The movie Clueless forever changed how I look at my favorite painter, Monet.Tai: Do you think she's pretty?
Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.
Tai: What's a Monet?
Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.
Well, hopefully not for long. Claude Monet has been my favorite painter ever since I read Sunil G's book, "Chobir Deshe, Kobitar Deshe" (In the land of pictures and poetry) about his year in France with Marguerite (sp?). When I moved to Chicago, the Art Institute had the copies of his haystacks prominently displayed in their permanent collection. But the most memorable exhibit I saw was in the Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona when I went to visit Paul. It's called Monet at Giverny.
Imagine a house beside the river Seine where the river has been re-routed to go through your garden. Water lilies have been planted, and a japanese footbridge constructed so that you could sit there all day and paint different variation of the pond. And after your first wife died of tuberculosis, you found love and inspiration again in Alice Hoschedé, a married woman with six kids who moves in with you. And then she develops leukemia, and is taken from you. And you can only find solace in your art.
It's amazing how the cruel universe could provide inspiration for such beauty.
