This sweet and clever hommage to the Douanier – which Joe found in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, to give it its full title – places the correct prowling desert beast in place of Rousseau’s lion, a sleeping Indian in place of the Egyptian traveler and, most importantly, in place of the infinite stillness of the original landscape, here we have one crammed with noise unheard: the traffic in the background, the gambling world implied in the cards and the dice at the sleeping brave’s side, along with a bare-breasted Indian maiden on the cover of an Indian ‘Playboy.’ So much to keep at bay. No wonder he sleeps with one hand on his knife. (Gentles, once more forgive my persistent use of the word deemed inappropriate, ‘Indian’; it’s what the most defiant ones insist on calling themselves. The condescending revisionism – no matter how well meant – of the new, politically correct term strikes them as a form of unintended appropriation; they want nothing of such ‘kindness’. You wanted Indians? You got ’em!)
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