The Learn Tracker
...life-long learning: structured, organized, searchable...
924
Lectures Watched
Since January 1, 2014
Hundreds of free, self-paced university courses available:
my recommendations here
Peruse my collection of 275
influential people of the past.
View My Class Notes via:
Receive My Class Notes via E-Mail:

VIEW ARCHIVE

Contact Me via E-Mail:
edward [at] tanguay.info
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:
Negress, mountains, mantel, Lethe, pleasure, free, protecting, passion, violin, Breton, dark, animal, similar, endless, desolate, recumbent, Rousseau, motion, trance, relationships, disturb, staff, right, outsider, moves, river, frill, natural, Dream, human, terms, mysterious, enigmatic
•
The Sleeping Gypsy (1897)
•
a                      work
•
has similar themes with The           
•
a                    female figure occupies the focal point
•
part of an exotic landscape
•
exists in harmony with the              world
•
the full moon rises high in the sky
•
in both paintings there is a         -skinned musician
•
differences
•
gypsy
•
a wanderer
•
carries a           
•
pitcher of water
•
musical instrument
•
an artist and an                 
•
perhaps like                  himself
•
was not accepted by the art world
•
except for Gaugin and Picasso
•
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."
•
the sleeping gypsy
•
perhaps she's dreaming of the lion in the river
•
as Jean Cocteau suggested
•
deeply                   , mysterious and puzzling
•
the base of the lion's main evoke the lines of the woman's hair
•
the bare foreground is mirrored by the bare background
•
the two plains divided by softly drawn mountains and a           
•
perhaps the river of           
•
both the woman and the lion are separated from the                    by the river
•
her bright robe enhances the beauty of the sea
•
relation to the senses
•
woman evokes music and                 
•
the full moon creates an overall sense of the romantic
•
but the romanticism is edged with strangeness
•
emphasizes the poetic quality of the work
•
the painting takes us back to a far distant imaginary time, long before the modern period
•
where human and animal lived in relative peace in the                world and shared common spaces
•
Darwin
•
humans and animals have more in common than previously thought
•
both experience a                range of feelings and emotions
•
structure
•
almost sculptural
•
nothing           
•
a strange lack of              in Rousseau's paintings
•
anticipates the surrealist's approach
•
juxtapositioning unexpected objects in unfamiliar ways to create a sense of the marvelous
•
frees up the viewer's mind
•
creates a new space of imagining new possibilities and                           
•
the marvelous was also disorienting, gave the viewer a shock
•
André              (1896-1966)
•
Surrealist Manifesto
•
described Rousseau as before the time of surrealists
•
Rousseau's painting invoke a                for otherness
•
particularly in relation to the lands and peoples of the colonial empires
•
the sleeping gypsy is an oriental picture of its own kind
•
a poetic oriental landscape
•
the gypsy is a musician
•
Rousseau played the             
•
sublime
•
a strong sense of boundlessness in relation to the landscape
•
a sense of an                desert
•
the beauty of a sublime landscape
•
surreal
•
gypsy lies in a deep sleep with eyes slightly open
•
robe with white            around the collar
•
as if she is a pilgrim
•
the bareness of the landscape suggests a dreamscape, a theme of surrealist paintings
•
freedom of imagination
•
importance of desire
•
shows a woman living and traveling freely according to her own desires
•
desire is the soul motivating principle of the world
•
arouses a desire for the          life, to find oneself
•
Rousseau locates this desire in a woman, black woman, an outsider, and artist
•
the painting has a strange beauty and evokes a desire to roam free from the restrictions of contemporary urban life
•
this woman lives in all of us
•
she represents an inner, deep-seated,            longing to live a life that is true to oneself
•
the woman is painted in an extremely unusual context
•
independent
•
alone
•
traveling on her own           
•
not sexualized at all
•
she's simply beautiful in her own           
•
a wanderer, living her own life, a strange, exotic being
•
black women were rarely represented as subjects in their own right
•
appears to live in harmony with nature
•
the lion seems careful not to                her
•
the painting can be seen as gendered
•
the lion male
•
the gypsy female
•
if Rousseau would have painted the gypsy as a man, it would have created a different meaning
•
the lion seems to be                      her so that she can have the freedom not just to sleep but to dream
•
reminds us of Mary of Egypt
•
the patron saint of penitents
•
born in Egypt, lived a sexually                  life
•
wandered the deserts
•
befriended a religious man on her journeys
•
he gave her his              to cover her body
•
after she died, he noticed a lion standing by her body licking her feet
•
the lion dug a deep grave and he buried her there
•
she lies on the ground as if asleep but her eyes are partly open as if in a             
•
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."
Tiepolo´s Cleopatra: Agency in Paint
The Political and Sexual Agency of Cleopatra
Gainesborough and 18th Century Effeminism
Soldiers, Chivalry, and Men of Feeling
Gainsborough's Portrait of Karl Friedrich Abel
The Ligoniers: The Tensions of Gender in Paint
Effeminacy and the Culture of Sensibility
Gainsborough's Cottage Door: Charity and Sensibility
Seduction in Boucher's pastoral paintings
Boucher's Madame de Pompadour: Controlling the Gaze
Rococo Eroticism in 18th Century Popular Culture
John Lavery in Morocco: Orientalism and the Academy
Hazel Lavery and the Politics of Display
Hilda Rix Nicholas in Morocco
The Dream by Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy
Restaging the Nude: Matisse's Dance
Cezanne’s Bather: Masculinity and Movement
Max Dupain (1911-1992): Australian Men on the Beach
Frida Kahlo's Fulang-Chang and I
Frida Kahlo: Self Portrait with Cropped Hair
Myth and Sexuality: Glyn Philpot's Oedipus
Australian Indigenous Visual Culture