In his seminal modernist paintings, Jean Dubuffet delved deep into questions of ground and materiality. Such themes were highly charged during the post–WWII period in which he worked, shortly after the destruction of many European cities as well as the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the war. The surfaces of his canvases are thick and clotted; their aesthetic is muddy and scatological. Dubuffet coined the term “Art Brut” to describe the kind of work that he collected and aspired toward: the untrained, outsider art of alienated groups, including children and the mentally ill. His own paintings are purposefully “deskilled,” often possessing the spontaneity and crude aesthetic of finger paintings.