Why Dubuffet’s Art Could Be Done By a 2 Year Old

by Phoebe Clark

Jean Dubuffet was a twentieth-century French artist, who created the movement, ‘Art Brut’, which was his rebellion against the aesthetics of the Academy and involved a re-definition of the qualities of Fine Art.

He also significantly contributed to the 'Naive Art’ movement, which was centred around the raw beauty of unschooled creativity instilled within everyone from a young age. He decided to become an artist after going to, and dropping out of, art college, and then setting up a wine business. Dubuffet took up art again in later life and created a series of portraits and then went on to sculpture, using natural resources and unusual media such as a thick paste he made himself, out of things like gravel, leaves and dirt. 

The reason that his work is so renowned is because he was a revolutionary rebel against traditional Fine Art, which, ironically, his work eventually became, defining new standards. His work was inspired not only by children but by psychotics! He argued that their creativity hadn’t been pruned and sculptured by education, so was therefore raw and completely virgin.

This artwork could have easily been done by a 2 year old; however, it is actually incredibly difficult to do once there has been any sort of academic influence in someone’s life. This is something many people do not realise and, as a result, dismiss his work and that of many other abstract artists.