tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post7310801657505669625..comments2024-03-18T07:23:32.809-04:00Comments on Gurney Journey: Monet, Sargent, and “Impressionism”James Gurneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01870848001990898499noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-84448993208795122102016-07-17T17:53:19.140-04:002016-07-17T17:53:19.140-04:00On a Facebook post about a painting I did of a sup...On a Facebook post about a painting I did of a supermarket with a lens flare effect, Roger Reed of Illustration House commented: "I was just reading about Sargent. It was apparently his understanding that what Monet meant by Impressionism was the flooding of the retina with light from a nearby source (sun) through half-closed eyes!"<br />I shared this post with him, and he said, "I hadn't noticed that you already blogged about this; you did a wonderful job. Yes, that's exactly what I was recently reading. It's obvious that Monet has no sense of theory, nor even a firm grasp of words, though his phrase "my impressions of the most fugitive effects" is helpful. Do I understand correctly that their emphasis on astigmatism has to do with chromatic distortions or refractions that only an astigmat sees? [And do normally-visioned people see something similar when they squint, and the eyelashes cause refractions?] In your supermarket painting, you render subtle rings around the light source, but with no chromatic aberration. I take it you are not an astigmat, or am I down the wrong rabbit-hole? [I have no astigmatism, so I don't know what they're talking about.]"<br /><br />Roger, you're right, that neither Monet nor Sargent were big on theory, but Sargent may be our best link about what Monet was thinking artistically. I have no idea what Sargent meant about astigmatism. I'm not astigmatic either, and I wonder if what you're suggesting when you say "chromatic distortions or refractions" are chromatic aberration, which is an artifact of color photography. I don't know if there's an analogue to that in human vision. <br /><br />The thing that struck me most about Sargent's take on Monet's Impressionism was the idea that impressionism was about the eyes adjustment not only to super-bright environments, but also to super-dark ones. That would explain a lot of Sargent's Venetian scenes. The only other links I can think of to what was really meant by "impressionism" is the writings of Frank Vincent Dumond and R. Ives Gammell in "Twilight of Painting." Very interesting reading, and very different from what you read about in art textbooks.James Gurneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01870848001990898499noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-81909703323090473392013-06-02T14:56:50.461-04:002013-06-02T14:56:50.461-04:00The term "Impressionism" had become too ...The term "Impressionism" had become too politically loaded too quickly, I suppose. It started out as a derogatory epithet in an article, coined about a particular painting (yes, it was a Monet), and journalists quickly popularized it, associating it with the whole group of rebels-against-against-the-French-Academy of the moment. I suspect the term became muddled since its very birth, and some artists got lumped in who were never even close to Monet's method at that time, like Edouard Manet who had still been exploring Spanish school of painting and causing scandals with non-academic subject matter, not loose and colorful painting.<br /><br />I think quite a few of these artists were learning from Monet, but almost none of them really grasped his visceral method. It's certainly not easy to grasp! But what he did (perhaps inadvertently) cause was the change in the way the artists looked at color and light.<br /><br />I find it ironic, though, that this half-observational, half-extreme, paradoxically romantic and naturalistic at the same time, approach to painting, had apparently been single-handedly invented fifty years before, by Turner. <br /><br />Turner was more in love with sunsets, than with sunlight and fog (like Monet). Turner's palette was different, too; Monet favored light, airy, vibrant colors while Turner's were more fiery and earthy - he was one of the very few painters who could use black and make it work as a color. Still, I see great similarity in the way they approached the picture. <br /><br />They have the same energetic, superpositional painting that throws out nearly everything but the visceral, perceptional light. They even show the same way to shift and enliven the hue by daubing pure contrasting color here and there, though it is easier to notice in Monet whose texture is rougher. So it's a little odd that the Impressionists seem to have ignored Turner altogether - hard to tell whether due to some French sort of "not invented here" syndrome or because of relative obscurity.Eugene Arenhaushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12899356091394676298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-53482786231563234862013-06-02T08:07:00.116-04:002013-06-02T08:07:00.116-04:00The thought that occurred to me while reading this...The thought that occurred to me while reading this post is that grown men were quibbling about something which is in a sense child's play.....paint and colors. And here we adults are more than a century later still fascinated with it. Trying to understand more full the truth and beauty of it as it pertains to fine art. It's an exhilarating thought. The whole discussion also begs the question: How have we, the heirs of this Impressionism, this idea of being attentive to the image as it "really" appears on our retinas, How have we done in furthering it's use and understanding? I'd say some have done quite well but the phenomena is known to such a small segment of society, the visual artists, that it seems somewhat esoteric.Robert J. Simonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06799208093956328662noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-19536361058633553062013-06-02T04:25:00.571-04:002013-06-02T04:25:00.571-04:00Thanks. This is priceless. I will be reading it ...Thanks. This is priceless. I will be reading it again and again. What is especially interesting is that it was Sargent, and not Monet, who had the more specific sense of what the word meant. This may be because he was able to see it from the outside, as it were, having come from a related, but different, painterly orientation. <br /><br />I am also astigmatic, so much so that contact lenses are not much use to me, and I sometimes paint without glasses on to get the "impression." So, that's the other interesting thing: Sargent calls Monet "the astigmatic," as if Monet's inventon was specifically the result of a defect of his visual apparatus. There's a book I read several years ago on the subject of how defective vision has influenced painters: "The World Through Blunted Sight" by Patrick Trevor Roper, and now I want to read it again to see what, if anything, he he has to say about Monet and Impressionism.Craig Banholzerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16958933400558297331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-73486142641773942982013-06-01T18:52:21.702-04:002013-06-01T18:52:21.702-04:00Thank you for this post! It is a subject of inter...Thank you for this post! It is a subject of interest in the atelier I study at and I just attempted yesterday to obtain a good translation from the French of the last quote by Monet you included. ! thank you! <br />--a student of the Boston School in NH.Sandra Galdahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15569976623389281955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-80641767745782149802013-06-01T17:17:24.559-04:002013-06-01T17:17:24.559-04:00Wow, I'm very glad you posted this. This is mo...Wow, I'm very glad you posted this. This is more depth than I've seen impressionism explained with. It gives me a little more respect for it and makes me want to go back and reexamine a few paintings that might not have caught my eye the first time around. I like the explanation about light on the retina as well as the inclusion of dim or low light paintings. It also makes me wonder what they would have thought about some of the night-time/low-light paintings paintings that Frederic Remington did (such as this wolf painting).<br /><br />http://thingswelikebyjoelanddaniel.blogspot.com/2011/04/frederic-remington.htmlHenry Frankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06260195877507249186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-76234384036298481672013-06-01T16:41:00.892-04:002013-06-01T16:41:00.892-04:00Very Interesting! I've seen a couple of good ...Very Interesting! I've seen a couple of good retellings of the Impressionism story in the last couple of years, and this bit seems to have been forgotten! <br /><br />Impressionism- Revenge of the Nice:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lasn54lPsE <br /><br />The Impressionists- Painting and Revolution:<br />http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz6dpn_bbc-the-impressionists-painting-and-revolution-1of4-gang-of-four-pdtv-xvid-ac3-mvgroup-org_creation#.UapcGkDVB8EMark Henghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05872172199243865094noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-61076937213122114122013-06-01T16:25:52.227-04:002013-06-01T16:25:52.227-04:00Someone who had visited Cezanne in his atelier had...Someone who had visited Cezanne in his atelier had written:<br /><br />"Cezanne very well knew about the uniqueness of Monet's colorist-eye. Recalling the way he knew how to color the shade, the parts receiving the sky's reflection without any direct sunlight, he said:<br />"The sky's blue, isn't it? And this, this Monet found out.""<br />Richhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14233420155151875249noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-35477876168027858842013-06-01T14:58:57.749-04:002013-06-01T14:58:57.749-04:00Interesting, and just in time for a blog post I wa...Interesting, and just in time for a blog post I was writing.<br /><br />I see that I am not alone here. I have extreme astigmatism and I often wondered how this affected my painting and my rapport to colours.<br /><br />I'm a big Monet fan, maybe there's a reason why?<br /><br />PS: to Katana, my optician said it was pointless to try and correct such extreme astigmatism, I think my glasses do correct it a bit but mostly they correct my myopia.<br />The headaches could come either from too big a correction (to be confirmed by a specialist) or just because you don't wear them constantly, the brain has to always adjust from one to the other? dragonladychhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04388676720313631946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-67825441690980708662013-06-01T12:35:43.315-04:002013-06-01T12:35:43.315-04:00Great post, James.
This also made me think of rec...Great post, James. <br />This also made me think of recent news stories about people who are tetrachromats and can see more colors than the rest of us.<br />SEE:<br />http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human-vision#.Uaog-bQsoZM<br /><br />There are also some online color acuity tests that anybody can take for free, though I am a little suspicious of the real accuracy of these tests because of the variability of people's home computer monitors and testing conditions. Here's one:<br />SEE:<br />http://www.color-blindness.com/farnsworth-munsell-100-hue-color-vision-test/ Walt Mortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14568096509064450995noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-90788121456454014442013-06-01T12:00:23.461-04:002013-06-01T12:00:23.461-04:00Sounds like his approach was more inquisitive, and...Sounds like his approach was more inquisitive, and almost scientific. Well now I'm headed outside to squint and see if I get any weird colors playing across my vision. As always, thanks for sharing.Keith Parkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14579786144772849547noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2999230124118604245.post-25982374838429138052013-06-01T11:50:01.615-04:002013-06-01T11:50:01.615-04:00I HAVE AN ASTIGMATISM TOO!!! So exciting. It reall...I HAVE AN ASTIGMATISM TOO!!! So exciting. It really is useful for seeing the lights/darks without getting caught up by detail, even though the constant wearing of glasses except when I am a passengar in a car, gives me a daily headache. I would love more tips on how to make the most of my poor eyesight. When I was young, my mom took me to meet another friend of hers - an artist who was going blind. The difference between her photorealistic paintings done with her glasses and her high saturation abstraction still lifes was striking and I remember it to this day. I would LOVE to hear more about how eyesight affects what we see.tay my https://www.blogger.com/profile/17716131308421020869noreply@blogger.com