Writings and correspondence: 1961-1985

This dossier comprises a selection of the correspondence between Hubert Damisch and Jean Dubuffet as well as six essays written by Damisch on Dubuffet between 1962 and 1985. Both the correspondence and texts are here published in English for the first time. “Jean Dubuffet and the Awakening of Images” (1962), Damisch's second article on Dubuffet, discusses the relationship between material object and idea, or painting and image, in Dubuffet's art since the 1940s. “Work, Art, Artwork” (1962) examines Dubuffet's return to figuration following his abstract works of the late 1950s. “Paris Circus” (1962) is an extended review of the recently completed series Paris Circus, and “Second Method” (1964) investigates Dubuffet's cycle of the Hourloupe in the light of questions of perception present in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Eye and The Mind. “DUBUFFET (Jean)” (1969) was written as an entry of the Encyclopedia Universalis. The final essay, “Starting Ground” (1985), was written at the time of the artist's death. It evokes, among other themes, contemporaneity and posterity and Dubuffet's complicated embrace of an artistic career. This essay lays the ground for subsequent texts by Damisch on Dubuffet. The correspondence, which is interspersed amidst the writings, is complete save for a few technical letters concerning the editing of Dubuffet's writings by Damisch in 1967. Damisch himself defines it as “work correspondence.” In these letters, artist and writer debate specific terms, discuss the artist's work and the writer's essays, and provide a glimpse of their complex personal relations.