Buffet ou la psychanalyse en peinture

He is seen as one of the damned in French XXth century art: in spite of having been the prodigal son of the 1950s, of having impressed creators such as Warhol, he has become persona non grata. Aside from the one in 1993 at the musée Gustave-Courbet in Ornans or of «Buffet et la Bretagne» in Quimper in the Summer of 2007, there are very few retrospectives that honor him. As a slight tremor seems to be felt with a biography by Jean-Claude Lamy expected as well as an exhibition at the museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Brigitte Camus deciphers the artist’s taste for death, he who chose to leave with an airtight bag around his head on 4 October 1999. In parallel, the book hints at this phenomena of generalized rejection. As Eric Troncy says: «It is more disturbing to see today a painting by Bernard Buffet in an exhibition of contemporary art than to see a cow in Damien Hirst’s formol».

• Buffet ou la psychanalyse en peinture by Brigitte Camus, de l’Epure publishers, 2007, 70 p., 12 €, ISBN : 978-2-35255-048-8

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