On The Hungry Lion Attacking an Antelope

The environment is like the unconscious. It would be preferred by some to remain in the background. Foregrounding it is like the return of a repressed sense of its agency. Henri Rousseau’s work is very much about the agency of the plant. His module, like Piet Mondrian’s grid, is the leaf. While never having visited a tropical region and instead using the natural history museum as a guide, the vast majority of Rousseau’s popular work depicts jungles scenes.