Given (Donnée)

The Non-Places were Dubuffet’s last fully developed body of work before his death in 1985. This series, which includes a number of paintings titled Given, are in many ways an extension of the Sights works, though they push even further into the domain of philosophical skepticism. With this final series, Dubuffet hoped to challenge the distinctions between being and non-being and between reality and imagination. Dubuffet saw a freedom in breaking down these divisions. Without them, he believed, existence would be full of new possibilities. Accordingly, to the artist, the Non-Places represented a “void full of potential fantasies of existence.” That void is suggested in the black backgrounds used throughout the series.

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