DUBUFFET Jean (1901 - 1985) L.A.S. "Jean Dubuffet" and L.S. "Jean Dubuffet" with 7 autographed lines, 1948-1949, to Joe BOUSQUET; 4 pages in-8 and 2 pages in-8. El Goléa February 28 [1948]. He has left Paris, "driven out by the cold". He thanks Bousquet for the stories dedicated to him [in Le fruit dont l'ombre est la saveur]: "This book will be dear to me beyond anything I can say, and will brighten my life and my work for all the time I have to live. On his return to France, he will visit Bousquet in his room in Carcassonne. "El Golea is an oasis in the far south, right in the middle of the Sahara. The population is a mixture of Arabs and Sudanese negroes, nestled in small clay houses [...] the palm groves are immensely extensive and all around is endless sand. I'm here with sweet Lili, who's absolutely enchanted by this fairytale setting, and it took us several days' travel in a coach over desert tracks to get here [...] We go to drink tea with the natives, and this morning we were drinking it under fruit-laden lemon trees, to the enchanting music of a six-hole reed flute played softly by our host"... Etc. Paris, August 3, 1949. He sends Bousquet a painting to add to his collection, and doesn't want to be paid. His portrait of Bousquet is exhibited in New York. He worries about Max ERNST's interest in his work. He works on "a small pornographic album, drawings and text. The text is very stupid. [...] I hate ideas; I find them so hollow! I want art with my head cut off"... He ends his letter with these handwritten lines: "I have no exhibition in mind. I'm tired of doing exhibitions that only elicit horions and insults. What the European wants is ideas. He doesn't believe (not seriously, at least) that anything other than ideas is worth paying attention to. I don't give a damn about ideas.