I will preface this review with the statement that Claude Monet
(1840-1926) is one of my favorite painters, hands down. This show, mostly
compiled from the private collections of the vestiges of the European
aristocracy, was an all around excellent experience.
The exhibition is showing at the Legion of Honor (17 June - 17
September 2006). The approximately fifty works therein contained spanned the
artist's entire career. All of the pieces were representations of various
idyllic scenes from the many years that the artist spent in Normandy in
Northern France. The imagery is generally bucolic and emblematic of the turn
of the century rural French experience. From sea-beaten cliffs, to roiling
seas, to the infamous haystacks and lily pads, to bustling sea-side tourist
towns, Monet captured the fleeting impressions of a unique and unmistakable
era.
The distribution of the pieces allows the viewer to see the
evolution of Monet's revolutionary and defining impressionistic technique. In
the earlier paintings the remnants of the realism of his predecessors is
easily visible. The edges are sharper. The blocks of color are more solid.
Depth of field is more clearly defined. Then as the exhibition progresses the
style begins to change.
Monet's characteristic faded, pastel blurriness begins to creep into
his work somewhere in the second gallery. The edges blur. The colors soften
and blend. The line between static and mobile fades. The viewer has now
entered a mildly hallucinatory dreamscape fresh out of a northern European
fairytale. Small brick cottages fade into flower-covered hillsides, which
fade into steeply sloping channeled cliffs, which fade into the pastel
maelstrom of the ocean, which fades into the airy pink remains of a hardly
present Norman sunset.
I find Monet's work the easiest to get lost in. It takes only a
glance to dive into the dancing realms of innumerable separate-yet-connected
pastel splotches. One painting can seem without end. So many layers of colors
from all ends of the spectrum. Images that appear to be nothing more than
random marking of color upon closer inspection, leap out in an
ever-so-pleasing impression of a beautiful reality with only so much a step
back and maybe a slight squint of the eyes.
This exhibition comes highly recommended. Not only are the pieces
exquisite, but they are also rare. Many of them are on American soil outside
of a private European collection for the very first time. I would consider
this an afternoon very well spent in a baby blue and soft pink wonderland of
bygone times.
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