Monet's Water Lilies: Great Art Explained — Transcript

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1. 0:00Claude Monet is often criticised for  being overexposed, too easy, too obvious.
2. 0:07Or worse a "chocolate box artist". His last  works, the enormous water lily canvases
3. 0:13are amongst the most popular artworks in the  world. Yet there is nothing tame traditionalist
4. 0:19or cozy about these last paintings.  These are his most radical works of all.
5. 0:26They turn the world upside down with their  strange disorientating and immersive vision.
6. 0:31Monet's "Water lilies" have come to be viewed as  simply an aesthetic interpretation of the garden,
7. 0:37that obsessed him. But they are so much more . These works were created as a direct response
8. 0:44to the most savage and apocalyptic period of  modern history. They were in fact conceived as
9. 0:51a war memorial to the millions of lives  tragically lost in the first world war.
10. 1:15In 1914 at the age of 74, Monet was  a successful and very wealthy artist.
11. 1:23However, his friends were dying off, and he was  still mourning his beloved wife's death three
12. 1:28years earlier, when his son Jean died - then his  legendary eyesight started to fail.
13. 1:35He should have just retired and enjoyed his old age. Instead, this was precisely when Monet decided to undertake
14. 1:42a revolutionary new series of paintings,  that would become his career defining work.
15. 1:49Monet's last works are eight monumental  curved panels, specifically designed for the
16. 1:55Orangerie in Paris. One of the greatest artistic  achievements of early 20th century painting,
17. 2:02They cover a staggering 200 square metres of  canvas, which surround and envelop the viewer,
18. 2:09with wild gestural abstractions. Monet himself described  them perfectly when he said it "gives the illusion
19. 2:16of an endless whole. Of a wave with no horizon and  no shore". We see them today - or rather experience
20. 2:24them today - the same way viewers did in 1927, when  they were installed according to Monet's plans.
21. 2:31Monet worked closely with the architect of the  two galleries. The paintings would be hung across
22. 2:37the curved walls of two egg-shaped rooms. He  meticulously planned out the forms, positioning,
23. 2:43rhythm, and even the spaces between the various panels. They would have filtered daylight coming in from above, that floods the space.
24. 2:53The panels with sunrise hues would be positioned to the galleries in the East, and the sun set scenes to the West.
25. 3:00And so the nature of the pictures would change, with the weather and the position of the sun.
26. 3:06In that sense, they could be considered the world's first "art installation".
27. 3:11And yet thirteen years before these incredible paintings went on display,
28. 3:15Monet had  no intention of ever picking up a brush again.
29. 3:21Forty years had passed since the notorious 1874 group exhibition which introduced the Impressionists.
30. 3:29The great Monet had accomplished everything he wanted to,
31. 3:31and decided once and for all, to retire his paint brushes.
32. 3:36He now claimed to find painting "unremitting torture".
33. 3:40Monet had had enough.
34. 3:42Luckily for us, Georges Clemenceau visited Monet, in his house in Giverny, in late August 1914.
35. 3:50Clemenceau was a newspaper editor and politician who would soon be made prime minister,
36. 3:55to help lead France to victory in the First World War.
37. 3:58He was an irrepressible force of nature. An art lover  and a close friend of Monet for over 30 years.
38. 4:05They had gone from "enfants terribles" to grand old men.  And were two of the most famous men in France.
39. 4:12Clemenceau would flatter and  sweet talk the depressed Monet,
40. 4:16coax him out of retirement, and persuade him  to paint again. For Clemenceau, art in general
41. 4:23and Monet's paintings in particular, were the  highest expression of French civilisation,
42. 4:28against the threat of German barbarism. In that  sense - to keep painting was Monet's "patriotic duty".
43. 4:37While Monet had been painting his ponds and lilies  since 1889, by 1914 there had been three years of
44. 4:44creative inactivity. Clemenceau's visit inspired  Monet to pick up his brush again, and he began
45. 4:51working intensely on, what he called: "The grand  decorations", a radical new departure.
46. 4:58Throughout the war, Clemenceau would nag Monet to paint, and despite wartime rations,
47. 5:04he would make sure Monet  had plenty of art supplies - and cigarettes.
48. 5:09And in return, Monet would donate his works to the nation.
49. 5:15Monet was deeply affected by the horrors of war. His stepson was fighting at the front, and his own
50. 5:20son Michel was called up in 1915. He could  hear the sound of gunfire 50 kilometers away
51. 5:27from his house in Giverny, as he painted. For Monet  these works would be his very personal response
52. 5:35to the mass tragedy of the First World War.  Following Armistice day, Monet contacted Clemenceau,
53. 5:42offering a gift of two panels of large-scale  water lilies to the nation. The canny politician
54. 5:49would soon persuade Monet to extend the gift to eight panels, by appealing to his ego.
55. 5:55Clemenceau despised the sculptor Auguste Rodin, who had once done an unflattering sculpture of him.
56. 6:02And Rodin, had just donated HIS works to France  for the creation of the Rodin museum in Paris.
57. 6:09Clemenceau proposed a dedicated space to Monet  for his "Grand decorations". Was the rivalry between
58. 6:16the two artists, a reason that Monet was now also  seeking artistic immortality in a dedicated space?
59. 6:25The impressionists, once the radical and  subversive young artists who scandalised Paris,
60. 6:31were now the mainstream. New Avant-garde  movements, meant Monet, once the voice of
61. 6:36rebellion, now became the standard to rebel  against. His new works needed to have an
62. 6:42impact, if Monet was to be as relevant in the  20th century as he was in the 19th century.
63. 6:49He decided to work on a scale he'd never attempted  before. His ambition was phenomenal. All eight
64. 6:55panels would be the same height, but differ in  length. Together they would span a total length of
65. 7:0291 meters or 300 feet. The first task was to build  a new studio, to accommodate the huge canvases,
66. 7:10with space enough for him to assess his work with  maximum possible light from top lighting.
67. 7:17It is a myth that Monet painted all his canvases outside,  A myth Monet himself propagated, when he famously
68. 7:23claimed to not even HAVE a studio. Most of Monet's  paintings were started outside, but finished off
69. 7:30in his studio. For these colossal paintings Monet  worked on up to 12 canvases at the same time,
70. 7:36which were placed on easels fitted with caster  wheels, and rotated according to the light he was
71. 7:42trying to capture. It also allowed one  canvas to dry as he worked on another.
72. 7:50A single canvas might take 60 sessions of  intense work, and some were given as many
73. 7:55as 15 layers of paint. One visitor noted  75 paint brushes and 40 boxes of pigments.
74. 8:02Monet chose canvases with a pronounced weave  whose "Weft" threads were thicker than the "Warp".
75. 8:08He then applied a series of undercoats, letting  them dry, before applying another. He would often
76. 8:15scrape off paint to create an uneven surface, that  he would paint over once again, to get a sculptural effect.
77. 8:22He brushed his paints on thickly, so that  the canvas weave trapped more of the pigment.
78. 8:26and created what has been described as "A textural  vibration". He didn't blend colours over large areas,
79. 8:33but rather did short strokes of colour side by  side, allowing the eye to mix those spots of colour,
80. 8:39at a distance. Here we can see the action that  produced these daubs and dashes of broken colour.
81. 8:46As we see, sometimes the strokes are fairly short  dashes, others are longer vertical strokes. There is
82. 8:54no blending or rubbing, just thrusts of the brush.  The water lilies themselves are simple strokes.
83. 9:02Then he uses pale yellows and greens, a spot of  red or a dash of lilac. Then vague strokes of
84. 9:08blue - to suggest shadows. Our eyes do the rest. There  is a key element missing from Monet's water lilies:
85. 9:16The horizon. A fundamental element of Western  painting since the Renaissance. In paintings,
86. 9:23particularly landscape paintings, the horizon  orientates the viewer, and defines the space.
87. 9:29Showing the spatial relationships within  the composition. By taking out the horizon,
88. 9:35the water takes up the whole of the canvas, from  edge to edge. We are left with a vast field of
89. 9:42unfathomable nothingness, of light, air and water. We  have no sense of scale. Monet somehow positions us
90. 9:51simultaneously floating above the water and  looking at it head-on. As a viewer, your eyes
91. 9:58tend to roam the canvas, left and right, up and  down. Looking for a place to settle and anchor,
92. 10:05wondering where the form you are focusing on, quite  begins and ends, and how exactly it is constructed.
93. 10:12This for me, is why these works succeed so well as  a war memorial. The image that often comes to mind
94. 10:19is the battle ravaged landscape, along the Western  front. Like the paintings, those battlefields had no
95. 10:26beginning or end, and no horizons. Time and space  was forgotten, as soldiers were enveloped in a
96. 10:33sea of mud, surrounded by waterlogged and surreal  landscapes, which covered their field of vision.
97. 10:41There is a sense of mourning in the work,  particularly with the truncated weeping willow trees,
98. 10:47gathering us up in their embrace. These paintings  ARE as Monet intended, not only symbolic of
99. 10:53the loss of the glorious dead of the great war,  but perhaps all those people Monet had lost too.
100. 11:01In 1912, Monet was diagnosed with cataracts,  which worsened steadily over the years. For Monet
101. 11:09for whom colour was everything, this was a tragedy.  Age-related cataracts manifest as a yellowing and
102. 11:16darkening of the lens, and have a major effect  on colour perception, as well as visual sharpness.
103. 11:23If we look at this early painting by Monet, we  can see that it is representative of the colours
104. 11:28and details of the actual bridge at Giverny. But  if we take the Japanese bridge and add a filter,
105. 11:34we can get some idea of how Monet might have  seen it tonally - after the cataracts developed.
106. 11:40Monet could either paint a yellowish world, or  he could compensate and neutralise the yellow,
107. 11:46by adding more blue pigment. These late paintings  show a predominant green blue tone that is quite
108. 11:53different from the subtle colour shading, that  characterises Monet's earlier Impressionistic work.
109. 12:00On top of this, his cataracts would blur his vision,  which may explain why the application of paint is
110. 12:05more abstract, less clear than it once was. These  are of course aesthetic choices, but we know from
111. 12:12Monet's own words, that he could no longer see the  details or make out colours. With all these issues,
112. 12:19it may explain his choice of working on  such a large scale, as a way to compensate.
113. 12:27Persuading monet to make the paintings was easy. Persuading him to part with them was the difficult bit.
114. 12:35It was up to Clemenceau, to arrange  the transfer of the artworks from Giverny.
115. 12:40A thankless task, that tested their friendship  Clemenceau, who had negotiated the treaty
116. 12:46of Versailles, drew on all his diplomatic  skills, negotiating with the difficult Monet.
117. 12:52The rooms at the Orangerie were completed and ready  for installation, but Monet hadn't delivered the paintings.
118. 12:59He was constantly "reworking" them, and  seemed incapable of finishing. The "Setting Sun"
119. 13:04canvas for example, took him two years. It has  been repainted over and over, but still Monet
120. 13:11left the lower right hand corner unfinished.  Painting was keeping him alive.
121. 13:17In the end, Monet didn't let them out of his studio till after his death.
122. 13:22Monet died on the 5th of december 1926
123. 13:25at the age of 86, with Georges Clemenceau at his bedside - holding his hand.
124. 13:32The "odd couple" had been friends for over six decades, and it was, by far, the most profound relationship of both their lives.
125. 13:40The thing they had in common, was their belief  in the transcendent power of art.
126. 13:46A few months after Monet's death, the public finally saw "The Grand Water Lilies" for the first time.
127. 13:53It was NOT a particularly glorious moment.
128. 13:56And they were attacked by critics, as the work of "an old man", and "Devastatingly dull".
129. 14:03All those colourful smudges and loose brush work seemed insubstantial and ephemeral,
130. 14:08when you compared them to the rigorous forms of the Cubists and Futurists.
131. 14:13Monet - rejected by the critics in the 19th century for being TOO radical -
132. 14:18was now being criticised in the 20th century, for not being radical enough.
133. 14:23Clemenceau himself died in November 1929,
134. 14:27devastated by the lack of public interest in his dream.
135. 14:31And the works would be largely forgotten about for decades.
136. 14:35However in the 1950s, a new generation of American artists,  The Abstract Expressionists rediscovered Monet,
137. 14:44and these last works in particular, were seen as a logical jumping off point for abstraction.
138. 14:50Artists, including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock were inspired by the last water lilies.
139. 14:56Their epic scale, gripping energy, and emotional impact, thrilled them.
140. 15:03They saw them as, less about water lilies, or the morning sun,
141. 15:06than they are about the "pleasures of paint", "The act of creation".
142. 15:12Nowadays the genius of Monet is indisputable, the Orangerie, a shrine to his talent.
143. 15:18But although Monet, may have painted, what  is now called "The Sistine chapel of Impressionism",
144. 15:24he could never have done it, without  the vision of Georges Clemenceau.