Agapanthus is a
lovely, stalky, showy water flower that appears nowhere in the painting that
bears its name. It is very easy to say that more is suggested than appears on
these canvases, but I get ahead of myself.
This last Friday, I was one of the many who took advantage
of the museum’s Free Friday Exhibitions to see The Water Lilies by Claude
Monet. I did pay to rent the audio tour, partly out of curiosity and partly to
help block out the sounds of my fellow exhibit-goers. In both of these, I was
amply justified. Again, getting ahead of myself.
We ticket holders gathered in a gallery across the Sculpture
Hall from the exhibit. I got a post-it note on the back of my driver’s license
with the numeral 1 on it to hand over for my iPod. The gallery we waited in is
one of the European Art galleries, devoted to the Grand Tour expressed
primarily through landscapes.
Landscapes are the kind of work that I have to look at
closely before I have the sense that I’ve seen anything, and that is difficult
because I generally don’t like them. Judith cutting off Holofernes' head? I’m
there. Saint Francis staring at a skull a la Hamlet? I want it on a magnet. The
view of Tivoli
I read a whole book on how nature has been represented and thought
of by humans in terms of patriotism, nationalism, character, morality, etc. There
are oodles of plates of landscapes, and I looked at them and I understood what
Schama was saying about them and nothing felt forced. And yet, well, I don’t
get it, but there it is. Throw a knife in the hand of a woman shaming her
husband into committing suicide by demonstrating for him and I will find
everything to say about the furrowed brows, the great swath of color in her
robes, the deep darkness of the backgrounds, etc. But a wander through
threatening boulders? Meh. Barely an adjective. It occurs to me that going to
see the Monet may have been an odd decision in light (ha!) of that preference.
The group was asked to start to line up 5 minutes before our
ticket times. We immediately formed a perfectly straight queue in the middle of
the room, providing slalom for the talkative and very knowing man in the
wheelchair whose wife(?) must have been forever in the wrong if his constant
statements of correctness and criticism were any indication of his behavior in
private. Viewing the painting of St. Peter’s brought him to state that the
gallery is too small and that the paintings should be high, up high, not at eye
level. (I will here say that the glaring of the track lights off the works does
make close inspection a bit awkward) At our appointed time, we crossed the
entry way (Sculpture Hall) and got our iPod thingies and walked into the quiet
of black and white photographs, water gardens and the museum curator comforting
the art-hopeless through the work of seeing art.
I’ve never owned an iPod. This was my first chance even to
use one. I think I could get the hang of it, as long as I have an idea of where
the volume control is. And that is my only complaint about the audio
experience: there were times when it was too loud. No ear buds, instead the
headphones were fitted with soft and cushy pads. There was no loud clicking of
play buttons or metallic sliding of cassettes or clunky anything. It’s a
brilliant development in self-guided tours. Truth.
As you walk into the exhibit, you are greeted with a large
photograph of Monet and another large photograph of the water garden. There is
a bit of verbage about the dates of the work (1915-1926) and an introduction on
the iPod. The next gallery is dark and quiet with a soft bench and a projected
video of Monet painting in the garden at Giverny. I watched the video and
welcomed the peaceful musical interlude provided there. The video is about 2
minutes long and is on a continuous loop, and the music is excerpts from pieces
inspired by Monet’s work.
The next gallery held verbage about the garden, a very quick
biographical sketch of M. Monet and a black & white photograph of the
triptych taken in 1921.
The next three tracks on the iPod discussed the three
studies on the walls of the next gallery: two of water lilies and one of Agapanthus. The colors, brush strokes
and suggested shapes rather than finished representations are well worth the
time to stand still for a minute, off to the side, and just look at the work
the painter is doing in them. The curator of Modern and Contemporary art at the museum, Simon Kelly, gives what I found to be helpful information and a way
into the pieces. He offers general observations about color scheme and focuses
your attention on one or two details in each piece that act as an anchor for
viewing.
The Triptych is along the far wall, opposite the door you
walk through. I cried. It is nothing to say that though, because I will cry at
any movie where there are moving pictures and music playing. What I mean is
that something shifted when I saw the wall of shifting colors and barely
perceptible definition. In a garden, everything moves with wind or changes in
changing sunlight. A painting, especially one in a room with consistently
controlled lighting, does not ever change, except in the viewers’ perceptions.
As such, if the artist wants to invoke the feeling of a water garden, the
viewers’ attentions must constantly be drawn from one part of the painting to
another, following lines that here are like ripples but a foot across. My eyes
were not still the whole time I looked at the work.
There is a Diptych on the opposite wall, on the wall with
the door. It is far less smooth, even than the others, and I found it difficult
to enjoy fully. I did not want to look away from it either. According to track
06 on the iPod, Monet was legally blind in one eye and had 10% vision in the
other when he did this work, which is of the reflection of wisteria swagged from
the Japanese bridge over the water garden.
The exhibit ends just outside the gift shop where I traded
the iPod for my Driver’s License and filled out the very quick Exhibit Survey.
The gift shop, as most art museum gift shops, is a joy and while I do not know
if I’m as keen on decorating my home in one city (St. Louis) with the looks and
attractions of another city (Paris), the refrigerator magnets and playing cards
and also the Handbook to the St. Louis Art Museum Collection and a few of the
puzzles (double-sided, no less) appeal to the sense of responsible decorator in
me.
I plan to go again. I would really like to do more reading
on the criticism of the paintings, on the techniques that are used to preserve
and study them, of the garden at Giverny and perhaps even some more
biographical information about Monet himself. I hope that many people go and
see this exhibit, it is not a strain on the senses, and offers a carefully
created pleasant shift from the stress of day to day life and the sights of the
city.
No comments:
Post a Comment