Description

Dubuffet dedicated himself to art full-time after World War II. He sought alternatives to traditional Western culture’s dependency on logic, reason, and narrow standards of beauty. He coined the term Art Brut (Raw Art) referring to art produced by people outside of the established art world, such as the maladjusted, patients in psychiatric hospitals, and prisoners. Dubuffet believed that Art Brut sprang from pure invention, uncorrupted by educational training and social constraints, and was evidence of the originality that all humans innately possess. By imbuing his work with unaccustomed crudeness or banality, Dubuffet sought to startle the viewer out of his acquired aesthetic responses.