One must be brute—be it male, female, or otherwise—for the brute is an impulse towards the infinite.
In Latin, brutus refers to slow, undisciplined, irrational, and stubborn animals. Yet for the Romans, Brutus was also a surname of noble lineage. Reading both uses side by side evokes the lightning-image of an illustrious animality: the exact point where that which exists simultaneously inside and outside the order manifests itself. One must be brute because brutes are a bit of everything, all at once.
Jean Dubuffet always knew this. He would seek art where there were no signposts to locate it. He sought it outside museums, salons, and academic books. He found it in everyday life, in humble acts, in simple words, and in raw fruit.²
Brutes shout and do not wash. Brutes do not vote and are not polite. Brutes smell and rub against things. Brutes are just as they are.
La Fragua Bruta [The Brute Forge] understands brutality as potential, and art as a gesture of welcoming that brutality. There is no art where rational, calculated, and/or logocentric thought prevails. There is no art where excellence and perfection are pursued. There is no art where the narratives upholding an agreed-upon, unquestioned prefiguration of the world are not shaken. There is no art where there is no uncertainty, ignorance, abyss, or void. There is no art where there is no error, doubt, or misunderstanding.
La Fragua Bruta believes that, for art to exist, it is necessary to erode any attitude that fails to open the door to the brute, the impure, the tainted, the marginal, the fragile, the crossbred, the flawed, the broken.
La Fragua Bruta opts for abandoning oneself to an animal attention—a self-loss in the other—through which it becomes possible to widen the known world. La Fragua Bruta believes that losing oneself in the other is to open the door to the duende or grace. It is to find the divine by embracing bestiality.
La Fragua Bruta has a need for in-competence, in-completeness, in-formality.
La Fragua Bruta wants to walk slowly, to pause, and—if frightened or amused—to leap, to run, to fly.
La Fragua Bruta flees from frivolity and indifference.
La Fragua Bruta wants to graze on silence and bray with joy.
La Fragua Bruta does not wear black tie. La Fragua Bruta wears its hair loose, tied atop a bald crown.
La Fragua Bruta shakes hands, embraces, nuzzles, touches. La Fragua Bruta works with tact and feels the con-tact.
La Fragua Bruta is a home. It is fire.
La Fragua Bruta observes its animality. It admits to being brute. It confesses to feeling fear in its attempt to surrender to the infinite.
¹ In cinematic jargon, “raw footage” or “rushes” (brutos) refers to the unedited material captured during filming. This material lacks a specific order or a polished finish. These raw takes contain errors and unforeseen moments as traces of the live action, making the filmmaking gesture far more visible.
² Dubuffet, Jean. Writings on Art. Barral Editores, Barcelona, 1975.