Psychologie de l'art : Le musée imaginaire

First edition, no deluxe issues published.
Richly illustrated.
A momentous presentation copy, signed and inscribed by André Malraux: "For Jean Dubuffet - who will not agree but who may console himself with the pictures! André Malraux. Dec. 1947." (Pour Jean Dubuffet - qui ne sera pas d'accord mais qui pourra se consoler avec les images ! André Malraux. Déc. 1947.)

This highly interesting inscription by Malraux acts as a perfect demonstration of their differing views on the subject of art:

"In 1947, as Malraux published, with Editions Albert Skira, the first essay of his Psychologie de l'art entitled Le Musée imaginaire [of which the present copy is the first edition], Jean Dubuffet and several associates inaugurated the Foyer de l'Art Brut in the basement of the Galerie René Drouin, place Vendôme in Paris. The two were acquainted and both drew on photographic documentation to assert their respective conceptions of art. But against Malraux's globalising and inclusive aim, which erected the abstract notion of 'style' as the common denominator of humanity's works of art, Dubuffet substituted the specificity of an 'art brut', positioned partly 'against' the museum, whose definition he refined through a vast campaign of prospecting and documentation. A construction in which photographic reproduction plays an essential role," recalls Baptiste Brun in his essay "Le Musée imaginaire de Jean Dubuffet? Réflexions sur la documentation photographique dans les archives de la Collection de l'Art Brut" (Cahiers de l'École du Louvre, 2012, no. 1).

These simultaneous events remained present in the writer's memory for a long time. At the inauguration of the Dubuffet donation to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1967, "the minister [Malraux] is said to have told the painter: 'Do you know that art brut was born at the same time as the Musée imaginaire?...'" (Le Monde, 15 September 1967).

A superb copy of a foundational text by Malraux, who offers his conception of art to the iconoclastic Dubuffet with this inscription tinged with humour: "Although his conception differs considerably from the unequivocal admiration Malraux professed for the entire body of works in the Musée imaginaire, [Dubuffet] drew upon its fringes to develop what he would call Art Brut from August 1945 onward. A project that still belongs to modernity." (Baptiste Brun, ibid.)