Jean Dubuffet. Brutal Beauty

Featuring newly commissioned essays and photography of rarely exhibited works, this book highlights the radicalism of Jean Dubuffet, who was one of the most provocative voices of the postwar avant-garde. In 1940s occupied Paris, Jean Dubuffet began to champion a progressive vision for art; one that rejected classical notions of beauty in favor of a more visceral aesthetic. Taking a pioneering approach to materiality and technique, the artist variously blended paint with sand, glass, tar, coal dust, and string. At the same time, he began to assemble a collection of art brutwork that was made outside the academic tradition of fine arteven visiting psychiatric wards from 1945 to collect work by patients. This book features texts from leading scholars and is accompanied by images that illuminate Dubuffets attempts to move beyond the artistic expectations of his time. The works are grouped into six thematic sections that focus on specific series, from his graffiti-inspired Walls and his notorious portrait series, People are Much More Beautiful Than They Think to the Corps de dames, a controversial series of female landscapes, and his anthropomorphic sculptures, Little Statues of Precarious Life. Exquisitely produced, this celebration of Dubuffets work embraces his world view that art is for everyone, not just the elite.With contributions by Sophie Berrebi, Charlotte Flint, Camille Houzé, Sarah Lombardi, Kent Minturn, Rachel Perry, and Sarah WilsonPublished in association with the Barbican Art Gallery, London