Picturing Tropical Nature Book

"Those masters, so overrated in their day, and so underrated in ours."

--Baudelaire

"In Manet, Baudelaire must have sensed a certain division between the picturesque romanticism which was dying out, and the realism which resulted from it as by an elemantary reflex, easily taking its place, as if by a reaction of mental distaste and weariness. Just as the eye replies with a 'green' to a too prolonged and insistent 'red,' so too, in the arts, an overindulgence in fantasy is compensated for by a regime of 'truth.' Which is no reason why one side should insult the other; nor why one side should consider itself bolder, and the other consider itself infinitely wiser."

--Valery