Claude Monet Shadows on the Sea - the Cliffs at Pourville 1882 oil on canvas Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen |
Claude Monet Seascape - Shipping by Moonlight 1864 oil on canvas National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh |
Claude Monet Doges' Palace, Venice 1908 oil on canvas Brooklyn Museum |
"In Modernist accounts, Monet's technical innovations are a mark of his critical and moral detachment from the codes, conventions and assumptions of Academic art. But just as important, they are seen to represent a similar detachment from the experiences and commodities of 'mass culture' which are considered 'inauthentic'. Monet's modernism, therefore, is regarded in such accounts as establishing a self-critical otherness to modernization and to capitalism's commodification both of experience and of most representations of experience. For Modernists, the autonomy of art and of aesthetic judgments is regarded as potentially emancipatory in an economic and social system where everything appears subject to rationalization and normalization. We might ask, though, for whom is there the possibility of such emancipation? Inevitably, as Modernists acknowledge, it will be for an elite (possessing, in Pierre Bourdieu's analysis, intellectual capital, though not necessarily economic capital) with the appropriate sensibility and developed critical faculties. . . . These ideological interests help explain why, for many Modernists, Monet's practice, where there is some level of emphasis on technical and formal issues, is regarded as exemplary. This relative emphasis is sometimes regarded as an absolute, pure and independent essence; the 'autonomy of medium' (surface, flatness, color, shape, texture, etc.) is seen as a value supposedly transcending the moral and social demands of historical circumstances."
– Nigel Blake and Francis Frascina, from the chapter Modern Practices of Art and Modernity in Modernity and Modernism : French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (Yale University Press, 1993)
Claude Monet Ice breaking up on the Seine near Bennecourt 1893 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
Claude Monet Poplars on the Epte 1891 oil on canvas National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh |
Claude Monet Springtime 1872 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
Claude Monet Summer 1874 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
Claude Monet Boulevard des Capucines, Paris 1873-74 oil on canvas Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City |
Claude Monet St Germain l'Auxerrois, Paris 1867 oil on canvas Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin |
Claude Monet Yellow Irises ca. 1914-17 oil on canvas National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo |
Claude Monet Wisteria ca. 1925 oil on canvas Gemeentemuseum, The Hague |
Claude Monet Japanese Bridge ca. 1918-24 oil on canvas Fondation Beyeler, Switzerland |
Claude Monet Japanese Footbridge, Giverny ca. 1920-24 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
Claude Monet Waterlilies 1904 oil on canvas Musée d'art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre |