Jean Dubuffet

This double-page spread from the book La Lunette farcie (The Stuffed Lunette) offers immediate immersion into the fanciful, haphazard world of Dubuffet. He created the atmospheric abstractions by chance, experimenting with a variety of "accidental" happenings to produce textures on the lithographic plates, which might include indiscriminate scratching and the random exposure of the plates to fire, liquid, dirt, or other elements. Otherworldly images are surrounded by the artist's nonsensical ramblings that consist of French words arranged more by sound or look than by meaning. The unpunctuated writing, reproducing the artist's own stenciled words, is placed in different orientations around the pages, making the text even more problematic. The inane title is virtually untranslatable. Dubuffet's relaxed, playful attitude reflects his admiration for children's art, the art of the insane, and that of the untrained. He was among the first artists to appreciate "visionary" or "outsider" art, which he called l'art brut (rough art).
La Lunette farcie was one of several books Dubuffet made with the poet-publisher Benoit. This man, whimsical by nature, would send blank etching or lithographic plates to artists such as Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst to tempt them to make images for his innovative publications.