Solo Date: The Brooklyn Museum

Monet and Venice

Yesterday, I made the journey from Midtown East to Brooklyn to get a glimpse of Monet and Venice, an exhibition I’ve been dying to see since it first opened to the public in October. The exhibition traces the inspiration behind Claude Monet’s Impressionist works, spanning Normandy’s beaches, Venetian cityscapes, and his celebrated water lilies. The exhibition opens with a collection of video stills, all working together in hypnotizing collaboration to fully immerse the audience in Venice’s architectural beauty, as well as the stunning movement of water within its canals. This room was a perfect preamble for what was to come. Monet skill as an artist captures this movement, his paintings a tangible study of the water’s fluidity and reflection.

I spent the next hour picturing myself living in these landscapes, sitting by the edge of the Japanese footbridge in Giverny, getting lost in the evening’s pinks and greens. I found solace in The Breakup of the Ice (1880), a landscape of the frozen Siene River, reminiscent of the icy Hudson, still frozen after last weekend’s winter storm. Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect (Le Parlement, effet de soleil) (1903) had the same effect. Here, Monet’s eye for water and light is particularly clear. The work’s palette is mesmerizing, the pinks and yellows of the glistening canal provide a dazzling foreground for the moody architecture that lurks just behind.

Left: Japanese Footbridge, Giverny, 1895. Oil on canvas. Center: The Breakup of the Ice, 1880. Oil on canvas. Right: Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect (Le Parlement, effet de soleil), 1903. Oil on canvas

In his work, Monet not only captures the light and color of a shoreline landscape, but the spirit of a city stuck in time during a period of rapid industrial growth. A last glimpse of serenity before the world fell into the depths of the modern. I left the exhibit and looked up at the bright evening light cascading over Brooklyn, wondering how Monet would have brought it to life.

Left: Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe, 1882. Oil on canvas. Center: Water Lillies, 1914-1917. Oil on canvas. Right: he Palazzo Contarini, 1908. Oil on canvas.

See you all next time! Xx Lucy.