Brutal Beauty exhibition - Barbican

The Brutal Beauty exhibition is a retrospective of one of the art world's outsiders, Jean Dubuffet. He was a playful artist who liked to experiment with different materials to create what he called 'Art Brut' (raw art). There were quite a few phases to his career, which are visually diverse but the most interesting to a pattern designer would be the 1950s. He aimed to portray the interior landscape of his mind in a series of abstract paintings. These have the frenetic energy of a very busy brain!

The other favourites of mine are the butterfly paintings, which walk the fine line between beautiful and grotesque. He called them assemblages, which is basically  collage with more unusual materials.

Perhaps this exhibition will give me the final push to try collage patterns, something I haven't tried before. I would probably start with paper, rather than butterflies though!

 Until next time creative crew,

Joanna

Landscape of the mind:

Assemblages: