Find what you love to do, do it your own way, and dedicate yourself to that pursuit. That's the lesson I took away from a visit last week to the Monet in Normandy exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Monet spent most of his life in northwest France, and the exhibit's several dozen paintings trace his development as an artist while documenting the natural world that surrounded him. I'm hardly an art historian, but seeing 60-some years worth of work compressed into a handful of galleries gave me a new perspective on Monet and a keen appreciation for his work ethic and for his accomplishments as a champion of personal vision.
"Regatta at Sainte-Adresse," from 1867, when Monet was 27, was my favorite of the earlier works. Even in this conventional scene there's something oddly personal and moving--I like to think that comes from Monet's commitment to paint what he saw, not necessarily what anyone else would see. That quality is buried in the more detailed images of the ships and buildings and bystanders, but it bursts through in his treatment of the sea and the sky.
Over the next few decades Monet found a way to tap into that personal vision, and it allowed him to pare down his work to its essential elements (apparently at some financial cost, given art buyers' preference for paintings with things like people and ships.)
"Grainstack at Sunset" from 1891, when Monet was 51, was my favorite painting in the show, and this little image doesn't come close to doing the original justice. In person the colors are incredibly rich and vibrant--they seem to radiate off the canvas. This image also does a poor job of capturing the almost abstract quality of the original. Standing in front of the painting, I felt as though Monet had used the real world merely as a springboard to allow us to sense the colors and feelings coursing through his head. The grainstack, the fields, the sky, the sunlight are just props--the painting's real subject is something else entirely.
The painting's surface is also intensively worked over, as though Monet returned to it again and again until he was satisfied. The note accompanying the painting mentions that he typically set out at sunrise or at sunset with a wheelbarrow filled with half-completed paintings and supplies, and he worked on the painting that best matched the day's weather and light conditions. I love the image that conjures up of a man passionately dedicated to his craft, working not just "when the spirit moved him" (like most artists in the popular imagination) but on a steady basis, allowing the spirit to find him because he was out there, at dawn or at dusk, with his wheelbarrow.
"Wisteria," from 1919-20, finished when Monet was 79, is one of the last paintings in the Legion of Honor galleries. I don't have nearly the same personal affection for this painting as I do for the two above, but it still strikes me as an extension of the themes of individual vision and hard work that resonate throughout the exhibit.
As with "Grainstack" above, the image here doesn't really convey the highly stylized and almost abstract nature of the original painting. Sure, it looks like a wisteria vine when it's compressed into a few square inches, but when I was standing in front of it, I was almost boggled by the colors and the brushstrokes rushing across the (fairly large) canvas.
Even though my art school days are long behind me, there's something deeply inspirational in Monet's ability to absorb a
conventionally beautiful image and use it as a vehicle for personal
expression that's relevant to my professional path today. Every job, every project is an opportunity to express myself fully. I'm not saying I approach my work as an artist per se (nor am I comparing myself to Monet), but I often face a choice between doing something the conventional way and doing it the way I believe it should be done, and Monet's example will help me make the right choice more often.
Although Monet finally achieved some financial security in the final decades of his life, he faced a number of personal difficulties. His second wife Alice died in 1911, and his son Jean died in 1914. After painting "Wisteria," he would undergo two surgeries for cataracts in 1923. And it appears that he kept painting through it all, right up until his death in 1926 at age 86. I have to believe there's a correlation between loving what you do, pursuing your personal vision, and finding the strength to keep doing it all your life, no matter what obstacles you face.
