The Artist's Studio: Jean Dubuffet

The Artist’s Studio: Jean Dubuffet

2010 | 36 min
Directed by Michael Blackwood
Courtesy of Michael Blackwood Productions

In the fall of 1973, Michael Blackwood visited Jean Dubuffet in his studio while he was at work on a detail for his musical theater piece Coucou Bazar—this film documents Blackwood’s visit with Dubuffet and his work on Coucou Bazar. The piece, which Dubuffet saw as an animated painting, featured performers in costumes resembling figures in his paintings and sculptures. Coucou Bazar had a successful premiere at New York’s Guggenheim earlier that year, alongside a retrospective of Dubuffet’s previous works, and later would open at the Grand Palais under the auspices of the annual Festival d’Automne. Though Dubuffet once suffered a period of doubt surrounding his art, he returned to the practice with an impersonal and primitive touch, becoming more and more influenced by works that had no connection to mainstream art, for which he coined the term Art Brut.

Jean Dubuffet’s inaugural exhibition with Pace took place in 1968, after the artist met the gallery’s founder Arne Glimcher for the first time in Paris in 1966 and began working with him the following year. A foundational figure in the gallery’s history, Dubuffet’s work has been the subject of more than 20 solo exhibitions at Pace since 1968 and has been featured in countless dual and group exhibitions.