet,
"L'Art Brut," a text from August
1959
as a
"Art Brut" presented
for the exposition
preface
by
inVence,
les Mages,
Chave at the Galerie
France, Prospectus
Alphonse
I, pp. 513-516.
written
55.
56.
L?vi-Strauss,
Ibid., 19.
The Savage
Mind,
p.
19.
on the technical
57. The passage
reads: "Like 'bricolage'
plane,
can reach brilliant unforeseen
reflection
results on the
mythical
intellectual
attention
has often been drawn to the
plane. Conversely,
on
nature
of
the
'brut' or
mytho-poetical
'bricolage'
plane of so-called
'na?ve' art, in the architectural
follies
like the R?lais Id?al du Facteur
. . ."
or the stage sets of
Georges M?li?s
(p. 17).
Cheval
258
RES 46 AUTUMN 2004
the title's double entendre
also belongs.58 Moreover,
announces
of L?vi-Strauss's
the linguistic dimension
In
to
evidence
project.
disprove the common
offering
that only "advanced" cultures are capable
misconception
for accomplishing
[Gaston the Zoologist]
Zoologue,"
this kind of declassification
through his work.62
we
if
follow
this
line of thinking further we
However,
arrive at an insurmountable
chasm between Dubuffet
that our
thought, L?vi-Strauss demonstrates
no
more
are
accurate or
modern
scientific terminologies
nuanced than those used in so-called "primitive"
societies. As someone who always maintained words are
and L?vi-Strauss, which no doubt explains why the two
In the end, their ideas
thinkers eventually
parted ways.
For L?vi-Strauss, ethnology
about art are incompatible.
as a whole,
and the study of art in particular, deals with
As a scientist he
"the problem of communication."63
of abstract
inadequate translators of thought, Dubuffet would
certainly agree with L?vi-Strauss here. In his homage to
the experimental writer Andr? Martel entitled, "A Grand
uses the
Deferential
Salute to the Martelandre,"/Dubuffet
a
to
He
of
Eskimos
make
suspects
example
similaj/point.
that the Eskimos, whose
language is/?sually taken to be
richer
than French, actually
have means
less complex
ours
to
More
communicate.
than
differentiating maybe,
or more nuancible."59
poor,
In The
is declassification.
chief concern
our
asserts
he
Mind
also
that
scientific
categories
Savage
are not as objective
and immutable as one might expect.
To the contrary, they are arbitrary, culturally constructed,
other words they are timely,
and historically
specific?in
not timeless. He concludes:
"the truth of the matter is
can never
that the principle underlying a classification
L?vi-Strauss's
in advance."60 Again, Dubuffet would
be postulated
concur wholeheartedly.
"The role of the artist. . . and
to Jacques Berne, "is
the poet," he once explained
to
normal
to disrupt them, and
blur
precisely
categories,
so
to
restore
the
mind
the
and
eyes
ingenuity
by doing
In a manner
reminiscent of L?vi-Strauss's
and freshness."
in chapter 2 of The
of
Totemic
classifications
analysis
Dubuffet
further
elaborates:
Savage Mind,
. . .
[Categories]
vegetable,
fruit,
citrus
fruit,
are
orange,
very arbitrary. . . . Everybody gets used to them by force of
habit, but we could have become very accustomed to other
For example,
categories.
when
one
says
that
a swallow
stabs the sky.Well yes, instead of grouping a swallow with
a stork in order to establish a bird category one could have
done otherwise, and classify a swallow with a dagger (in
the category for sharp objects and perforators) and a stork
with an electric desk lamp (the category for things with feet
with long legs).61
breaks down
for the sole
preconceived
categories
new
are meant to
of
which
ones,
purpose
reconstructing
us
art
the
and
of
other
cultures.
interpret
help
myths
L?vi-Strauss believes
that the practice of structural
will enable him, as the pun in the title of
anthropology
La voie des masques
(1975) implicitly suggests, to give
to works of art which would otherwise
In
silent.
the preface to this study of Northwest
Indian masks he posits:
"voice"
...
As
in the case
with
myths,
masks,
too,
remain
Coast
cannot
be
interpreted in and by themselves as separate objects.
Looked upon from the semantic point of view, a myth
acquires sense only after it is returned to its transformation
set. Similarly, one type of mask, considered only from the
plastic point of view, echoes other types whose lines and
colors it transforms while itassumes itsown individuality.
For this individuality to stand out against another mask it is
necessary that the same relationship exist between the
message that the firstmask has to transmit or connote and
the message
same culture
that
or
the other
in a
mask
neighboring
must
convey
culture.64
within
the
in
Dubuffet, on the other hand, is uninterested
Art
the
he
brut,
reconstructing
categories
destroys.
is precisely
Modernism's
lastOther,
that which
falls
outside of any "transformation
set" or "matrix of
It is always sigular and isolated,
intelligibility."
is
inaccessible
and inpenetrable. As far as Dubuffet
each art brut artist is a "closed-circuit,"
concerned,
in dialog with him- or herself alone.65 The essence
of thework of art brut lies in its illegibility, its
Dubuffet's
and its indecipherability.
incommunicability,
art brut is, ultimately, L?vi-Strauss's "mana": a sign
signifying nothing, a symbol with zero symbolic value.66
to one of his favorite art
In a long essay dedicated
brut artists, Dubuffet
praises "Gaston le
specifically
58.
Strauss
Strauss
to Structuralism:
Cf., James A. Boon, From Symbolism
in a Literary Tradition
1972.
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
in
liked Boon's book; see his comments
apparently
Conversations
London:
with
L?vi-Strauss
of Chicago
University
(1988),
Press,
ed. Didier
1991 ):181-182.
III, pp. 245-250.
Prospectus
The Savage Mind,
p. 58.
Lettres ? J.B., pp. 1-3.
Eribon
62.
L?vi
(Chicago
Dubuffet,
"Gaston
le Zoologue,"
(1965)
Prospectus
I, pp.
319-332.
L?vi
to the Work of Marcel Mauss
Introduction
L?vi-Strauss,
and Kegan Paul, 1987):36.
(London: Routledge
Claude
The Way of the Masks
(1975) (Seattle:
L?vi-Strauss,
of
1982):12.
Press,
University
Washington
63.
and
Claude
(1950)
64.
59.
Dubuffet,
60.
L?vi-Strauss,
65.
Prospectus
61.
Dubuffet,
66.
L?vi-Strauss,
I, p. 322.
Introduction
to the Work
of Marcel
Mauss,
p. 64.