The work of French painter Jean Dubuffet and American artist Jean Michel Basquiat has often been compared and exhibited alongside one another. In 1981, provocative poet Rene Ricard wrote: “If Cy Twombly [an American painter] and Jean Dubuffet had a baby and gave it up for adoption, it would be Jean-Michel.” He made a point that will echo for years to come.

This short film explores the parallels between the two artists' works. It reflects on their spiritual, artistic, and intellectual connections. Dubuffet is from Paris and dominated the post-WWII art scene with what he called "Art Brut"—a rupture with conventional ideas of beauty. Basquiat is from late 1970s New York and brought the underground scene into museums with his first exhibition New York/New Wave in 1981. The artists were sixty years apart in age but their visual outlook was remarkably similar. Both had wild, rebellious, self-taught minds and a deep desire to explore the unconventional.

Directed by Sophia Loren Heriveaux, the short film was made for the Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty exhibition at the Barbican Centre, which closed on August 22, 2021. This exhibition was one of the first major surveys of Jean Dubuffet's work showcasing four decades of his career.

Text by Clotilde Nogues