HENRI ROUSSEAU’S paintings have been stopping people in their tracks for nearly 120 years, and despi
Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris” at the National Gallery of Art.
What happens when a lion fells an antelope in the forest, or (somehow) a gorilla attacks an American Indian, and no one hears it? Life goes on.
Strangest of all, Rousseau painted his jungles without leaving Paris.
three more vitrines of ephemera
moments of Darwinian struggle or startlingly Surreal strangeness unfold amid velvety botanical Edens
What happens when a lion fells an antelope in the forest, or (somehow) a gorilla attacks an American Indian, and no one hears it? Life goes on.
Strangest of all, Rousseau painted his jungles without leaving Paris.
three more vitrines of ephemera
moments of Darwinian struggle or startlingly Surreal strangeness unfold amid velvety botanical Edens
The focus might also be a dark-skinned snake charmer or an alert nude on a red couch. But Rousseau’s leafy grandeur, his tapestrylike parade of starchy, incipiently Cubist foliage and outsize lotuslike blooms, remains profoundly indifferent, decoratively intact, nearly abstract.
Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris” is at the National Gallery of Art, East Building, Constitution Avenue between Ninth and Third Streets, Washington, through Oct. 15; (202) 737-4215.