This evening, hubby took off to spend the holidays with his family in San Diego County. Yesterday, we went to the Cleveland Museum of Art to see a special exhibit entitled: Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. As it’s due to close on January 6, there would have been no other day when we could have seen it. It was a fantastic show. Beyond the image of the yuge, thoroughly non-vegetable top below are images of some of the paintings on display in the exhibit.
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Claude Monet was both a painter and a gardener. His gardening, and the paintings he made of his garden, revolutionized the way gardens were depicted in art. Similarly inclined artists took up gardening and made paintings of them (Bonnard, Klee, Kandinsky, Liebermann, etc.). Others artists of this period depicted the gardens created by others in their paintings (van Gogh, Matisse, Rusinol, Singer Sargent, etc.).
The exhibit mainly concentrated on the paintings of Monet, with generous sprinklings of paintings by others. Monet began gardening at his first home, in Argenteuil. Later, he moved his family to Giverny, where he built a huge garden, including the water garden where he grew the waterlilies depicted from some of his most famous paintings.
Hubby asserts that in 1873 there were no red dahlias that grew that tall. If you disagree, you’ll have to argue with him.
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Renoir may have been painting Monet as he was working on the painting shown at the top.
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Monet depicted in paintings the Japanese-style bridge he built in his water garden during two particular periods. The first was around the year 1900, and the second was during the last decade of his life, between 1918 and 1926. Following are images of two paintings of the bridge, each from one of the two periods. The first work is lovely in the way we come to associate Monet’s impressionistic technique. The second was a great surprise to me, because it is so expressionistic rather than impressionistic. [Disclaimor: Unlike the other images in this diary, I’m not sure that these two particular paintings were actually in this exhibition, but I saw paintings similar to these.]
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Also included in the show were works from a series entitled the Grand Decorations. These painting were made during World War I, and many of these paintings are infused with more somber colors, expressing his despair over the destruction caused by the war. One of these works, called the Agapanthus Triptych, spans 42 feet; there’s no way an image of the whole thing can do it justice, so I’ve just included a detail from it below. Ironically, after he started working on it, he actually removed the agapanthuses from the painting, but the name stuck.
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Paintings of gardens by dozens of other artists were also included. Here are a not entirely random sample of offerings from other artists, ending with a contribution by Matisse. (It’s something of a mystery to me as to why the organizers included Matisse in the title of the exhibition. Only five of his paintings were in the show, as opposed to the dozens by Monet.)
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This van Gogh had an incredible three-dimensional feel to it.
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I had never heard of Santiago Rusinol (there’s a tilde over the n, but diacritical marks are currently beyond me) before this exhibition, but paintings like this one made me a believer.
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Who knew there was a German impressionist?
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Hubby looked at this painting and suggested that, on discovering tropical horticulture, Matisse’s mind went sproing!
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Leaving the world of the impressionists and post-impressionists, let’s get on to the comments!
TOP COMMENTS December 20, 2015
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors! Let us hear from YOU when you find that proficient comment.
From ZenTrainer:
This comment by Denise Oliver Velez hit the spot:
At 68, and black, and female — I don’t forget. Ever.
Republican controlled legislatures across the nation are taking away access to voting — something many of us fought and died for to get.
If Republicans get a chance to pack SCOTUS — what will stop another series of Taney-like descisions?
as did this one by CwV:
People had a purity test.
Boneheads.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The lesser of two evils is less evil.
Sometime you have to make the calculation of who is going to do the least damage and vote accordingly.
I call it defensive voting.
Only 2 of the about 10 comments I thought were top comment worthy in Vetwife's diary Let’s Walk Down Memory Lane Shall We! If you were too young...Read and Learn. I think this diary could maybe be added to the DK masthead and put an end once and for all to the "I'm not voting for the Dem unless my demands are met" mentality.
TOP MOJO December 19, 2015
(excluding Tip Jars and first comments) *Got mik!*
TOP PHOTOS December 19, 2015
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