Paint Boldly!: Dubuffet's DIY Manual*

In 1948, Jean Dubuffet wrote a thirty-one-page pamphlet entitled Peinturez hardi (Paint boldly!) for his unrealized Almanach de l'art brut. Divided into twelve monthly installments, this “treatise on the techniques of painting” reads like a how-to manual, presenting concise, straightforward guidelines for what materials to use and how to use them. As a practical guide for the amateur, it inventories and evaluates products on the market (much like an issue of Consumer Reports) and then offers more economical, do-it-yourself recipes for the “common man.” Drawing largely from the techniques and materials of house painting, Dubuffet aligns himself with the worker as opposed to the professional artist and insists upon art as labor. As yet unpublished, Peinturez hardi underscores materiality as absolutely central to Dubuffet's understanding of what art brut is and how it differentiates itself from arts culturels.