Smile 1962

Jean Dubuffet's "Smile" is a playful face rendered in fleshy pinks and oranges, punctuated by stark black and white features. You can almost feel Dubuffet in the act of creation: the carving, the inking, the pressing. He’s making marks, but he's also making a face. I wonder, when Dubuffet made this, was he smiling too? There’s something so primal about the way he uses the medium, like a kid with finger paints but with a grown-up's sense of irony. The surface has this mottled, worn feeling, full of imperfections and inconsistencies. The mouth, a simple curve, is so wide it’s almost unsettling, yet kind of funny. The eyes are staring right through you, like some alien presence. It reminds me a bit of Picasso's masks, but with an added dose of existential humor. Painters are always in conversation with each other, borrowing, stealing, riffing. It's comforting, somehow, to see these echoes across time and style, reminding us that art-making is a deeply human endeavor, full of questions, experiments, and the occasional smile.