In Part 1, following a discussion with Mitch Albala,[1] the question arose, why if the results of Monet’s work (particularly within his later work such as the Water Lily series) is so non-literal (see two “water lily” details below), does Monet constantly look at what he is painting (as evidenced by a rare film which can be seen on Youtube). One might think that to be non-literal one might do a fair amount of imagining or working out of one’s head, as opposed to a steady looking or engagement with the subject. In other words, if one’s work is very non-literal, almost to the point of abstraction, would one be painting more in the mode of – say – Picasso or the Abstract Expressionists? Certainly, that’s a possibility, but with the Impressionists and particularly with Monet, I would argue that something else entirely is going on.

But let’s take a look at what Monet has said about his way of painting.

1. Don’t See the Thing as a Thing

He once said to a friend that he “wished he had been born blind and then had suddenly gained his sight so that he could have begun to paint…without knowing what the objects were that he saw before him.” So for example, if you had just gained your sight and you saw the image above, you wouldn’t know if you were looking at Aunt Mary or a plate of spaghetti. It would have no meaning. It would just be sense data. So for this reason, Monet suggests, “When you go out to paint try to forget what object you have before you – a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it emerges as your own naive impression of the scene before you.”

Non-literal, for Monet then, means, simply, don’t see the thing as a thing.

2. See Only Visual Elements

So if you look at a house and don’t see “a house,” what do you see? Well, above Monet says he sees “a little square of blue…and oblong of pink; so he is seeing color, but not the thing (house, boat, person) as a thing. But notice also that often he speaks of a particular kind of color. Again Monet: “For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value (emphasis added).”

What Monet is describing here is tonality, the unifying color that bathes everything. This is also known as atmospheric color. One cannot see a house (or anything else) except through the “surrounding atmosphere.” Note also that because the “appearance changes at every moment,” it behooves the Impressionist, at “every moment,” to look again to see what the subject is doing.[2]

Monet calls this kind of steady looking “instantaneity”: “I’m getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but the more I see that a lot of work has to be done in order to render what I’d call ‘instantaneity’, the ‘envelop’ above all, the same light spread over everything the more I’m disgusted by easy things that come in one go. Anyway, I’m increasing the need to render what I experience….”

With his emphasis on the “need to render” what he experiences, we arrive at a crucial point.

3. The Realization of Feelings

We have arrived at what I think may be the most important aspect of Impressionism, but I caution the contemporary reader: remember, that in 1865, just as the Impressionists were grouping together, there were several strands of thought that cohered, ultimately became dominate both in Europe and in the US, and that provide, to a considerable degree, a philosophical foundation for our way of life today. Here’s the punch line:  it is that bundle of ideas, which we have inherited, that the Impressionists passionately opposed. In fact, the way of thinking about creativity that was opposed is now so completely accepted as the new normal, things we simply assume to be true, that it makes it very difficult for us 21^st century moderns to understand the view it replaced.  To fill this out properly is well beyond the scope of a blog, but let me give you an example.

We may think of paintings as having an imitative function (they are pictures of something), as something nice to look at (they are pleasing), or as advancing our understanding (as in conceptual art which practitioners believe communicate extraordinary “content”). And in each of these cases, the artist has feelings about the success, or merit, or value, or worth of the piece in question. We may say that these kinds of feelings – those that depend upon the result – are, therefore, contingent and stand apart from the work. They are separate. This is not what feelings are about when the Impressionists expressed themselves or “rendered their experience.” Let us look at a typical passage where Monet ties together his notion of success, the activity of painting, and his feelings (translated of course)[3]:

“People who hold forth on my paintings conclude that I have arrived at the ultimate degree of abstraction and imagination that relates to reality. I should much prefer to have them acknowledge what is given, the total self-surrender. I applied paint to these canvases…bordering on hypnosis…. These landscapes of water and reflections have become my obsession. It’s quite beyond my powers at my age, and yet I want to succeed in expressing what I feel.”

It’s not about abstraction (the non-literal) or imagination as such, meaning he isn’t inventing or making things up. He defines success in terms of his ability to express what he feels which in turn is about the total self-surrender, a kind of hypnosis, that occurs within the activity of painting.

So we can see why Monet’s looking is so constant. But the larger point so often lost on us contemporaries who are locked within assumptions that have diverged from Impressionist thinking for more than a century is this: art is all about an expressive activity whereby we come to know our powers and who we are because as we express our feelings about sensations in the moment of making marks, we make determinant and clear who we are. In those moments we expand our existence. In fact, if we take the word “render” to mean “realize” (which would be supported if we listen to Pissarro and Cèzanne), our feelings or our sense of self, as we paint, can not be known before our marks are made. The feelings/experience that Monet describes and wishes to “render” (or convey or realize) are not incidental to the work, or a matter of indifference, but are experienced with joy or pain because in this position of self-clarity, Monet becomes what he has in himself to be and through the act of painting is, therefore, made free.

Let me put it a different way. This is not the “be all you can be” motto of the old US Army ad. In that sense of becoming more, one puts him or herself in tune with an external order, where success is measured by the degree to which one penetrates such an order. This is called “climbing the ladder.” But this is the opposite of what Monet is doing. Monet, since childhood (and many of the Impressionists along with him), had been struggling to realize who he was – as against his surroundings – or the received order. Do you see the difference here? In our way of thinking, we struggle to succeed within an order that we inherit and we have feelings about our work as it contributes or not to that penetration. I feel good about a painting or believe it was successful in that it demonstrates a certain value or level of accomplishment.

Monet (who is engaged in a total self-surrender, who states that his goal is to render his experience) is “obsessed” with discovering a self that unfolds from within him. His realization must be his own. In this respect the Impressionists were “intransigents,” fighting with moral passion against an art system, not unlike ours today, that compelled artists to embrace a self that was an illusory substitute for who they really were.[4]

If all of this seems rather grim to the reader, know this: the unparalleled exhilaration of painting and sense of freedom that motivated the Impressionists also explains their method and the power of their work, work that today continues to move people more than any other art movement in history. Think of it this way: Monet looks, he receives the vibrating, ever-changing sensations of nature. It is as though he looks and is touched in some way. Something within him responds and a feeling in that moment is realized. I say “something” because initially his feelings would have been inchoate. He chooses a color, makes a mark on the canvas by touching it and only in that moment of touching, of expressing who he is,  realizes a feeling, a sense of exhilaration that could not have been known before the touch occurred.

What is he doing? He is touched and he touches back. He is alive. He is free. He is becoming more Monet. And the painting? Oh, that. It’s happening. It follows along. But for goodness sake, if Monet pauses for a moment to look for results, to see if it measures up to something, or if he invents, the spell is broken. To paraphrase Henri, nature doesn’t reveal herself to those who are hell bent on accomplishing “external tasks” ((Pissarro and Manet), particularly those having to do with career.

When we paint for the product, the other, for results, we do not express ourselves but rather an illusory substitute, as I have noted. This point bears repetition because it is this inauthentic self, from the point of the Impressionists, that is a distortion, a mutilation of who anyone is, regardless of whatever outward “success” once may achieve. Hence, such environments and situations ought to be challenged, as the Impressionists inveighed against their institutions, with moral passion.

The Impressionist aesthetic, then, must be understood as an authentication of this passion. But contrary to the work of many scholars (to say nothing of how-to mimicry), one cannot understand Impressionism through a narrow and primary focus on Impressionist paintings. The paintings followed from a journey into a creative freedom that we could describe as becoming (that is, a commitment by these artists to become who they were most).[5] Or to put it starkly, the paintings just happened along the way. It is their journey into a creative freedom, however, that is still both relevant and radical for it still holds out the promise of freedom for the contemporary artist.

In Part III, I will talk a bit about why torment is the underside of joy in this context.

[1] In a recent blog, Mitch explains how he works differently in the studio from when he is out of doors and why he never uses photographs as a source of color. http://blog.mitchalbala.com/?p=2789

[2] This is one important reason why working from photographs – at least in terms of color – is a problem. Light twinkles, constantly changes, is energy, and is alive. Photographs are not.

[3] Translation is no small problem. I do not know French, or French terms or dialect of 150 years ago. But were one to seriously attempt to understand how the Impressionist understood themselves, it would be necessary to know these things for the simple reason that translations keep pushing their ideas back into our own ways of thinking which make understanding their ideas difficult to start with.

[4] Recall Mary Cassatt’s fierce rejection of a prize she was awarded: “I am an Impressionist…I must stick to my principles, our principles, which were, no jury, no medals, no awards….Liberty is the first good in this world and to escape the tyranny of a jury is worth fighting for, surely no profession is so enslaved as ours.”

[5] The emphasis on the activity of painting as becoming is an emphasis also used by Joaquim Pissarro, great grandson of the artist.