Façades d'immeubles (Building Façades) 1946

Jean Dubuffet made "Facades d'immeubles," or Building Facades, using oil paint to build up a dark, gritty surface, which he then scratched into with a lighter colour to create the windows and figures. It's such a process-oriented way of working, a kind of back-and-forth between adding and subtracting. You can really see the materiality of the paint, how it's thick and crusty in places, almost like tar. Then, he uses these thin, scratchy lines to define the architecture and these funny little figures peering out of the windows. Look at the way he renders the faces; they’re so raw and direct, like he's not trying to pretty them up at all. It makes you feel like you are looking directly into other peoples lives. Dubuffet's interest in art brut, or "raw art," makes him a kindred spirit of artists like the American painter Forrest Bess, who also had this outsider sensibility. Both artists make work that embraces the messy, the intuitive, and the deeply personal. Art is so much more interesting when it comes from a place of genuine curiosity and exploration, rather than some pre-conceived idea of what it should be.