It's a quality shared with Henri Rousseau, with whom Eilshemius was grouped in Museum Folkwang's recent «In the Shadow of the Avant - Garde»: both were ambivalent
about academicism, both somehow avant - garde and vernacular, both candidates for the contested status of «outsider artist».
In fact, it's an identical feeling — gratuitous bravura technique, no content; painting
about nothing;
academicism disguised by flash surface.