Always in search of original creativity and new experimentation, Jean Dubuffet attaches essential importance to materials in his work: “Art must be born of the material and the tool, and must keep a trace of the tool and the tool's struggle with the material. Man must speak, but so must the tool and the material".

Jean Dubuffet is one of the great pioneers of assemblage art. The artist created the technique of assemblage d'empreintes in the early 50s, when he began to create collages from a variety of materials. Using objects or textures of all kinds: earth, sand, stones, debris, plants, etc., the artist creates, according to his inspiration, Indian ink prints on paper, which he arbitrarily cuts into fragments of all shapes and sizes, assembling and gluing them together. 

Chien errant, from 1957, is a highly complex work of vast dimensions, belonging to the famous series of assemblages of prints. It is made from around fifty pieces of paper, inked, cut and glued, sometimes in superimposed layers.
In this way, Chien errant emerges from a relatively arbitrary trial-and-error process, from cut-out parcels, from a play of shapes and stains born of the chance of ink infusing and diffusing itself on the paper. At first glance, the barely-identified shapes slip away, as if the result of assembly had been to blend them together, so that each takes on some of the properties of the other. The dog at the center of the composition is almost lost in the landscape, but remains highly identifiable, as Dubuffet has taken care to surround it with paper cut-outs and collages painted deep black, just like its shaggy coat. At the very top of the work, an irregular horizontal band of shaded black stands out, evoking a night sky on the summit of a mineral landscape. It provides minimal structure to the composition, giving the viewer a spatial cue.

The animal (cow, dog, etc.) in a landscape is a theme that Dubuffet developed extensively. In the same year, 1957, Dubuffet produced another large assemblage of prints, also with a canine subject, Le Chien du Hasard; this work was donated by the artist in 1968 to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and has been part of the museum's permanent collection ever since. 

Jean DUBUFFET
Le Chien du Hasard, 1957 
Assemblage of prints, Indian ink on paper
67 x 124 cm
Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD) collection, Paris, Inv. 41531
(Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jean Dubuffet, 1968) 

Supervielle's poem Le Chien seems to resonate with our work:

LE CHIEN
I am a stray dog
And I know no more,
But here comes this voice,
Falling on me,
A poet's voice
Who wanted to choose me
To celebrate me a little,
I, who can say nothing,
And have only a bark
To clear up a little
The mists and the voice.
I don't want to come out
From my darkness,
I don't want to know anything
Of a head inhabited
By words descended
From some out-of-the-way place.
I'm a stray dog
Ask no more.
(Jules Supervielle)