Henri Rousseau, 1844-1910 [Paperback]

Henri Rousseau astonishes! I've seen it in the eyes of other museum-goers. In New York, Paris, Philadelphia, San Francisco, in every gallery where one of Rousseau' painting is hung, people will stop and gasp. These days, having been 'astonished' by 100 years of expressionism, surrealism, and abstraction, they will instinctively gasp with appreciation. In the 1880s and 1890s, when Impressionism was still regarded as wild and woolly, the exhibition-goers of Paris gasped with contempt and ridicule. The 'public' had a harder time accepting Rousseau than any other painter of the era except, perhaps, Vincent van Gogh. Wouldn't it be 'comforting' to be sure that we today are just as blind? that we are failing to recognize the geniuses amongst us? I'd be happy to be regarded as a hide-bound philistine by my great-grandchildren if I could bequeath them a great under-appreciated painter like Rousseau instead of an ecological catastrophe!

As with all Taschen art publications, this book is beautifully printed on durable paper, with accurate colors and excellent resolution. It will have the strongest visual impact on people lucky enough to have seem some of Henri Rousseau's paintings 'live' in museums. Rousseau's most famous paintings are large; size is a component of their power, as is the tapestry texture of his paint application. But even if you've never had that opportunity, this book will reveal Rousseau's uniqueness to you. There's no mistaking a Rousseau painting for the work of anyone else, before or after him.

That's one of the big questions addressed in the text of his edition, by Cornelia Stabenow: Where does Rousseau fit? Post-impressionist? Anti-impressionist? Early modern? Proto-surrealist? Stabenow takes a good stab at providing an answer, but it would be a "spoiler" to summarize her thoughts. My own image is that he was the "tail that wagged the dog" of modern art. The other big question that Stabenow addresses is the persistent supposition that Rousseau was a "primitive", a naive painter who scarcely understood his own mentality. Stabenow presents quite a different image of Rousseau, of his life, his artistic ambitions, his craft, but once again I will abstain from summarizing her cogent analyses. She writes well, both in the voice of an art critic and as a cultural historian.

But what's this about Melville? I'm absolutely sure that Rousseau never read or heard of Hermann Melville. I doubt that any of the great French painters of his era had. Influence is not the issue. But the exoticism of Rousseau's "jungle" paintings -- unquestionably his greatest -- reminds me intuitively of Melville's South Pacific novels, Typee, Omoo, and Moby Dick. Both the writer and the painter were fervent 'democrats', radical supporters of the Rights of working men. Both were odd blends of materialistic mysticism, passionately committed to objective reality and yet convinced that objects were merely surfaces covering profounder mysteries. Rousseau painted every leaf of his unreal jungles with meticulous detail, just as Melville expounded every mundane facet of whaling as if it had metaphysical urgency. Besides, they were both "douaniers" - customs officers - Rousseau before his success as a professional painter, Melville after his 'failure' as a professional writer.

One of the greatest post impressionist artist. Some said he was part of the naïve movement but for me the "naive" Rousseau was the most "wise" man portraiting dreams. Paintings like "The dream" and "Sleeping Gypsy" deserve a winning award. This book is very hard to find. Finally I had to buy it from a third part because Amazon always had the tittle as not available. Get dizzy of pleasure by his perception and prepare not to get trapted inside HIS jungle.

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