Monet's Encore Success is a wonderful thing. Regardless of how we define it, it is the
ultimate goal of every artist. Whether it's a single, successful painting, or a
whole series of paintings, or an entire art movement, success is sweet.
Amazingly, though, it also has a downside. As Michelangelo discovered in
painting his Last Judgement, "what do you do for an encore?" is a very
real problem. Success means that to fail in the next endeavour makes the long
fall to the bottom, from the lofty heights of that success all the more
traumatic. For some artists, just the fear of that precipitous fall means a dead
end to their careers. Even for artists who merely continue doing that which
brought them their initial success, the challenge is quite difficult. Especially
in art, the public tires of success after what is often a surprisingly short
time. The mark of greatness in a painter is continued success, often against all
odds. Claude Monet bears that mark of greatness.Monet's struggles with
poverty as he and others gave birth to Impressionism, then nurtured it to
maturity and acceptance, are legendary. However by the 1890s, he could bask in
the financial success and critical acclaim his tireless efforts had brought him.
The only problem was, the Impressionist art movement, like the living things its
artists often painted, had begun to wither. One by one, Impressionist painters
moved on, quite often to even greater success. Monet, however, didn't. More than
any other artist, he considered Impressionism to be his, and with the creative
freedom that comes with financial success, he took personal possession of it,
perhaps because no one else seemed to want it. Stories abound of his loading a
carriage full of dozens of unfinished canvases, then journeying to a favourite
painting location to work on each one a few minutes when the light was just
right. Whether painting streams, trees, haystacks, or cathedrals, Monet seemed
out to systematically prove that Impressionism was not a worked-over mother lode
but a deep well from which the dedicated artist could forever draw forth a
refreshing wealth of incredible beauty. By the turn of the century, Monet
was 60 years old. Already he'd single-handedly extended the life of
Impressionism by an amazing ten years or more. But let's face it, even if you're
Claude Monet, there are only so many cathedrals and haystacks you can paint before
exhausting the subject matter. Comfortably ensconced in his country home a
Giverney, in what for most men would be their "declining years," he could have
rested on his laurels, though seldom is retirement an option for any painter so
long as he can see and still hold a paintbrush (both of which became
increasingly painful challenges as the years went by). Instead he picked up on a
thread that had always fascinated him in his art--water. First in his gardens,
he poured his financial resources into creating an aquatic paradise. Then he
poured his talent and waning energies into re-creating its subtle beauty on
canvas. Traditional shorelines disappeared as he peered deep into the water and
the plant life that floated upon it. His enormous canvases spread deep and wide
with luscious, cool, liquid colour, incredibly turned out to be his best work
ever. It was an encore to success even more successful than the success itself.
Contributed by Lane, Jim
1 August 1999 |
