Dimensions: support: 975 x 1304 mm frame: 1021 x 1348 x 50 mm
Copyright: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2014 | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Jean Dubuffet's "Spinning Round," held here at the Tate, has such a primal energy. It feels almost…visceral, doesn't it? Editor: It does. Looking at the impasto, the raw application of paint, I'm struck by how deliberately Dubuffet seems to foreground the materiality of the work, the very act of its making. Curator: Exactly! It's like he's digging into something… fundamental. The crude figures, their almost cartoonish hats—it’s as if he's trying to touch the very essence of humanity, with all its chaos. Editor: And those figures, en masse… they appear almost like commodities, produced and consumed within some unnamed social system. I can almost hear the factory sounds and imagine the labor behind their rendering. Curator: Yes, there’s a tension between the individual and the mass. The painting feels unfinished, always vibrating with the potential for transformation. It’s a glimpse into a world perpetually in flux, forever spinning. Editor: And for me, that rawness underscores the social commentary. It reminds us that art is never separate from the material conditions of its creation.
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This work belongs to a series called ‘Paris Circus’, which reflect the excitement of Dubuffet’s return to the city after living in the countryside for seven years. In the intervening period, he had attempted to remove all human presence, including his own, from his work. The new Paris pictures, by contrast, were teeming with humanity. Dubuffet wrote: ‘The presence in them of the painter now is constant, even exaggerated. They are full of personages, and this time their role is played with spirit'. Gallery label, April 2004
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