Henri Rousseau le Douanier

(Click here for the Romanian version)

How could be this possible, a naked woman sitting on her coach in the middle of a tropical forest? Rousseau le Douanier answered with simulated innocence, the young lady was sleeping on her coach and having a dream - he just rendered the dream.

One of the first paintings of Rousseau imagining a jungle, Tiger in surprise. Bad received by the critics - his recognition would come very late, when Picasso, Brancusi, Appolinaire, Jarry, would realize that le Douanier was a forerunner for what happened with the art in the twentieth century.



The mysterious personage is Pierre Loti - rendered with the same simulated innocence, or, I should say, what his contemporaries perceived as innocence was hiding a certain malice.
There is these days the Rousseau exhibition at the Washington National Gallery, entitled Jungles in Paris, I visited it yesterday for the second time, and I spent about three hours. I was trying to find some correspondences with the works of Pirosmani - both are great naives, only Rousseau was somehow an actor, he played a bit the fool to sell his value.

Bohemienne endormie, it seems to me fabulous. By a curious association, it reminds me a contemporary French, Guy Ferrer, though they are very distinct each other. I met with the works of Ferrer, as I met with the works of Cayron and of Tobiasse, at a very small art gallery in Georgetown, the Attis Gallery, devoted to the contemporary French art.

One of the finest paintings of Rousseau, Carnival Evening, the couple comes from the celebration, and there is a mistery in everything there. Was Rousseau really a naive? Oh, yes, he was not aware at all about perspective, about foreground, and middle ground, and background, but, was he really a naive?





La Guerre, full of cruelty, look at that frightening girl, running near the horse, I would range this near other great paintings about the horrors of war, near Dürer, and Goya, and Picasso.




But if you ask me which is the craziest work of Rousseau, well, this is, the Rugby Players, it belongs now to the Museum of Modern Art in New York - the exhibition in Washington DC gathered paintings of Rousseau from all over the world, from MoMA in New York and form the Chicago Institute of Art, from the Tate Gallery in London and from Musée d'Orsay in Paris, from Musée Picasso in Paris, and from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
The craziest painting of Rousseau, and my favorite.














(Washington DC National Gallery of Art)