Fresh from being celebrated at the Royal Academy of Arts in London with her largest retrospective to date, Rose Wylie is finally receiving her first solo exhibition in France – at the age of 91. Born on October 14, 1934, the British artist has waited a long time for her moment, much like many women artists of her generation. Now, that recognition has arrived. At the Zwirner Gallery, located in the Marais district, she has chosen first and foremost to pay homage to one of the French artists she most admires: Le Douanier Rousseau. It is a fitting echo to the current retrospective devoted to Rousseau at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, honoring this singular, genre-defying painter. Picasso revered him, as did the Surrealists. Wylie joins this line of admirers with her exhibition titled “Henri, Egypt… Bette, Bear.” Henri, of course, refers to Henri Rousseau.
At the heart of the exhibition, her canvas Homage to Henri, Bette and Bear directly references Mauvaise surprise, which the supposedly naïve Rousseau painted between 1899 and 1901. In both paintings, a bear approaches a young girl, while a mysterious man, lurking in the forest’s shadows, threatens them with a rifle. The composition and motifs are nearly identical. But Wylie takes up the reference with a brush that is more forceful, almost wild. She floods the landscape in a wash of dark red; the lake in the background becomes a pinkish stain, the tree dividing the canvas in two turns into something resembling a brown lightning bolt; as for the rifle, only its tip is visible in Wylie’s version, somewhere between a flower and a phallus.
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