Welcome to One Nice Present, the place Observer highlights a not too long ago opened exhibition at a museum not in New York Metropolis, a spot we all know and love that already receives loads of consideration.
One of many extra hilarious ideas invented by Gen-Z is that of “the physique depend,” a dependable vein of TikTok content material fodder whereby individuals ask one another what number of sexual companions they’ve had. Even leaving apart the connotation that having intercourse with somebody is much like killing them, it’s wild to indicate that any grownup might or ought to preserve observe of that quantity. It jogs my memory of Martin Scorsese being defined the idea of a “sneaky hyperlink” by his 20-something daughter and shrugging, “We by no means used that time period. We by no means noticed particular individuals in my day.”
You must marvel what Philadelphia Zoomers will make of Henri Rousseau’s The Previous and the Current, or Philosophical Thought, which was painted in 1899 and celebrates his second marriage with pictures of each events’ deceased spouses within the clouds above. The portray is featured in “Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets and techniques,” a brand new exhibition on the Barnes Basis, which with 18 work, owns the world’s largest assortment of works by the artist. The present pairs these with different vital loans for a complete of 60 works, offering an authoritative introduction to this artist for these unfamiliar together with his distinctive profession.
Rousseau was a customs officer in Paris who solely turned an artist in his 40s; his work was exhibited on the Salon des Indépendants, the place anybody who paid the doorway charge might show their work. However you possibly can’t name him an outsider artist—not when his work was so in dialog with artwork historical past and so influential, particularly on acquaintances like Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso. In case you’ve been to the Museum of Trendy Artwork in the previous couple of years, you’ve most likely admired their main work by him, The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), which is on the Barnes. It’s laborious to consider it’s from the nineteenth Century as a result of it’s intensely unusual and fashionable. A lion sniffs the sleeper who is likely to be pretending to be asleep or truly dreaming. Both method, she smiles unconcerned. The folds of her hair turn into her hair, and her arm might turn into a guitar. There’s a lot right here concerning the nature of creativity.
The MoMA piece is proven alongside two of his different undisputed masterpieces for the primary time ever. These are Disagreeable Shock (1899-1901) from the Barnes and The Snake Charmer (1907) from the Musée d’Orsay. Within the former, a nude bather is shocked by a comically menacing bear as a hunter concurrently shoots the bear, which could clarify her curious pose and expression. As Christopher Inexperienced writes within the catalogue, “Is she a sufferer in mortal hazard in any respect?” {The catalogue} explains additional that the work “tapped into a recent style for erotic encounters between people and wild beasts,” and it does really feel doable that the adjective was meant to be ironic.
The Snake Charmer was made for Berthe Delaunay, mom of the modernist Robert Delaunay, and naturally, has its personal connotations. The charmer is female but in addition not fairly human, with pores and skin as black because the evening, hair beneath the knees and maybe some sort of fur. She’s a bizarre black gap on the middle of a lush, layered and false-looking jungle, drawing snakes not simply to her however into her world of shadows. Maybe Gen-Z can relate to those advanced views on heterosexuality, the place there may be as a lot to worry as there may be to have fun.
“Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets and techniques” is on view on the Barnes Basis via February 22, 2026.
Extra exhibition opinions
