A Letter To Van Gogh's "Starry Night" From Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy"

Hey, man.

We've been hanging on the same wall at the MoMa for a few years now, but I've never had the chance to talk to you.

Maybe it's because you're always surrounded by people. Like ALL THE FUCKING TIME.


Oh, I get it. You're one of the most recognizable paintings since Grant Wood's "American Gothic" at the Art Institute in Chicago. So people naturally flock to you when they spot you on the wall; hell, some even make a special trip here just to see you. So, sure, you should be getting a lot of attention.

The thing is, so should I.

Dude, there's so much to me. Rousseau himself wrote "A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic. The scene is set in a completely arid desert. The gypsy is dressed in oriental costume." That shit is poetry.

And you're a starry sky?! Big whoop. You're the Pink Floyd laser show at the planetarium. And check out this love:

“The Sleeping Gypsy is formally exacting — its contours precise, its color crystalline, its lines, surfaces, and accents carefully rhymed. Rousseau plays delicately with light on the lion's body. Rousseau was a self-taught painter, whose work seemed entirely unsophisticated to most of its early viewers. Much in his art, however, found modernist echoes: the flattened shapes and perspectives, the freedom of color and style, the subordination of realistic description to imagination and invention.” – Museum of Modern Art



I am a work of art that you'd hang over your mantel. You're like a bedazzled mousepad in some tween girl's bedroom.



Okay, I'll admit– I've been harsh; I am a bit jealous. Maybe I'm being a bit petty with the amount of attention you get versus me. Maybe your themes of wonder and dreams with the backstory of being the actual window view from a sanitarium makes you deservedly one of the most technically accomplished and discussed paintings. Okay, I'll give you that.


But we're both Post-Impressionist oil on canvas works, so let's just be honest here– that Mona Lisa is crap, right?