NaBloPoMo Day 29: Seeing Monet In Venice in Brooklyn with Renya

 Renya and I made a plan to escape Work Island (which is what the kids call Manhattan these days, I learned that eavesdropping on the subway). We excursioned ourselves to the outer borough of Brooklyn to go to the Brooklyn Museum and see Monet in Venice. The whole way there on the 2, Renya and I cackled about Work Island. It's objectively hilarious.

So we get to the Brooklyn Museum, go up to the exhibit. Here's the rather morbid opening salvo:

MEMORIES OF VENICE

The moment has now come to leave this
unique light. I’ve spent some delightful hours here,
almost forgetting that I’m now an old man.
—Claude Monet

Venice resonated with Monet’s artistic concerns and practices, enchanting

the artist with its iridescent light, ephemeral atmospheric effects, and the

interplay of stone, water, and reflection. Like the Giverny gardens and pond

he designed to provide painting motifs, Venice’s architecture rising from the

lagoon offered a confluence of art and nature. The city symbolized both the

suspension and passage of time. Monet faced a similar temporal paradox:

an “instant” took a long time to capture in paint.

Monet told his dealers that he would bring back only a few canvases of

Venice, just to “have a record of the place.” His plan to return to the city

ended with Alice’s death, and the works he started there in 1908 remained

untouched until 1911. The artist thought of her constantly while completing

the paintings in his studio, refining and harmonizing the effects he had

first perceived en plein air. Balancing observation, sensation, imagination,

and painterly expression, he created a modern and personal vision of Venice,

imbued with his “memory of the happy days spent with . . . dear Alice.

Lots of pastel.

So yeah, Monet's wife Alice died either in Venice or right after they got back to France. I did not know this before we went. 

I also learned that Monet would move around the same buildings and paint them from different spots in the different light. Like he had five canvases of different angles of the same building or maybe different buildings. He would walk around and paint each one at dawn. Then do the same circuit at whatever midmorning, coming back at sunset. He was doing the painting thing like it was his job, in other words.

...and so the water lilies came to be.

The only thing I really knew going in was Venice was where Monet really went throw hot for painting water. He got really into it. So he probably would not have gotten masterful enough to finish painting all those water lilies had it not been for Venice. Apparently he started the water lily paintings before he left but just couldn't get them right. Alice was annoyed at him for poking around with them for so long.

At the end of the exhibit when we exited through the gift shop, they had a photo booth. Renya and I looked at each other - totally, why not. I loved the photos we took. It cost money, don't get me wrong, but good on the museum figuring out how to level up their merch game.