Bad Impression (A critic confesses: I hate Monet.)

New York Magazine ^ | Mark Stevens

[nickcarraway]

Yes, Claude Monet is a great painter. But the very idea of Monet sometimes makes me want to kick a golden retriever. The air around him is clotted with cheerful clichés. He has become the pretty-picture man—haystacks, cathedrals, Venice—who offers a reprieve from difficult art. He is Father Time among the water lilies at Giverny. He is postcards, calendars, and countryside. Since he sells more tickets to museums than most of the nineteenth-century painters who are his equal, museums regularly find new ways to exhibit his work. (Monet is Money.) The latest is “Monet’s London: Artists’ Reflections on the Thames (1859–1914),” a show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art fashioned around Monet’s series of paintings of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament. The idea of pairing this painter with London is, of course, very seductive. “Monet’s London” sounds like one of those summer vacations to England and France that one can claim is also educational. Sometimes, I’d rather rough it.

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida—and coordinated in Brooklyn by Elizabeth A. Easton—the exhibition offers viewers a social and visual sketch of the Thames during England’s rapid industrialization in the nineteenth century. The river, a churning highway steeped in fog and smoke, attracted many artists of the period who wanted to capture the new realities of modern life; the show presents a selection of their views, among them a fine array of prints and photographs of life along the riverbank and two wonderful paintings by Derain. The Thames could provoke in artists both an intense, descriptive realism and—owing to the foggy environment—an air of romantic reverie. In Whistler, you can see each at work: a dreamy evocation of the river (particularly in his nocturnes) and a sharp-eyed view of life on the docks. The American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn also created lushly poetic images that nevertheless reflect our fascination with fact.

Monet (1840–1926) visited London three times around the turn of the century. He stayed at the Savoy Hotel, from which he painted the nearby bridges. He also found a vantage point across the river from which to paint the Houses of Parliament. He would sketch out the smoky, intoxicating effects of light and then usually finish the canvasses at home in Giverny. (He liked to say that it took him long hours of labor to capture a fleeting moment.) He took little interest in the social bustle of the river. The Houses of Parliament seemed to represent nothing more to him than an interesting vertical. In that respect, Monet was a remarkably solipsistic artist, one who asked even Parliament, a symbol of the larger nation, to yield to the individual eye.

Which also makes me irritable. I wonder if Monet chose to paint Parliament partly because (like the face of a cathedral) it represented something large-minded—and he wanted instead to assert the private and idiosyncratic. In Monet’s later work, light dissolves every declarative form. Much as a meditating Buddhist will empty a moment of distractions, he created an enveloping atmosphere of visual rapture, one in which nothing was allowed to intrude upon the mind or interrupt the eye. The sensations created by such a sensibility are very pure—but also circumscribed. Monet was a radical artist who excised much. That’s partly why he is popular today: He created a paradise without metaphysical complications.

Well, the argument goes, shouldn’t paradise, of all places, be easy? Perhaps the best of all possible worlds will indeed finally arrive when Parliament melts magnificently in the eye. But I like an edgier Eden, one that does not entirely forget the difficulties of existence or the awkwardness of other people. I prefer the exquisite Dionysian ferocity of Matisse’s Dance I, which emphasizes communal release, to Monet’s passive bliss. Cézanne best described Monet: “He is only an eye—but, my God, what an eye.”

[Republicanprofessor]

Art ping.

Let Sam Cree or me know if you want to be added to or deleted from the list.

[Republicanprofessor]

We need some images for this article.

Monet's and Derain's views of Parliament. I don't know if these were in the show or not.

I love the internet; not only do I get my "fix" on art topics, but I can see images paired that I've never seen in person before.

Derain does have more solid images of Parliament. Even the sun is more solid. But the author is wrong that Monet is all eye candy; he does have content and meaning in the very items he chooses. Why Parliament? Probably because it is a symbol of English government and national Gothic architecture. Monet chose Rouen cathedral to paint for the same reason: it glorified France.

[Joe 6-pack]

It almost looks as if Monet was trying to recreate the now mythic "Impression: Sunrise," for the British crowd....

[AnAmericanMother]

J.M.W. Turner

Henry Pether

Another, I think better, Derain

[AnAmericanMother]

BTW,

Baroque is what you are when you are out of Monet.

. . . badda-bing.

< sorry, you can hit me now. >

[Republicanprofessor]

I was looking forward to your comments.

Monet was definitely influenced by Turner, and I love that Turner of the burning of the (old) Houses of Parliament. It shows how his work is all fire, air, water and very little solid ground. Even the bridge at the right hardly looks solid.

I do a funny thing in class with Monet and works like these. If you could "punch your hand" at the objects in the painting, would you hit something solid? With Monet, even his cathedrals seem like air and you could punch with impunity. Same with Turner. (Now, with the Post-Impressionists, you'd hit something solid and hurt your hand.) Don't do this in a real museum; you could be in for $40 million worth of damage!

Sorry your Pether work did not come through. I don't know his work.

[wagglebee]

I went to the Monet exhibit at the Bellagio in Las Vegas back in December, it was absolutely incredible. I stayed for three hours.

[AnAmericanMother]

Dang, it was there a minute ago!

Mid- to late-Victorian English painter (1830-1902). Somewhat pedestrian but very atmospheric work. Best known for his pictures of water by moonlight.

[walden]

I was also there a long time-- in fact, I was back in town the following year and went again. Fabulous! And, I disagree that Monet was merely an "eye"-- in fact, I don't know what that means. If they're trying to say that his work isn't "emotional" then I disagree completely-- to work to capture light as he did displays a passionate love of the beauty of color.

[Sam Cree]

I am pretty much of a Turner fan. This is one of my favorites, I love trains also:

[wagglebee]

The thing that amazed me the most is that all of Monet's worked seemed to become "clearer" depending on the distance you stood from them. Posters and pictures in books don't do them justice.

[Sam Cree]

The writer doesn't make his point. It would have helped if he'd mentioned what it is that he really liked. I guess I am not taking him seriesly after having read this (silly) sentence:

"I prefer the exquisite Dionysian ferocity of Matisse’s Dance I, which emphasizes communal release"

[Ditto]

The thing that amazed me the most is that all of Monet's worked seemed to become "clearer" depending on the distance you stood from them.

Exactly correct. Juxtapositions. The eye blends the image.

Nobody "gets them" without seeing the original. One of the most fun I had with my kids was showing them a very large Monet Water Lilly canvas at the Carnegie in Pittsburgh. I intentionally walked them up close to the painting at first and asked them what they saw. They were not "impressed".;~))

Then I walked them across the room to sit on a bench and asked them to look at it again. They fell in love with it.

Amazing talent involved in painting a large canvas, at arms length, that is intended for viewing from many yards away. A person has to be exceptionally skilled in seeing the "important" detail to render that image. I only wish I had a room big enough to do a Monet justice.

[wagglebee]

I only wish I had a room big enough to do a Monet justice.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that most people who can afford a Monet probably have a room in their house that's big enough for it.

[walden]

"Posters and pictures in books don't do them justice."

So true. I think there's something about the brokenness of the color, and the way one color zings off of another, that the camera just cannot capture.

I am a painter myself, mostly in oils, and I had the funniest reaction the first time I left that exhibition-- even though I KNOW it's not true, my thought was, "His paint must just be BETTER than mine!" Wrong-- it's not about the paint. ;)

[wagglebee]

My guess is that the moronic author of this commentary was very supportive of federal money being spent on "artwork" such as a Crucifix in a jar of urine.

even though I KNOW it's not true, my thought was, "His paint must just be BETTER than mine!" Wrong-- it's not about the paint.

Maybe it was this:

[walden]

Oh, I doubt it. He just saw more color than most people, and I have discovered that a trained eye is something one can acquire. Takes time, and practice, though.

[Petronski]

Monet is genius.
This writer is jealous.

[vannrox]

I was wondering if you liked more impressionist art... I have a real liking for George Inness. He might be too reaslistic for some people, but he blends his images with such beauty and sweep that they appear magical.

October

Passing Clouds