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Highlights on view at
\nMAZE Art Gstaad
\n14–16 February
\nFestival-Zelt Gstaad
\n3780 Saanen, Switzerland
\n
\nView Conditions of Sale >
\n

\n","auctionDetailsSmall","London Auction 6 March 2025","extraInfo","

Charlotte Gibbs
\nSpecialist, Head of Evening Sale
\n+44 7393 141 144
\nCGibbs@phillips.com
\n

\n\n

Olivia Thornton
\nHead of Modern & Contemporary Art, Europe
\n+44 20 7318 4099
\nothornton@phillips.com
\n

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Jean Dubuffet, Arabe au désert, 1950. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London.

\n\n

1. Like a fine wine, nuance matters

\n\n

Known for beginning his art career in earnest at the age of 41, Dubuffet did in fact train as a painter in his younger years. He began his studies at the age of 17 at the Académie Julian before setting his practice aside and becoming a wine merchant in his family’s successful business. Art was always calling, however, and he created works off-and-on in his 30s before fully immersing himself in a groundbreaking and prolific practice that sought to liberate creativity from the prevailing bourgeois notions of so-called “good taste.”

\n\n

\n\n

Jean Dubuffet, Donnée, 1984. Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale London.

\n\n

2. Art Brut is anything but dry

\n\n

Dubuffet found inspiration in everyday life and experiences in Paris, from the people he saw on the metro to the colloquial rhythms of the city. It was a wellspring he shared with a friend, fellow Le Havre native and admirer of all things experimental, the French poet and novelist Raymond Queneau. Dubuffet looked to the creative impulses across all walks of life, finding an aesthetic lexicon in supposedly low culture.

\n\n

\n\n

Jean Dubuffet in El Goléa (El Menia), 1948. Image: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025

\n\n

3. The established, the Avant-Garde, and Dubuffet in-between

\n\n

Dubuffet held a unique position within the 20th-century Parisian art and culture scene, and he was friends with just about anyone you can name from the era. His departure in style from those he was associated with made him a standout artist in New York and he had frequent gallery shows in the city. Dubuffet proved to be an influential figure in this cultural-artistic exchange between Paris and New York, old and new.

\n\n

\n\n

Jean Dubuffet, Animation parcellaire, 1979. Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York.

\n\n

4. He was an Outsider’s Insider

\n\n

Dubuffet was a real champion of Art Brut, seeking diverse sources for his project to establish a movement outside of the traditional spheres of art — from children to inmates, hospital patients, hobbyists, and more. Fascinated with the margins of society, his writing also employed a deeply analytic style, showcasing a side of Dubuffet that was as scholarly as it was vernacular and providing insights into his approach to visual art.

\n\n

\n\n

Jean Dubuffet, Tête de héros, 1950. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London.

\n\n

5. Material differences

\n\n

Where Dubuffet’s early works employed traditional materials like oil and canvas, his practice developed with the conceptual range of Art Brut. He branched out into found materials, including polystyrene, asphalt scrapings, and more. His signature impasto was often made thicker by sand or straw stalks, as seen above in Tête de héros, executed with oil and sand on Masonite. This approach extended into other mediums that the artist explored as well, working with sculpture (Jardin d'émail, 1974), music (collaborating with Jasun Martz), and public monuments (Group of Four Trees, 1972).

\n\n

6. Becoming the city

\n\n

In his later years, Dubuffet’s works reflected the public he drew inspiration from. His sculptures became a worldwide experiment in spontaneity, verticality, and improvisation — concepts that brought the city to his work and his work to the city.

\n\n

\n\n

Jean Dubuffet, Corps de dame, jardin fleuri (Lady's Body, Flower Garden), 1950, The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Artwork: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025

\n\n

7. A lasting influence in his own time

\n\n

Throughout his life, Dubuffet was associated with countless movements and cultural touchpoints. He found kindred relationships with artists whose practices laid the foundations for the next generation of outsiders who found a home in the mainstream. Artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Charles McGee, and Keith Haring brought Dubuffet’s essence to their own developments.

\n\n

Discover More from Modern & Contemporary Art >

\n\n

Recommended Reading

\n\n

How Lee Jaffe Ended Up in Thailand with Basquiat >

\n\n

By Way of Jean Dubuffet >

\n\n

\n","publishDate","2025-02-26T20:23:29.000000Z","authorCredit","Jesse Limbacher","coverPosX",50,"coverPosY",0,"articleUrl","https://www.phillips.com/article/155572529/seven-things-you-didnt-know-about-jean-dubuffet","displayOrder","auctionEditorialID",2377,"editorialID",4829,"flocklerID",155572529,"https://flockler.com/thumbs/sites/889/lj-with-jmb-ac89e47a-96c8-43ab-8e45-669f80703541_s600x0.jpg","Jaffe shares stories and photographs of the trip that led to Basquiat's 1984 work 'Pattya' — on offer in our Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London.","How Lee Jaffe Ended Up in Thailand with Basquiat","

Lee Jaffe and Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.

\n\n

In 1983, the interdisciplinary artist, musician, poet, and filmmaker Lee Jaffe took a spontaneous trip through Japan, Thailand, and Switzerland with Jean-Michel Basquiat, documenting the unforgettable experience with his camera. Bonding over their shared love of art and reggae music along the way, the trip was pivotal for both of them.

\n\n

In 1984, Basquiat executed Pattya, a deeply personal reflection on the globe-trotting tour, on offer in our upcoming Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London. Jaffe has comprehensively shared stories and images from this trip in his book Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads. Here, he offers us a glimpse into this remarkable journey of discovery and how he felt when Basquiat first showed him the work.

\n\n

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pattya, 1984. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London.

\n\n

PHILLIPS: How did you come to meet Jean-Michel Basquiat and decide to take this trip together?

\n\n

LEE JAFFE: I met Jean-Michel at the opening of an exhibition of the work of sculptor Italo Scanga at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1983. Italo had been my professor in college and became a lifelong friend and collaborator. He was eager for us to meet, as he felt we had similar artistic sensibilities. In particular, the socio-political concerns prominent in our work, as well as the integration of words within our visual practice — something I had begun as a student in the late ’60s.

\n\n

The art dealer Fred Hoffman, who I knew, was there. He was working with Jean-Michel at the time publishing prints, and kindly introduced us. I was excited for the introduction as I had seen the exhibition at Annina Nosei Gallery in New York the year before and it had made a powerful impression on me. A great fan of Jamaican music, Jean-Michel was aware of my work with Bob Marley and told me that he had worn out the grooves of Legalize It, the album I produced with Peter Tosh. He told me that the airline Pan Am was running a special “’round-the-world” first-class ticket for $4,400 dollars, and he had a trip planned, so why not come along?

\n\n

\n\n

Bangkok, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.

\n\n

P: Once you arrived in Bangkok from Japan, how did the two of you decide to travel to Pattaya?

\n\n

LJ: It was the first trip to Thailand for both of us. We knew no one. Leaving the airport in Bangkok — humid, hot, and sticky — we grabbed a taxi. In the early ’80s in New York, Thai herb had become prevalent and was the best cannabis around. We were eager to find and sample. In Japan, we hadn’t bothered searching for something to smoke, believing it would be a quixotic endeavor... We asked our driver if he could help, and he emphatically answered “yes,” eager to make some extra money. We drove around Bangkok in the aircondition-less cab, cab, sweltry and muggy, immersed in raucous traffic jams and interminable honking, still not checked into a hotel after a seven-hour flight. The drive began to seem much too long.

\n\n

\n\n

Jean-Michel Basquiat in Thailand, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.

\n\n

LJ: Finally, we parked, and the driver guided us through a tiny, rancid-smelling alley. It felt dangerous and not right at all — like the opening of the Jamaican movie The Harder They Come, when the hero, played by Jimmy Cliff, arrives by bus in Kingston — the big city — as a naive country boy and immediately gets his baggage stolen. The driver knocked on a door, and a thuggish, scowling bouncer walked us into a club. It was one of the most indelible and depressing scenes — etched like a grim, sordid nightmare in my memory. The club was dimly lit. There was a stage — like a bandstand — but there was no band. About twenty girls with signs hanging around their necks with bold numbers printed on them were spotlighted. Two girls were lying down with cigars ensconced in their genitals, puffing smoke curling above their naked torsos. Shocked and disgusted, we turned around and exited, furious at the driver. The next day we wanted to get out of Bangkok as quickly as possible — anxious to put the experience behind us. When we asked the front desk guy where we could find a beach, he replied, “Go to Pattaya.”

\n\n

\n\n

The beach in Pattaya, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.

\n\n

LJ: Driving on the outskirts of Bangkok, we noticed a giant billboard along the road advertising the movie The Deer Hunter. It was an image of Robert De Niro holding a gun to his head — a still from the iconic Russian roulette scene with De Niro and Christopher Walken. It felt like that movie must have been playing interminably, as it had been released in New York five years earlier. How ironic that this powerful and tragic movie — so brilliant in so many ways yet so easily interpreted as Orientalist — would be so popular in Thailand. The two-hour drive was a welcome escape, but when we arrived, we discovered it was a national holiday and all the hotels were booked. Worse, there was a US Navy destroyer anchored a couple hundred yards offshore, and hundreds of sailors in uniform mingled with the tourists along the crowded beach. It felt like a scene from Apocalypse Now. We asked around and managed to buy some herb, when someone told us we could take a small boat to a little island an hour or so off the mainland. The island had a small fishing village devoid of tourists, and the people were extremely kind to us and so unpretentious. We drank coconuts and smoked spliffs. City life seemed a galaxy away.

\n\n

\n\n

Thailand billboard, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.

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P: What do you remember of the conversations the two of you had on this trip?

\n\n

LJ: There were many conversations about Jamaica and what it was like living with Bob Marley and working with Peter Tosh. Of course, JMB’s work is so much about class and colonialism and deconstructing race theory, as was Marley’s and Tosh’s. He knew of the assassination attempt on Bob’s life and that both he and Rita Marley had survived being shot in the house I had been living in for three years. “Weren’t you scared living there?” He asked me. And I laughed, “No. I was too naïve.” I explained that although I knew about the political violence, it was largely confined to the underserved neighborhoods of West Kingston. The house we were living in was uptown — Bob was bringing the Dread uptown where previously dreadlocks Rastas had been forbidden — and also, I thought, because we were artists, we were immune — especially being with Bob who was truly revered amongst the “sufferer” class and so much the voice of the people. Of course, I was wrong.

\n\n

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Jean-Michel Basquiat in Thailand, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.

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LJ: And we talked about art. He had recently seen the Turner Slave Ship at The Museum of Fine Art Boston and drew the parallel with the powerful album cover for Bob Marley’s Survival — designed by the Wailers’ brilliant artistic director Neville Garrick — that incorporated an actual 19th century diagram of the packing of a slave boat which was probably the first time that had ever been used in an art context. And he talked about how the Turner painting subverted the Renaissance perspective, which was so entrenched in the roots of colonialism.

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Photograph by Lee Jaffe, 1983. Image: © Lee Jaffe.

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P: Looking back today, what are your thoughts or feelings about this work? Did Basquiat ever speak to you about it?

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LJ: When he showed it to me, I was really thrilled as it transported me to our trip from the beach town — Pattaya — and to our exodus aboard a tiny boat to the little island. And I was glad and inwardly gloating that our trip had been an inspiration for such an incredible work. I felt in some small way I was part of it, and at the same time, it made me feel envious of how he could condense so many levels of meaning into so few brushstrokes and overwhelmingly his use of negative space — of nothingness — to conjure the enormity of the sea. It was Melville and Turner and Gauguin all rolled into one, and I was in awe.

\n\n

Discover More from Modern & Contemporary Art >

\n\n

Recommended Reading

\n\n

Basquiat Around the World: St. Moritz >

\n\n

Seven Things You Didn't Know About Jean Dubuffet >

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“Perhaps it was the time I spent in the deserts of White Africa that sharpened my taste […] for the little, the almost nothing, and, especially, in my art, for the landscapes where one finds only the formless.”
\n—Jean Dubuffet

\n\n

A pivotal work within Jean Dubuffet’s early oeuvre, Arabe au désert, 1948 marks a decisive moment when the artist's practice shifted toward raw materiality and a bold departure from European artistic conventions. Painted shortly after his second trip to the Algerian Sahara, this oil on canvas is one of only eighteen works Dubuffet produced during a concentrated burst of creativity in Paris between May and June of 1948.ⁱ Of these, only twelve directly reflect his experiences in the North African wilderness, while the remaining six belong to a sub-series of portraits titled Grandes têtes. The rarity of Arabe au désert is underscored by the fact that paintings from this exclusive group of Saharan oils are held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Staattiche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe in Germany. Moreover, the painting stands apart for its exceptional provenance: it has remained in private ownership since it was acquired directly from Dubuffet by Édouard Bret, the brother of the artist’s first wife, Paulette Bret. Beyond his familial connection, Édouard was the director of the Dubuffet family’s wine and spirits business, where the artist worked before fully committing to his art practice in the 1940s. Since Bret’s passing in 1982, the painting has remained within the family collection, untouched by public exhibition. Having never been exhibited publicly and held privately for over seventy years, Arabe au désert offers a rare and compelling glimpse into a transformative period in Dubuffet’s career, when his artistic philosophy evolved in response to the austere landscapes and timeless culture of the desert.

\n\n

\"\" — Jean Dubuffet in El Goléa (El Menia), 1948. Image: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025

\n\n

Arabe au désert forms part of Dubuffet’s broader cycle of Sahara-inspired works, collectively known as Roses d’Allah, Clowns du Désert (‘Sons of Allah, Clowns of Islam’), produced between his first visit to Algeria in February 1947 and his final trip in March 1949. The evocative title, conceived by French Surrealist poet Georges Limbour for a proposed exhibition at Galerie R. Drouin around 1953 that never took place, captures Dubuffet’s fascination with the elemental forces of the desert and the figurative visual language of its Bedouin inhabitants.ⁱⁱ This cycle, also includes a range of works created in situ—including drawings and gouaches—is represented in prestigious institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago and The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., highlighting the enduring significance of this period within Dubuffet’s oeuvre.

\n\n

The Sahara as a Catalyst for Transformation

\n\n

Dubuffet’s fascination with the Sahara began in 1947, driven by a need to escape the hardships of post-war Paris, where a severe coal shortage had made winter conditions nearly unbearable. Together with his second wife, Emilie ‘Lili’ Carlu, Dubuffet traveled to the dunes of Algeria in search of warmth and respite, but the journey quickly evolved into a transformative artistic pilgrimage. The artist immersed himself in Bedouin culture, living among the nomadic tribes for several months in relative isolation, learning Arabic, and adapting to the customs of desert life. For Dubuffet, the oases of El Goléa, Beni-Abbes, and Timimoun offered ‘a bath of simplicity.’ⁱⁱⁱ Writing to Jacques Berne, he described how he returned from his excursion ‘absolutely cleansed of all the intoxications, really refreshed and renewed, as well as enriched in the ways of savoir-vivre.’^iv

\n\n

\"\" — Henri Matisse, *The Moroccans*, Issy-les-Moulineaux, late 1915 and fall 1916. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image: The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

\n\n

Unlike his predecessors—Eugène Delacroix, Henri Matisse, and Auguste Renoir—who had also spent time in the Maghreb region and approached their novel environs through a romanticised and exotic lens, Dubuffet was driven by a desire to strip away the constructed narratives of Orientalism. Instead, he sought to experience the raw, unmediated reality of the desert and its people. The barren, uncompromising landscape of the Sahara offered Dubuffet an escape from the stifling traditions of Western art, which he viewed as burdened by affected heroics and cultural inhibitions. The simplicity and austerity of the unmarked sands, in conjunction with his imposed solitude and deliberate immersion, inspired a new visual language, one that rejected the traditional artistic values of perspective, realism, and idealized beauty. As Dubuffet himself noted, ‘Perhaps it was the time I spent in the deserts of White Africa that sharpened my taste […] for the little, the almost nothing, and especially, in my art, for the landscapes where one finds only the formless.’^v

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“Dubuffet's observation of life in the remoteness of the desert, a life that follows its own rhythm of everyday activities and routines, was given expression in pictures… Observing the real-life situations, [he] entered into their spirit with sympathetic appreciation and then transposed them into his own personal idiom.”
\n—Andreas Franzke

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Materiality and Technique

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Arabe au désert is a masterful example of Dubuffet’s early experimentation with texture, a hallmark of his mature work. The painting’s surface is dominated by thick impasto, into which the artist used a palette knife to incise a rugged, tactile topography—a negative relief outlining a man and a smaller figure, possibly a child, in a sunbaked landscape of sand and palm trees. This technique embodies Dubuffet’s broader artistic philosophy of challenging the conventional hierarchy between surface and form. Rather than creating an illusionistic space with depth and perspective, he emphasizes the material presence of the paint itself, allowing the figures to appear both embedded in and emerging from the landscape. Indeed, the composition’s tactility serves as a physical testament to the artist’s assertion that ‘Mud, waste and dirt, which are man's companion throughout his life, should they not be his most treasured possession and is it not a service to him to remind him of their beauty?’^vi

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\"\" — [Left] Paul Klee, *Printed Sheet with Picture*, 1937. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
\n[Right] 5th century Roman fresco. Catacombs of San Gennaro, Naples, Campania, Italy. Image: DeAgostini Picture Library/Scala, Florence

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The painting’s earthy palette—featuring shades of ochre, umber, and rich sandy browns—further enhances its connection to the desert. Dubuffet employs colour not to depict reality but to evoke the arid, desolate essence of the Sahara. The scene possesses the spontaneity of a quick sketch made on-site, while the high horizon line, pushed almost to the top edge of the canvas, compresses the pictorial space and creates a sense of boundless, ever-shifting vastness. Rejecting European traditions, Dubuffet draws instead on non-Western and pre-modern artistic practices. Consistent with his Art Brut sensibilities, the flattened perspective and abstracted, almost primitive figuration within Arabe au désert evoke his interest in the pictographic style of children’s art while recalling ancient art forms—such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, cave paintings, and Roman frescoes—as well as contemporary influences like the spontaneous aesthetics and ephemeral nature of graffiti.

\n\n

“Man writes on the sand. This suits me well; effacement doesn’t bother me. When the tide goes out, I begin again.”
\n—Jean Dubuffet

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Critic Peter Schjeldahl captured this raw quality in Dubuffet’s desert works, noting how the artist ‘wrecks the conventions of exoticism by subjecting them to eruptions of the primal, levelling energy that informs all his art."^vii This ‘levelling energy’ is palpable in the present composition, where the landscape and figures are treated with equal emphasis, blurring the boundaries between the natural world and human presence. The painting’s textured surface and gestural marks evoke the unpredictability of the desert, offering a physical and sensory reflection of Dubuffet’s conceptual shift away from Western aesthetic norms. Anticipating the nearly abstract Texturologie and Matériologie series of the 1950s—where Dubuffet would push the expressive potential of surface and texture to new heights—Arabe au désert stands as a powerful early expression of these ideas, deeply rooted in the artist’s firsthand experiences of untouched wilderness.

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Collector’s Digest

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\n\t
Painted shortly after his second trip to the Algerian Sahara, Arabe au désert is an important early work by Art Brut proponent Jean Dubuffet. Highly prized, it is one of only eighteen works Dubuffet produced between May and June of 1948, of which only twelve reflect on his time in North Africa. Testament to their significance, paintings from this exclusive group of Saharan oils are held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Staattiche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe in Germany
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Unseen in public for decades, Arabe au desert is presented with exceptional provenance, remaining in private ownership since it was acquired directly from Dubuffet by Édouard Bret, the brother of the artist’s first wife, Paulette Bret. Édouard had been the director of the Dubuffet family’s wine and spirits business, where the artist worked before fully committing to his art practice in the 1940s.
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Having never been exhibited publicly and held privately for over seventy years, Arabe au désert offers a rare and compelling glimpse into a transformative period in Dubuffet’s career, when his artistic philosophy evolved in response to the austere landscapes and timeless culture of the desert.
\n\t

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ⁱ Max Loreau, ed., Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fascicule IV: Roses d’Allah, Clowns du Désert (1947-1949), Lausanne, 1967, pp. 7-11.

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ⁱⁱ Max Loreau, ed., Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet, fascicule IV: Roses d’Allah, Clowns du Désert (1947-1949), Lausanne, 1967, pp. 7-11.

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ⁱⁱⁱ Jean Dubuffet, quoted in Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, vol. 2, Paris 1995, pp. 247-248

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^iv Jean Dubuffet, quoted in Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, vol. 2, Paris 1995, pp. 247-248

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^v Jean Dubuffet, quoted in Mildred Glimcher, Jean Dubuffet: Towards an Alternative Reality, New York, 1987, p. 9.

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^vi Jean Dubuffet, quoted in Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubuffet. Fascicule II: Mirobolus, Macadam et Cie, Paris, 1966, p. 13.

\n\n

^vii Peter Schjeldahl, “1942 and After: jean Dubuffet in His Century,” Jean Dubuffet 1943-1963: paintings, sculptures, assemblages: an exhibition, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. 17.

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22

Jean Dubuffet

Arabe au désert

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Jean Dubuffet