Lessons from Monet

Everything was going well with the new Essence portraits until I began to work on one of Claude Monet. The first one was of Andy Warhol, which set the tone for the others as I tried to combine my style somewhat with theirs. For instance for Vincent van Gogh, I made “strings:” of tiny letters to emulate his longer strong brush strokes. Rembrandt, I played with his softness and the light. I am working my way through the artist whose work influenced me, my heroes.

I was also fixed on painting faces, up close with maybe a bit of neck, stylized and simplified, thus the term Essence refers both the our spiritual essence, physical essence (always symbolically referring to the pre-matter branes of strings – the energy that matter is made of) plus, the essence of a person's appearance. Faces, just faces.

But when I came to Monet, I became stumped.

As I stared at my initial portraits of Monet, I knew something was missing. But what?

Actually, I had the text I knew I was to use, a Psalm that seems to me to refer to Monet. That was one of the first ones I had as I peruse through Bible texts searching for appropriate ones for portraits, wildlife and other paintings.

The difficulty was whatever I drew and painted did look like Monet, but somehow it was wrong – a likeness that was missing his essence.   My portrait looked like Monet, but failed to captue him. Hmmm...  This went on for a week, on and off as I pondered Monet and his life.

I first learned about the wonder and even magic of strokes from Monet, who “held” regular classes for me through his works hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art . I learned about art from many of the works of artists at the Met and MoMa , from the time that I was a pre-teen growing up in NYC, armed with a passionate curiosity about art, way too much free time that needed to be spent away from home, passes for free public transportation, and as a student free admittance to all of the museums.

Being nearsighted, actually with better than normal vision up close, I have always been most comfortable getting as close to things I want to see (especially art) as my nose will allow.

Since I was at the Met on a almost every other day schedule, except for summers, and also at MoMA regularly, their guards came to know me, trust me and even watch over me as I roamed and explored. It did not take long until they allowed me to get as up close and personal as I wanted with paintings as they knew I would never touch one, plus out of respect, I even held my breath, usually making a grand display of that effort. I laugh now, because I sort of took a gulp and went “into” a painting much like a diver. Back in my girlhood on wintry or bad weather afternoons the Met was fairly empty, and there were times that I was the only person in some of the rooms, including those that have Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.

Last spring the Wildenstein Gallery gave NYC a world class type of museum show of Monet's works. It was crowded, but after assuring the guards that I would not actually touch the works, that I am just a near-sighted artist, they also allowed me to come close, but now I quietly take care not to even breathe on the works (there is moisture in breath).

Monet taught me more about how to paint and strokes than anyone, except van Gogh.

Monet's strokes are multi-colored, multi-sized, textural blobs of paint. Unlike the Pointillist Seurat, Monet's strokes are not of one size, they overlap and one grand cascading jumble of color. Certainly more than any other artists work, my original approach to using symbol-strokes was influenced by Monet. M colors are always influenced by Monet as one can learn a great deal about color from studying his work.

We know that Monet painted outdoors, including in horrible weather, working quickly to catch the light, that he would return to the same spot to paint day after day, as change between canvasses, each canvas only worked on for the time that the light was relatively the same as when it was begun. Thus there are series of paintings that show the movement of light through the day. Monet painted in a hurry, capturing the essence of a place, capturing its light. His strokes are the hurried and thoughtful strokes of a master; they are the notes of a symphony of color that he plays upon his canvases.

It took a man who was strong, physically and in resolution to produce the art that Monet did. Physically, he endured long days outdoors in the cold and heat. We see photographs of his large studio at Giverney, but that came late in life. Most of his paintings were created outdoors as Monet painted what he immediately saw. To do this he was lugging around paints, brushes, solvents, an easel and lots of canvases, from location to location, often on foot. He would stand all day long in whatever conditions, painting. He was strong is resolution, too as he struggled for a long time to make ends meet for his wife Camille and their two children. Then after her death he continued to struggle to take care of his two sons plus the family of Alice Hoschedé, who became his second wife, and her six children.

Monet's career spanned the emergence of photography on into the Twentieth century, so we have photographs of him, as well as portraits. In one of my favorites, he is youngish, and has a walking stick in his hand; he pauses for the camera for a moment clearly about to resume his walk. Monet was a strong, vital, good looking man and clearly from his output of paintings and projects at Giverney, very physically active. Only in a few of the last photographs, after he was famous and well, older, does he seem slowed down – but he ever physically active, calm but in motion.

To capture the essence of Monet, the artist in his prime, I needed his body, at least his strong shoulders that had supported so much and so many, and perhaps Impressionism, which ushered in Modern Art.

I began again and the effort was better, but difficult to complete as something was still missing. Monet without color is, well, not Monet. However, my original Essence works are black and white, but I will be using the images in later works that involve color. So how could I reconcile this?

There is more shading, built of layers of symbol-strokes, often made with very thin nibs or brushes, than in any portraits thus far. Then, at the very end, using a brush, I added in pure white daubs of symbol strokes, even in the background, adding a bit of color to the not as pure white paper. There is a bit of the purest white in his eyes, those eyes that saw such color and light!

Thus, in my own first portrait of Monet that seemed acceptable, that captured Monet, his essence, and his blobs of strokes permeated the whole of the space, the paper, not just the image of his physical body. He takes over the whole space the way that dynamic and charismatic people can enter a room, most quietly, but their vital energy colors the space with their presence.

Once again, I learn from Monet.

January 24, 2008

[Note: for more about Monet 's influence on Judy Rey Wasserman and UnGraven Image theory see: Monet's Blobs and the Hebrew Letters  ]