The Morgan Library’s show of Jean Dubuffet’s drawings is now at the Hammer in LA. KCRW takes a look at the artist and his waxing-then-waning-now-waxing-again reputation. Listen to this conversation with Hunter Drohojowska-Philp for more perspective:

Immensely popular with collectors and fellow artists in the 1940s and 1950s, Dubuffet’s art lost some of its popularity during the changing tastes of the 1960s. Yet, numerous contemporary artists — Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Thomas Houseago — have responded to Dubuffet’s spontaneity and raucous subject matter[…]. Dubuffet was friends with artists like Fernand Léger and dabbled in making his own art in the 1920s and 1930s but mostly he operated the family wine business. […]

After 1942, when he decided to devote himself completely to his art, children’s drawings were his initial source material, less for their innocence than their awkwardness. […] Portraits of friends, mostly writers and artists, were almost caricatures in their bold simplicity.

Dubuffet drawings | Art Talk (KCRW)