Jean Dubuffet Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Real, Patterns

  34 Copy quote

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

  Jean Dubuffet

  Funny, Mean, Creativity

  69 Copy quote

• Art is a language, an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of communication.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Communication, Language

  Jean Dubuffet (1983). “Jean Dubuffet: Two Decades, 1943-1962 : November 1 - December 31, 1983”

  56 Copy quote

• There is no art without intoxication. But I mean a mad intoxication! Let reason teeter! Delirium! The highest degree of delirium! Plunged in burning dementia! Art is the most enrapturing orgy within man's reach.. Art must make you laugh a little and make you a little afraid. Anything as long as it doesn't bore.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Mean, Men

  Jean Dubuffet, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1993). “Jean Dubuffet 1943-1963: paintings, sculptures, assemblages : an exhibition”, Smithsonian Inst Pr

  70 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Strong, Men

  "Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews". Book by Fabrice Hergott, p. 14, 2006.

  29 Copy quote

• Normal means lack of imagination and creativity.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Creativity, Mean, Imagination

  19 Copy quote

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

  Jean Dubuffet

  Believe, Passion, Mean

  Jean Dubuffet (1974). “Dubuffet: Paintings, Drawings, Gouaches 1946-1966 ; March, 1974, Donald Morris Gallery”

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Children, Ambition

  36 Copy quote

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

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Laughing, Long

  Jean Dubuffet, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1993). “Jean Dubuffet 1943-1963: paintings, sculptures, assemblages : an exhibition”, Smithsonian Inst Pr

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Depth, Normal

  "Prospectus et tous écrits suivants". Book by Jean Dubuffet, Vol. II, pp. 203-204, 1967.

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Goodbye, Farewell, Long

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Eye, Mind

  Jean Dubuffet (1974). “Dubuffet: Paintings, Drawings, Gouaches 1946-1966 ; March, 1974, Donald Morris Gallery”

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Running, Art, Sleep

  23 Copy quote

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

  Jean Dubuffet

  Dance, Dancing, Lasts

  40 Copy quote

• Art should be born from the materials.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Born, Should

  Jean Dubuffet, Mildred Glimcher (1987). “Jean Dubuffet”, Abbeville Press

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Unexpected, Surprise

  Jean Dubuffet, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1993). “Jean Dubuffet 1943-1963: paintings, sculptures, assemblages : an exhibition”, Smithsonian Inst Pr

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  Doe, Culture, Common

  "Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Vol. II". Book by Jean Dubuffet, p. 94, 1967.

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Beauty, Men, Dirt

  12 Copy quote

• Art is the most frenzied orgy man is capable of.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Men, Art Is

  17 Copy quote

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

  Jean Dubuffet

  Camels, Want, Limits

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Mistake, People, Rehabilitation

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

  Jean Dubuffet

  Ideas, Moments, Stage

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• 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

  Numbers, Effort, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• I do not see in what way the face of a man should be a less interesting landscape than any other. A man, the physical person of a man, is a little world, like any other a country, with its towns, and suburbs.. ..As a rule what is needed in a portrait is a great deal of the general, and very little of the particular.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Country, Men, Interesting

  "Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, Vol. II". Book by Jean Dubuffet, p. 63-73, 1967.

  15 Copy quote

• I want my street to be crazy, I want my avenues, shops and buildings, to enter into a crazy dance, and this is why I deform and distort their outlines and colours. However I always come up against the same difficulty, that if all the elements were one by one deformed and distorted excessively, if in the end nothing remained of their real outlines, I would have totally effaced the location that I intended to suggest, that I wished to transform.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Crazy, Real, Elements

  "Prospectus et tous écrits suivants". Book by Jean Dubuffet, Vol. II, p. 483, 1967.

  7 Copy quote

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