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.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a deep appreciation for the simplicity and vastness of natural landscapes, emphasizing that true love often lies in what is overlooked.
Jean Dubuffet's quote reflects on the profound connection between love and the unnoticed aspects of our surroundings. It suggests that the genuine essence of beauty lies in vast, untouched landscapes where nothing intrudes upon the natural flow. By appreciating the simple, expansive spaces of the world—like deserts and seas—we can find a sense of calm and continuity that nurtures our existence. This recognition of the unnoticed elements encourages a deeper love for nature and the tranquility it embodies.
In practice
This quote can be used in an art presentation to emphasize the beauty of natural landscapes.
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.
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.
Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
I think of myself in the oral tradition-as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, _x000D_ the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered-_x000D_ as a storyteller. A good storyteller.
There are things that I refuse to deal with except through my music... because I don't trust humanity that much, and I don't know if I trust me that much. But I trust the songs.
When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.
There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.
I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.
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