 |
| Jean DuBuffet |
Today was an unconventional day in the Art Room. Our kids learned about Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901-1985). Dubuffet disliked authority, conformism and mainstream culture. As a young man he disregarded art education, and himself dropped out of art school choosing instead to teach himself art. He was attracted to the art of children, the mentally ill and other outsiders. His art was identified as Art Brut, or Outsider Art or “raw”, “rough” art created outside the boundaries of official culture, by untrained, naïve, self-taught artist. Dubuffet's style accommodates notions of automatic or SPONTANEOUS drawing, often using a continuous line (the pen is never lifted from the paper) and seeks to tap directly into his subconscious. Dubuffet's "Hourloupe" style was developed from a chance doodle while he was on the telephone. The basis of it was a tangle of clean black lines that forms cells, which are filled with stripes of red, blue, white and black. This approach allowed Dubuffet to break away from objectivity and, he believed, to arrive at art in the purest form. Today we took on the Dubuffet challenge and LET GO of our art notions!
Jean Dubuffet would have been seriously pleased with these adorable and Dubuffet-inspired portraits, drawn without lifting our pen from the paper (using one continuous line). First we each practiced drawing a face from memory on the white board without lifting the pen off the board. This was a hard concept for the kids to grasp at first. They all lifted their pens off the board! After a few more practice rounds they finally got it. We then set off on our own white paper with black pen, and each looked at a fashion magazine portrait, which we loosely copied (notice the hair bun on the top of Daniel's girl's head). After drawing our face in one continuous line, we colored our faces in Dubuffet's favored colors copying his use of stripes (thick ones, thin ones, horizontal, vertical and slanted ones), and leaving white spaces for balance and 'visual rest'.
Art doesn't always have to be academic and rule-driven, and you don't need an art degree to make beautiful, famous art either! All art can be beautiful, even spontaneous art drawn with one long continuous line, even scribbles! That's what Dubuffet taught us. Here are our beautiful, spontaneous, raw and rough portraits, drawn without lifting our pen off the paper. Pen, marker, colored pencil and chalk pencil.
 |
| Kids 6-11 |
 |
| Kids 4-6 |
 |
| Kids 8-11 |
 |
| Daniel, 5 |
 |
| Zoe, 5 |
 |
| Eva, 5 |
 |
| Sif, 7 |
 |
| Vita, 10 |
