Henri Rousseau

Fülszöveg

HENRI ROUSSEAU
by Dora Vallier
One indisputable peculiarity distinguishes Rousseau from every other painter. If this difference does not appear obvious to us today, it is because it has become blurred by a heightened eclecticism in the matter of taste. By pushing back the frontiers of art, the emancipation of esthetics has, in the course of the last hundred years, blinded us to the exceptional nature of the customs-officer-painter whose name was Henri Rousseau. Yet we need only put him in the context of his time, as this volume does, to see to what extent he was in conflict with the accepted structure of artistic life and defied critical criteria, how he belonged to no group or school, how, in addition, social strictures and class distinctions weighed on him. The gifts that he possessed and that he utilized in the absence of a formal artistic education were, in the period in which he lived, simply those of the artisan class to which, in effect, he belonged; and his manner of... Tovább

Fülszöveg

HENRI ROUSSEAU
by Dora Vallier
One indisputable peculiarity distinguishes Rousseau from every other painter. If this difference does not appear obvious to us today, it is because it has become blurred by a heightened eclecticism in the matter of taste. By pushing back the frontiers of art, the emancipation of esthetics has, in the course of the last hundred years, blinded us to the exceptional nature of the customs-officer-painter whose name was Henri Rousseau. Yet we need only put him in the context of his time, as this volume does, to see to what extent he was in conflict with the accepted structure of artistic life and defied critical criteria, how he belonged to no group or school, how, in addition, social strictures and class distinctions weighed on him. The gifts that he possessed and that he utilized in the absence of a formal artistic education were, in the period in which he lived, simply those of the artisan class to which, in effect, he belonged; and his manner of painting was very different indeed from what was then expected of a painter. Within the framework of his contemporaneous society, Rousseau was considered an artisan gone astray, a trespasser in the inner sanctum of art. But although he was persuaded by external circumstances to make this leap outside his normal milieu, he never in good conscience really accepted this as a definitive act. Just as, in view of the very special attitude that he had, he was totally unable to assimilate the erudite language of art. Therefore he brought to modern painting an unprecedented pictorial innocence. He recreated, from alpha to omega, the complex alphabet of knowledge bowed under the weight of secular tradition. He raised the action of painting to an instinctual level; and by forcefully asserting his own personal vision, he gave birth to a whole new category of art: naive or primitive painting.
Dora Vallier is recognized as an authority on Rousseau's painting. She is the author of the most important monograph devoted to the Douanier, which appeared in 1961. Ten years later she published the Catalogue raisonné of the work of Rousseau, which has been acknowledged to be definitive. Vissza