Tag — Impressionism
The League of Extraordinary Heretics
L’Orangerie, built specifically for Monet’s last great work, his waterlilies series.
Paul and I both love Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. We’ve traveled the world to worship at Impressionists Temples: The Getty Museum, our Mecca in Los Angeles. The Art Institute in Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Even the tiny Impressionist room in the Glyptotek in Copenhagen, with a painting by Renoir of our neighborhood park. And now, at long last, the Musee d’Orsay and L’Orangerie in Paris.
As a teenager I would see posters and calendars full of pastel reproductions of Monet’s waterlilies or Van Gogh’s sunflowers and think, “Ick. Too pretty.” Then I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, walked into the enormous Impressionist wing, and nearly fell to my knees. The impact of those pieces in real life, the depth of the paint strokes, the vibrations of the color — there’s no way to reproduce it. No way at all.
The more I’ve learned about the Impressionists–and perhaps even more so, the post-Impressionists– the more I’ve come to feel a kinship with them. Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and dear, broken Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Latrec: I adore them all. I feel if I could meet them today we would be like siblings: all bickering and laughing: remembering and reaching. These painters, who we now see as little more than producers of decorative posters, were once brave, bold radicals.
In the last 1800’s, there were two ways to succeed as artists: show in the Salon, or show in the Academy. Both French institutions presented perfectly executed works of art. And, both institutions insisted there was only one way to create and present said art. “Real” art, said the Institution, was neo-classical art. These acceptable pieces depicted the same set of myths and Bible stories, all portrayed with familiar, formulaic precision. It was pretty, perfected, and above all tame.
The Impressionists saw another way, craved another way. Truth came at them from odd angles, and they wanted to express the impressions reality made upon them. But the Academy and the Salon had no room for exploration. The new work was considered ugly, inappropriate, and misconstrued. So the new Impressionists broke away. They left paying jobs and secure posts. They gave up the professional credentials and the assured success that came with membership in the Institution. They risked everything. The Impressionists were reformers — not to make a name for themselves — but because it was the only way to be themselves.
Take for instance Edgar Degas, a privileged child from a family of wealthy bankers, who painted successfully in the Academic style — until he met the Impressionists. Or Edouard Manet, formally trained and accepted into the Salon, who threw his “opportunities” aside and instead surrounded himself with artists experimenting in new techniques. Or my favorite, Vincent Van Gogh, a seminary student with a guaranteed career in the church, who left it behind to follow the deep pull art, truth, and post-impressionism had on his heart.
I suppose by now you are seeing the parallels that draw me to these rebellious souls. I too had a career which was controlled by two great institutions — the Catholic and the Protestant. I too was set up for immenent success within that system. I too fell in with a crowd of outliers. I too left it all behind to follow a pull towards something “post.” (In this case, post-modernism as opposed to post-impressionism.) Like Van Gogh I battle depression. Like Toulouse-Latrec I work around a broken body. Like Monet I tend to circle around the same source material over and over again.
These are my kinsmen, these heretics we. And in their stories I find comfort.
What great artists are your withmates? Who in history partners you on your journey? Do tell in the comments below.
Stayed tune for my next Post-Impressionist post: Vincent Van Gogh and The Terrible Need. Join the mailing list or follow me on Twitter and you won’t miss a thing. Thank you for being here!
