I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist…..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a shift from ambition to personal enjoyment in creating art, emphasizing the value of authenticity over conventional success.
In this quote, Jean Dubuffet expresses a personal transformation in his relationship with art. He describes a moment when he abandoned the pursuit of a conventional artistic career and the pressures tied to it. Instead, he finds joy in the simplicity and purity of children's art, realizing that his own creative fulfillment lies not in fitting into established artistic norms but in creating for personal pleasure. This conveys a powerful message about valuing personal expression over societal expectations.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing one's passion over societal norms.
The things we truly love, the things forming the basis and roots of our being, are generally things we never look at. A huge piece of carpeting, empty and naked plains, silent and uninterrupted stretches with nothing to alter the homogeneity of their continuity. I love wide, homogenous worlds, unstaked, unlimited like the sea, like high snows, deserts, and steppes.
In the name of what - except perhaps the coefficient of rarity - does man adorn himself with necklaces of shells and not spider's webs, with fox fur and not fox innards? In the name of what I don't know. Don't dirt, trash and filth, which are man's companions during his whole lifetime, deserve to be dearer to him and isn't it serving him well to remind him of their beauty?
Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.
Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.
Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.
Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.
Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.
Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.
I am always wandering around in enigmas. There are young people who constantly come to tell me: you, too, are making Op Art. I haven't the slightest idea what that is, Op Art. I've been doing this work for thirty years now.
Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter -- to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water.
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