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Notes on video lecture:
Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on March 1, 2018 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
animal, violin, human, natural, pleasure, mountains, Rousseau, dark, protecting, moves, disturb, trance, mysterious, endless, outsider, Breton, terms, relationships, Lethe, similar, frill, motion, free, staff, passion, Negress, desolate, Dream, right, recumbent, enigmatic, river, mantel
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The Sleeping Gypsy (1897)
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a                      work
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has similar themes with The           
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a                    female figure occupies the focal point
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part of an exotic landscape
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exists in harmony with the              world
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the full moon rises high in the sky
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in both paintings there is a         -skinned musician
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differences
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gypsy
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a wanderer
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carries a           
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pitcher of water
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musical instrument
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an artist and an                 
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perhaps like                  himself
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was not accepted by the art world
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except for Gaugin and Picasso
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Rousseau described it: "A wandering               , a mandolin player, sleeps in deep exhaustion, her jug beside her. A lion happens to pass that way, and sniffs at her, but does not devour her. The scene takes place in a completely dry desert. The Gypsy is dressed in oriental fashion."
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the sleeping gypsy
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perhaps she's dreaming of the lion in the river
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as Jean Cocteau suggested
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deeply                   , mysterious and puzzling
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the base of the lion's main evoke the lines of the woman's hair
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the bare foreground is mirrored by the bare background
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the two plains divided by softly drawn mountains and a           
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perhaps the river of           
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both the woman and the lion are separated from the                    by the river
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her bright robe enhances the beauty of the sea
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relation to the senses
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woman evokes music and                 
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the full moon creates an overall sense of the romantic
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but the romanticism is edged with strangeness
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emphasizes the poetic quality of the work
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the painting takes us back to a far distant imaginary time, long before the modern period
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where human and animal lived in relative peace in the                world and shared common spaces
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Darwin
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humans and animals have more in common than previously thought
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both experience a                range of feelings and emotions
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structure
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almost sculptural
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nothing           
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a strange lack of              in Rousseau's paintings
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anticipates the surrealist's approach
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juxtapositioning unexpected objects in unfamiliar ways to create a sense of the marvelous
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frees up the viewer's mind
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creates a new space of imagining new possibilities and                           
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the marvelous was also disorienting, gave the viewer a shock
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André              (1896-1966)
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Surrealist Manifesto
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described Rousseau as before the time of surrealists
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Rousseau's painting invoke a                for otherness
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particularly in relation to the lands and peoples of the colonial empires
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the sleeping gypsy is an oriental picture of its own kind
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a poetic oriental landscape
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the gypsy is a musician
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Rousseau played the             
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sublime
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a strong sense of boundlessness in relation to the landscape
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a sense of an                desert
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the beauty of a sublime landscape
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surreal
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gypsy lies in a deep sleep with eyes slightly open
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robe with white            around the collar
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as if she is a pilgrim
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the bareness of the landscape suggests a dreamscape, a theme of surrealist paintings
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freedom of imagination
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importance of desire
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shows a woman living and traveling freely according to her own desires
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desire is the soul motivating principle of the world
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arouses a desire for the          life, to find oneself
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Rousseau locates this desire in a woman, black woman, an outsider, and artist
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the painting has a strange beauty and evokes a desire to roam free from the restrictions of contemporary urban life
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this woman lives in all of us
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she represents an inner, deep-seated,            longing to live a life that is true to oneself
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the woman is painted in an extremely unusual context
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independent
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alone
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traveling on her own           
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not sexualized at all
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she's simply beautiful in her own           
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a wanderer, living her own life, a strange, exotic being
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black women were rarely represented as subjects in their own right
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appears to live in harmony with nature
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the lion seems careful not to                her
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the painting can be seen as gendered
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the lion male
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the gypsy female
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if Rousseau would have painted the gypsy as a man, it would have created a different meaning
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the lion seems to be                      her so that she can have the freedom not just to sleep but to dream
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reminds us of Mary of Egypt
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the patron saint of penitents
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born in Egypt, lived a sexually                  life
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wandered the deserts
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befriended a religious man on her journeys
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he gave her his              to cover her body
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after she died, he noticed a lion standing by her body licking her feet
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the lion dug a deep grave and he buried her there
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she lies on the ground as if asleep but her eyes are partly open as if in a             
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perhaps this is the seen of Mary's death

Ideas and Concepts:

Rousseau on his painting Sleeping Gypsy, via tonight's Sexing the Canvas class: "A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, sleeps in deep exhaustion, her jug beside her. A lion happens to pass her way, and sniffs at her, but does not devour her. The scene takes place in a completely dry desert. The gypsy is dressed in oriental fashion."
Early hints of surrealism and the desire for the free life, via tonight's Sexing the Canvas class:

"Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy (1897) is arguably a precursor to 20th century surrealist painting. The bareness of the landscape suggests a dreamscape, a common theme of surrealist paintings. The gypsy lies in a deep sleep with eyes slightly open, robe with white frill around the collar, as if she is a pilgrim yet in peaceful proximity to a curious lion.

With the sense of an endless desert around them, there is an emphasis on the freedom of imagination, the importance of desire. We see a woman living and traveling freely according to her own desires, as if desire is the soul motivating principle of the world.

The painting arouses a desire for the free life, to find ourself. Rousseau locates this desire in a woman, a black woman, an outsider, an artist. The painting has a strange beauty to it and evokes a desire to roam free from the restrictions of contemporary urban life.

This woman lives in all of us. She represents the inner, deep-seated, human longing to live a life that is true to oneself."
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