Bilden visar hans Jardin d'émail som finns i skulpturträdgården vid Museum Kröller Müller i Holland.
I Sundsvallsdistriktet klagar många över Bengt Lindströms "Y-et" intill E4:an i Timrå. Man tycker att skulpturen är ful.
I Holland klagar man inte över sitt "Y" :)
Bilden till vänster: "Dhotel nuance d’abricot" av Dubuffet. Gjord 1947 och hänger i det franska museet för samtidskonst Centre Pompidou i Paris.
Visst påminner porträttet om TV4:s (utmärkte) expertkommentator under friidrotts-EM?
Dubuffet's technique in Dhotel nuancé d'abricot can be reconstructed from a studio log book kept by him at the time. Laying the stretched canvas on the floor, he covered its entire surface with a thick, sticky pate of light colored oil paint applied with a spatula, like icing a cake. While it was still wet he took handfuls of ashes and sprinkled them over the whole area to darken the paint. Over this he dropped sand and then coal dust which would all, to a certain extent, sink into the surface. At this point some color was put on in the form of a thin 'apricot' mixture of yellow ochre, white and crimson brushed over the surface broadly. Some pure crimson was also put on, and is still visible through parts of the black crust.
The surface was now prepared to be totally covered with thick black paint troweled across with a palette knife, possibly with the addition of more ashes and dust. There was still no trace of the image at this stage - it would have looked instead like a plain smoke-blackened wall. With a broad spatula Dubuffet then carefully rubbed the materials into the surface and put the canvas on an easel to let any excess fall off.
It was only at this stage that the head was painted in with a cream white on a palette knife. Then, using a blunt point, he incised the contours of the head through this rich sandwich of paint and material, so that sometimes the canvas texture was revealed, as, for instance, on the side of the face to the left of the chin. The lines of the hair and the rest of the features were also drawn in with this instrument, sometimes lightly, as on the chin and spectacles, or deeply, as in the neck and shoulders, breaking through to the first thick impasto. A very thin mixture of 'apricot' paint and turpentine was then brushed over the face so that it ran into the gutters made by the ploughed lines, and stained the face with a warm glaze. Some of the original light paint of the face which was outside these boundaries was then blacked over. Finally, using a fine lettering brush the lines were enhanced with the addition of crimson, yellow ochre, black and white, in particular drawn into the trenches of the teeth, hair, nose and bow tie. These colors were used in a broader way in the earlier preparation of the surface, and thus the head and background appear unified visually.
The title of the work is, as usual with Dubuffet, an important final contribution. The result, in the case of Dhotel nuancé d'abricot, creates a humorous tension between what the viewer anticipated by the rather poetic description and what is actually confronted in the finished work with its primitive, earthy textures and skull-like gaze.
