Landscape with Monkeys 1908

Curator: Right now we are standing in front of Henri Rousseau's "Landscape with Monkeys," an oil on canvas painted in 1908 and now part of the Barnes Foundation Collection. Editor: It’s…striking. There’s an almost dreamlike quality, a lushness that borders on claustrophobic, all these dense layers pressing in. Curator: It is certainly a dense composition. Rousseau’s jungles are, of course, famously imagined. He supposedly gleaned inspiration from botanical gardens and illustrated books rather than direct experience. This one presents an ecosystem brimming with life; observe how many simians Rousseau has nestled among the foliage! Editor: Look how human-like their faces are, like masked actors in a Brechtian play. I wonder if these primates represent the colonized ‘other,’ infantilized by the Western gaze as existing in some primitive, pre-civilized Eden? Curator: It's tempting to apply such postcolonial critiques, however the appeal of this lies within Rousseau’s approach to symbol, I think. Jungles as symbols of untamed id or dreamscapes filled with instinct. Consider the colour red which repeats here in fruit and sun and the plumage of one peculiar bird, each acting like emotional markers within an already disorientating space. Editor: You read the sun as 'emotional marker'; to me, it looms like a colonial wound bleeding into the landscape, marking the theft of resources and autonomy from colonized peoples. The "naive" style—what is naive about exoticizing dark skinned "others", for example—could mask underlying complicity in the machinery of empire. Curator: Those “primitive” forms are a style as deliberate and thought-through as Cubism; one of many aspects through which this "outsider" influenced subsequent generations. But, perhaps both readings, psychological and social, exist side by side within this frame. Editor: Perhaps. This painting really compels us to engage with its multifaceted narratives. The potential here for discourse and excavation keeps me very interested in revisiting its meanings over time. Curator: I agree, a journey through the symbolism will always reward further looks at the themes explored here. This remains a captivating piece over a century later, one which provides fruitful dialogue.