Echoing Magic Flute

#89028    91 X 61 cm      36″ X 24″     ac

• Rousseau: ” Serpent Charmer” (1907)

Like Maurice Utrillo, Henry Rousseau is regarded as a miracle in the history of modern art. At the beginning, nobody would think that their arts would be valued as those of masters like Picasso and Matisse. Even they never dreamed to be professional. As armatures “Sunday Painters”, it seems that they painted for themselves, either as a kind of therapy or as a past time pleasure. Out of academy and self-taught, both of them were regarded as naive and childish in painting.But what a purity in Rousseau’s art world, what a utopic dream and exotic charm! As in his “la Charmeuse de serpents” (1907), a dreaming scene unholds a Flutist, a serpents-chermer playing at the edge of a virgin forest beside a river where serpents come from every direction, up from the tree, down from the ground and across the river. Echoing the mysterious music, flowers are openning, foliages are quivering, grasses spout, and a flamingo is strolling gently around. T.F. Chen put the Eiffel Tower on the background behind the forest of oppositive bank while above the Tower appears a full moon like the point on the i.In Salon d’Automne of Paris 1906, Henry Rousseau’s paintings attracted the public as well as the other artists. That was the moment when Fauvism had already made noise and Cubism was almost to come. He met many avant-garde artists there, including Picasso and Matisse. In 1908 Picasso honored Rousseau with a banquet at Bateau-lavior. Drunk, Rousseau said to Picasso: ” You and I, we are the greatest painters: you in the Egyptian kind, me in the modern way”. No matter what, Rousseau seems to have brought a magic flute to the modern art. Since his success, the so-called ” Naive school”, arts by amateurs, was recognized as an authentic art style worthwile to be noticed in the art history. It was much promoted in Dubuffet’s art as “l’Art Brut”. By adding the Eiffel Tower to Rousseau’s paintings, T. F. Chen offered his homage to both the scientific beauty and the beauty created by amateurs, for ” A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”

– T. F. Chen