Comings and goings - Jean Dubuffet

A striking example of Jean Dubuffet's Hourloupe series, featuring a dense, interlocking network of red, blue, and black forms.

Comings and goings is a characteristic example of Jean Dubuffet's Hourloupe cycle, a series he began in 1962 that occupied his creative output for over a decade. The work features a dense, interlocking network of cellular shapes defined by bold, black outlines. Within these compartments, Dubuffet employs a restricted palette of red, blue, and white, often using parallel hatching to create texture and visual rhythm across the surface. Dubuffet developed the Hourloupe style through a series of automatic drawings, which he later translated into paintings and sculptures. The aesthetic rejects traditional perspective, opting instead for a flattened, all-over composition where the figure and ground merge into a single, continuous puzzle. The title suggests a sense of movement and flux, reflecting the artist's interest in the fluid nature of perception. By limiting his visual vocabulary to these specific colours and line weights, Dubuffet forces the viewer to engage with the structural logic of the image rather than any representational subject matter. This piece demonstrates the artist's rejection of conventional fine art techniques in favour of a more raw, immediate mode of expression. The repetitive, almost mechanical application of line and colour creates a hypnotic effect, drawing the eye across the canvas in a constant state of motion. As a key figure in the development of Art Brut, Dubuffet sought to bypass cultural conditioning, aiming for a form of visual communication that felt primal and unmediated. The Hourloupe series remains one of his most recognisable contributions to twentieth-century art, bridging the gap between painting and graphic design through its rigorous, self-imposed constraints.