From Library Journal
At a time when the post-impressionists were reacting to Impressionism, the self-taught Henri Rousseau was creating dream-fantasy paintings in his uniquely primitive style a style that influenced artists from Pablo Picasso to Blaue Reiters Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. This volume, which is part of a series of catalogs of retrospective exhibitions held in Tubingen, Germany, on modern artists such as Cezanne and Degas, accompanies the first major show of Rousseau's work in Germany since 1933. The introduction discusses Rousseau's unlikely life as a petit bourgeois in Paris, his method of painting, critical reception of his work, and his relationship with various writers, including Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire. Adriani, director of the Kuntshalle Tubingen and a prolific author (e.g., Renoir: Oil Paintings), also includes early photographs of the artist and his circle of friends and acquaintances. The catalog richly explores the 59 paintings in the show, with informative commentaries and full-color reproductions, and includes other works that emphasize the painter's influence on German artists, such as Max Beckmann and Otto Dix. In a well-planned format, footnotes run parallel to the text throughout in the right-hand margin. Public as well as school and special collections will want to provide this book on a beloved artist for their patrons. Ellen Bates, New York City
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Henri Rousseau, called le Douanier because of his early career with the French customs service, is one of the most important, and fascinating and least studied of late nineteenth-century artists. His determined and unapologetic primitivism distanced his work from that of most of his contemporaries, but he was widely admired by Picasso, Apollinaire, and Kandinsky and is now seen as one of the pioneers of the modern movement. This beautiful book offers a detailed portrait of Rousseau's life and career as well as sensitive interpretations of his unusual, individualistic art.
Götz Adriani tells Rousseau's strange life story: his petty bourgeois background, his attempts to establish himself as an independent artist after leaving the customs office, and his reaction to the derision with which his art was greeted in his own time. Adriani discusses the paradox that Rousseau had reactionary views about art and politics but was taken up by the French avant-garde. He describes Rousseau's particular brand of visual and conceptual realism and the way he set the exotic animals, figures, and plants of his dreams against the bland background of the Parisian suburbs. He explains Rousseau's contact with Alfred Jarry, Apollinaire, Picasso, and other artists of the Parisian avant- garde. Finally, he examines a selection of little-known and well-known paintings, provides details about their subjects, provenance, and reception, and shows how they influenced other artists.
