KS2 Art and Design: Bob and Roberta Smith looks at Surprised! by Henri Rousseau

BOB AND ROBERTA SMITH:

Hello, I'm Bob and Roberta Smith. I'm a British artist and I use the superpower of looking. And in my own work I use the power of looking to see sound, to make images that convey words and ideas, but also noises and crashes and bangs. And we're going to look at a painting today which I think is a very noisy painting.

Oh, what's this? A painting by Rousseau.

I'm using my superpower of looking now. I'm looking at the painting and, actually, I'm looking, I'm looking, but I'm hearing things. And what I'm hearing is (thunder noise) because there are two enormous cracks of lightning here, and across the whole surface, Rousseau has painted it – I don't know how he's done this. It's a kind of magic. He's kind of created a surface where you can see the rain falling. And the wind is whooshing in and all the leaves have been taken one side. And we don't know if we're scared ofthe weather, or whether we're scared of the tiger, or whether the tiger's scared of the weather, or whether the tiger's looking at an antelope that he wants to eat. So there's lots going on. It's a world of confusion and it's a really exciting painting, but it's also – as I look at it – I can see it's a really careful painting. So you'd think excitement would mean Rousseau would have a brush like this and he'd be going, "Oh, this is exciting!" But he's not. He's making the painting like this. So he's thinking about all that sound and he's thinking about how to convey that in something which in the end is really beautiful.

I can see gourds, or plants, or pods, fruit growing on this tree. He's painted this tree in bright red and that leaps out at you. You can see distance. You can see the leaves and the foliage get smaller as you go further into the painting and things are larger as you come closer to the painting. The trees are putting their arms out across the space, across the jungle, and they're sort of saying, "This is ours, tiger. This jungle is ours and you're a bit of an imposter." But the tiger is also perhaps surprised by the sounds that are going on.

And, in fact, I do this when I'm making a painting myself – I might imitate the sounds of the noises of the things that I'm painting and you might do this. You know, if you're painting a car, you might go (car engine noises), you know. Or a steam train, you know, youmight imitate the sound of the thing actually, as you're drawing it. The smoke coming out of the steam train. And Rousseau was doing this, I'm sure, when Rousseau, the artist, was painting this painting, he was going (growls), or maybe he had a cat himself and he's going, "meow, meow". Imagine it purring. But he's very carefully made this beautiful tiger. Lovely, stripey tiger.

And we think of tigers, don't we, like Tigger in Winnie the Pooh as being impetuous and leaping around. Being impulsive. Jumpingeverywhere all the time, and this tiger is definitely playing to that audience, isn't he? He's leaping around. Look his foot is sticking out here, and his tails got tangled around these leaves. It's a beautiful painting, but it's also a noisy painting.

We've all got the superpower of looking, whether we're artists or not, and I hope it inspires you to look at the world afresh, come up with bright ideas about the world because, in a way, we're all artists.