James Johnson Sweeney
'
JOAN MIRO: COMMENT AND INTERVIEW
Fernand Leger, the French cubist, tells of meeting Henri
Rousseau,
le douanier,
at the
vernissage
of an official Salon in Paris a
year or so before the older man's death. They happened to be in a room
with a group of pictures by the academician Bouguereau. Leger was un–
interested; Rousseau was enthusiastic-"But, Monsieur, look at the
wonderful technique. See the little highlights on the fingernails!"
It was the virtuosity of the academician that impressed Rousseau.
He was a sensitive and careful technician himself. His essential naivete
lay in his failure to realize the futility of academic ostentation in
comparison with his own gifts. Actually he was painting in their manner,
more than they could ever appreciate-more than would ever appear from
a superficial comparison of the work of both. For the academician had
set out to seek exactly what Rousseau was finding. The academician's
premises were sound: a scrupulous compositional structure, an integrity
of line, and a cleanness of workmanship. It was a weakness for ostenta–
tion, for exhibitionism, that spoiled the product. Rousseau's personal
simplicity and directness were his strength. His intensity of focus on his
objective, the picture, would not permit him to be led aside by alien
interests-display, easy effects, or worldly success. He could not see
beyond the picture itself any more than a Piet Mondrian could. He
lived in his painting and for his painting. He put all his ability and
sensibility into his work to that end. This was his naivete.
But since the recognition accorded Rousseau as an artist, a plague
of "naive" painting has spread over Europe and America. Every country,
district-almost every art gallery has its own so-called "primitive": his
work justified by a proclaimed resemblance to that of Rousseau. The
basis for the claim is either a total misunderstanding of Rousseau's art,
or a willing blindness to the difference between it and the other. Such
"primitives" are usually "Sunday painters" as Rousseau was forced to
be. "In view of the lack of fortune on the part of his parents," he ex-
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