Queensland Art Gallery Presscuttings Book 10 : Record of press coverage, March 1982 - May 1984

•' ,r 8 April 1984 Arts and Leisure , .~ ?""· • Major European workfor gllllery The Queensland A rt Gallery s new acquisition . . . Le Bivouac ( l 976) by le.an Dubujfet. acrylic on paper,collaged onto· canvas, 141.6 x 203.8 cm. . ;nubuffet: 'raw art' I The Queensland Art Gallery has purchased a major contem- porary European painting - le Bivouac (I 976) by modern master Jean Dubuffet. Dubuffet is described by the gallery's director, Raoul Mellish, as "one of Europe's foremost living artists, (who) at 82 years of age has attained a unique place in the history of 20th century art." His name is associated with the tenn alf!,brut (raw an). a ·phrase coined by the artist for works produced by those he referred to as being "free from artistic culture" - patients in psychiatric hospitals, pri· soners, solitaries and other un• ' trained amateurs standing outside the established art world. Such works, Dubuffet con• tended, arise spontaneously from the creator's un– conscious and . unlike more conventionally accepted an , do not derive from artistic stereotypes. They give evidence of the creative power and originality which all people possess. but which is generally repressed by "education" and the pressures of social conformity . It is. he has said, "art spring– ing from pure invention and in no way based. as cultural art constantly is, on chameleon or parrot-like pro– cesses." In the 1940s Dubuffet began a collection of hundreds of crude pictures painted by children. fortune tellers, schizophrenics and others out– side the pale of professional art and these he later plaj:ed on exhibition in Paris. Since then he has continued to integrate art bn11 with his own work . Le Bivouac. which is said to be typical of Dubuffet's recent work , belongs to a series from which both the Tate Gallery in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris have recently acquired pain– tings. It comprises 30 paper com– ponents, painted with acrylic paint and collaged onto a linen-backed canvas. These components reflect the faux naif character of the artist's earlier work and the painting as a whole has a wide ran$e o't'colour and a corn· positional freedom afforded by the collage technique. The striking subject of the work and its large dimensions (141 .6 cm x 203.8 cml make it an impressive addition 10.. the !X)ntemporary collectiolf . of the galfefy, where it is now on display.