French artist Jean Dubuffet (b. 1901; d. 1985) rejected principles of decorum and classical beauty, along with pretentions of expertise. Instead, he looked to the commonplace and the unheralded, employing crude materials, mundane subjects, and a style that spurned any outward sign of academic training. His goal was not only to reveal how threadbare cultural conventions were; he also wanted to illustrate the vitality of life freed from them.
His work of the 1940s and 1950s invited audiences to fundamentally reconsider the concept of beauty, and it demonstrated how worthy of admiration ordinary things could be—whether rocks, crumpled aluminum foil, or thickened paint.
This exhibition, drawn entirely from the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, offers a vast survey of his production from the 1940s to the last decade of his life. It highlights how he kept his ever-evolving project grounded in its dedication to sharing new and revitalizing perspectives with viewers.
