The Dream (1910) by Henri RousseauMoMA The Museum of Modern Art
It’s a full-moon night. A silver light brightens up the thick forest; keep your eyes peeled, what can you glimpse between the leafy fronds?
Henri Rousseau paints a mysterious and dreamy setting. Within this, a young woman turns her body towards us, but not her gaze: her eyes point elsewhere and lead us to discover this landscape.
A lush place, two-dimensionally painted, rich in detail with an instinctive, almost primitive technique.
A kind of painting called precisely naïve, made of gaudy colors and simple shapes, uncultured, childlike. Take a look at the dense twine of flowers in the jungle with edged contours and proportions so exaggerated to even exceed the size of the lions!
Just above, a vivid-feathered bird is depicted in quite an odd position: the same as the girl’s on the sofa.
Wait a moment…a sofa? In the middle of the jungle? As the only realistic element, it’s the link between reality and dream: dozing here, we started the trip around this dreamlike universe.
The scene as a whole is surreal, marked by an ancestral force which leaves us enchanted. Rousseau’s world is unspoilt and enigmatic, far from any space-time logic.
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