All Photos By Gail

Jean Dubuffet’s Study for Tower with Figures (1968), standing nearly ten feet tall, makes a striking statement when encountered outdoors; its painted polyurethane on epoxy facade, bold black outlines and puzzle-like shapes making it instantly recognizable as part of Dubuffet’s famous Hourloupe cycle.

At first glance, it looks playful — almost cartoonish. Tangled forms, bulbous limbs, and abstracted faces interlock like a jigsaw puzzle sprung to life. But beneath the humor lies Dubuffet’s serious artistic mission: to challenge the polish of modernity and instead celebrate the raw, the provisional, and the imperfect.

Installation View

The Study is exactly what its title suggests — a smaller prototype for Dubuffet’s monumental Tower of Figures, yet it stands on its own as a complete work, revealing how the artist thought architecturally while working in the language of doodles. His looping black lines, irregular patches of color, and layered forms feel spontaneous, but in fact follow a strict, rhythmic logic.

What makes this piece especially compelling in the garden setting is the way it interacts with its surroundings. Against trees, sky, and shifting shadows, the sculpture seems almost alive — its contours changing as you circle around it. Synthetic and artificial on one hand, its forms also evoke something organic, as if it might stretch or grow when you’re not looking.

Jean Dubuffet believed art should unsettle assumptions, and here he succeeds: Study for Tower with Figures refuses the sleek grandeur of traditional sculpture in favor of something unruly, exuberant, and defiantly strange. Take time to walk around it, notice the shifting play of light across its surfaces, and let yourself be pulled into its world.

Photographed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at MoMA