Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

With its caricatured depiction of identically dressed businessmen devouring their lunch, this painting satirizes postwar conformity. A leader of the Art brut (raw art) movement, which rejected the norms and power structure of the mainstream art world, Jean Dubuffet took his inspiration from art created by the mentally ill, folk artists, and other self-taught artists. This work is painted with a technique Dubuffet called haute pâte (high impasto), in which the painting is built up in numerous layers. He covered a white ground with a layer of oil paint and then applied a thick coating of dark pigments mixed with sand. The figures are incised into the rough surface, giving them a graffiti-like quality.