Jean Dubuffet

“The more banal a thing is, the more pregnant it is with wonder.”

“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.”

“Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.”

“Beauty is a convention, a currency, and I have no use for it.”

“What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.”

“There is no art without intoxication. But I mean a mad intoxication! Let reason teeter! Delirium!”

“Art should be born from the materials.”

“Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes. It has always been considered in this way by primitive peoples, and they are right.”

“The true art is where no one is waiting for it.”

“Culture is a crust accumulated over the centuries over the spirit of man.”

“A work of art is a story, a fable, a myth. I want to tell it without saying a word.”

“I would like people to see my work as a enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values.”