Letter to Jean Dubuffet

The following extract from the letter was published in the exhibition catalog Jean Paulhan through his painters organized by André Berne-Joffroy

This probably unpublished letter obviously follows the famous Letter which served as a preface, during the Dubuffet exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin in October-November 1944.

...And how will it all end? I hardly dare say it (although I know it very well), but we are men, who face things. This will end with private collections, and Museums and lessons for young children (with instructions and deductions). We will say: 20th century French art shows, between Douanier Rousseau and Dubuffet (let's see, those are easy names to remember)... And obviously, this is a rather sad ending, and I easily understand why you refuse to consider it. And I already pity the students that Jouhandeau will refuse to take the bachot because they will have missed the parallel between Titian and Dubuffet. But finally, it is a sad truth that we can just as well, if it is our system which wants it, consider under its joyful face: it is an almost unimaginable thing, but if we apply ourselves, perhaps we would get a little closer to it - all the paintings which bore us in these Museums began by being something extremely funny and fanciful, which vomited up tradition and museums; and that after all it is not only in the 20th century that man explodes. It must have burst quite a few times already. It is even possible that what we call, in a rather unbearable way, the great painters, were people who, we don't really know why, because they had a more explosive nature, found themselves helping in this explosion. I see another advantage in this: it is that this way of seeing allows us not only to love the first comer, the brave man who passes in the street (without even suspecting, the Modest! that he passes in the street) but all the first comers from a hundred and a thousand years ago, and the town sergeants of the second empire and finally all those who, deep down, only had the mistake of dying a little too quickly (like all men, which it would be very unfair to reproach). You say very well that we should not blame (but on the contrary) the grocer on the corner of the street because he is only a grocer on the corner of the street. But we should not blame our grandfathers and great-grandfathers for this either. I know well that this leads to asking a serious question: how to walk through a museum without getting bored? There, I have no answer. But I think we should look and it's not a solution or it's too easy, to say: then let's knock the Museums to the ground! Ruskin had found a fascinating way (he said) of walking in the countryside: it was to make a small hole in a piece of cardboard with a pin and look at everything, meadows, trees, cows, through this hole. He added, among other things, that we finally see the true colors of things that are always fun (because God cannot have intended to be bored). There is surely a treatment of museums to be imagined, in the same sense (and also a fortune to be made by selling at the entrance the small device that one would have found: let's not neglect this side of the question).
My three Chinese, alas, are real - all three from the Yuan period. There was also the rice field painter Wen T'ong, who said: "I once studied the Tao, but I was never able to attain it, nor find peace of mind. So, what do you want? I paint rice fields and more rice fields and to express my anxiety with rice fields, I think I make them a little too big." These are comments of this kind that I gladly attribute to you. Although yours (of words) suffice very well (but we lend to the rich), and without even going as far as your own words, those which are obviously made by your characters and ludions. "Ah, they say, it's obvious that we are a little clumsy, and not quite finished, but (have you not felt it?) that is precisely where this slight nostalgia and unease comes from - which you have surely noticed. Ah! this It's not so easy to be a man (or close to it) and when you're a man, to ride a bicycle. Above all, don't insist! Because if you think about it, it becomes even more difficult and this time you are completely lost."
But, enough of that. I return to this delicious cake that I tasted earlier. And tender! out of habit (stupid), I started by soaking it (in your Bordeaux wine). It was a mistake. Ah, Lili also has her secrets. Goodbye dear Lili, dear Jean without whom - no, we would not completely die of hunger, but - there are so many exquisite things of which we would have lost even the idea. Goodbye, see you soon...