The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Figure from the "Legends" Series

Figure from the "Legends" Series

1962
(French, 1901–1985)
Sheet: 50 x 33.3 cm (19 11/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Location: not on view

Description

The obsessive repetition of forms and phantasmagoric polychrome apparitions in his Legends series in 1961–62 prefigured Dubuffet’s Hourloupe cycle that began in 1962 and occupied the artist for the next 12 years. While doodling at the telephone, Dubuffet created the cool, anonymous idiom he identified as the Hourloupe, in which the compositions consist of pockets of intense colors framed by firm black lines. The effect is of a jigsaw puzzle-like mosaic of tightly interlocking cellular forms. Dubuffet’s concern was not to show objects as they might appear in the world but completely flat expressions of the irrational or pre-logical mind. With his Hourloupes, Dubuffet effectively created his own distinct language: a world of fantasy and grotesque figures and shapes that belong only to him.
  • Mrs. Henry Blazy, New York, NY
    February 22, 1973
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • French Drawings from the Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 13, 1994-March 12, 1995).
    CMA, French Drawings from the Collection (Dec. 13, 1994-Mar. 12, 1995).
    Year in Review: 1977. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1977-January 22, 1978).
    CMA, The Year in Review for 1977 (Dec. 28, 1977-Jan. 22, 1978), cma Bulletin 65 (1978), p. 41 no. 101.
  • {{cite web|title=Figure from the "Legends" Series|url=false|author=Jean Dubuffet|year=1962|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1977.51