These images reflect two of the last drawings done by the French author of "The Theater of Cruelty", and were copied for this site at MOMA's 1996 exhibit, "Antonin Artaud: Works on Paper". The image at left reflects a colored chaulk and wax crayon drawing Artaud made on 22 June 1947, of Lily DuBuffet; that at right, a graphite drawing, on 21 May a month earlier, of Professor Collete Thomas, they were among the last drawings he created, as he died the next year. His psychological dislocation is reflected acutely in both. His was a social objection that reflected itself in his images and, as the MOMA bulletin suggested in advertising the exhibit, "Artaud's message is as powerful and distrubing as it was during his lifetime." The decades and global wars that had elapsed since Sargent or Harrison Fisher created more elegant, carefree images (see Index to all Exhibits below) seem to have piled up in these drawings. As the exhibition bulletin suggested, Artaud's work reflected a "rage against a society to which he could not adapt" and is "a quintessential expression of the artist's condition. In his case, however, it is more than that. It was the expression of his own peculiar destiny." In August of 1946, Artaud began a series of portraits of friends, including one (now lost) of artist Jean Dubuffet.
