Arts Wandering for Henry Rousseau
Henry Rousseau is an established painter in France. He observed the outside from pure perspective, which shows the essence of true life—powerful and lively. The theme of his paintings is extremely various, including Paris outskirts, vivid and pure portraits, rosy fable works, etc, among which the specifically exotic ones impress most of us. Unimaginably all of these works are inspirationally created by his visit in kinds of gardens, arboretums and zoos.
As each time has its own prophet, Henry Rousseau had become the forthgoer and pope of surrealism art in 20th century. “He instinctively drew his own paintings, considering that only entire freedom in mind can maintain the beauty and good.” Rousseau once said. The only secret of an artist is just the freedom of his mind. It is unnecessarily gained by pursuit but keeping and owning himself with care and perseverance. It is genuinely manna for everyone. But keeping spiritual freedom may rob ones wealth, family, social status, etc. Believe it or not, Rousseau, for instance, just left his poverty behind when he passed away.
Rusticity and innocence are the invariable words describing Henry Rousseau paintings. Unfortunately, such a pure figure had been always hurt by others. Brand speaking, tease from others has been filled his whole life besides his poverty. Well, the latter might be the special test from God, while the former could have been cut every possibility of joy to him as most of other ordinaries! Yet he calmly dealt with all that. Therefore, from my point of view, when he made a violin performance on the curb just for his next supper, he must have been in naivety and happiness. For he was not fighting against pain, or enjoying in adversities, no! He never put pain for pain! Innocence, candid and confidence in them—-compose the very freedom of his great mind. So any adversities through life can never get into the holy land.
Rousseau was usually called as a primitivist painter. His paintings were etched with imaginative jungle, in which the beasts and human could warmly look at each other’s eyes, building up an atmosphere of mystery and leading us into a beautiful memory of the very old times. Filtered the cruelty of rude time, we could only discover the innocence, naivety, calm and pure life. This Indian, just as him, never left Paris, had just been living in his own dreamy world all the time. It was said by him that the dream was the only pure thing to create his view in oil paintings. In simple words, he was just following his heart and portrayed eternal dreams one and another. Or, the real world was illusory while the illusory world created by him was real? Truly, we’d say, Rousseau’s artworks have been so pure that we could deeply understand them at the very first sight, meanwhile invariably making us to suspend we’ve lost something much deeper in his artworks. To tell you the truth, each time when I listen to Mozart music, I feel the same. The problem is, I prefer to keep a pure feeling of simplicity and naivety, firmly believing that that is just everything-innocence, freedom, following one’s own inclinations in art.
About the Author
Henri Rousseau
