Claude Monet's 'Water Lillies' (1920) and Chuck Closes' 'Maggie' (1998)
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Maggie, (1996), Oil on canvas, 30 x 24"
(76.2 x 61 cm), Photograph by Ellen Page Wilson, courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York, © Chuck Close |
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| Self Portrait (1994). Chuck Close. Detail. |
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| Water Lillies (1920) Claude Monet |
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| Water Lillies (1920) Claude Monet. |
Both Claude Monet and Chuck Close were exploring paint, colour and human perception. Research the work of both artists in order to;
1. Outline the intentions of each artist.
1)In a unique visual exchange between the ancient and contemporary worlds, the Museum presents works by Chuck Close to coincide with its exhibition of Roman mosaics from the ancient city of Antioch. Inspired by Close's keen interest in ancient floor mosaics, this exhibition is the first to explore the relation between his work and mosaics of the past. On view in the Contemporary Gallery, the exhibition includes a selection of Close's recent paintings, as well as paper-pulp pieces and a silk rug. Close has been a leading figure in contemporary art for over 30 years, working with a single subject - the human figure. Close's monumental "heads" include intensely personal images of friends, family, and fellow artists, as well as self-portraits. Each painting, which is built of carefully constructed grids, is both a highly abstract and systematic composition of individual units or marks and a finely rendered likeness of his subject. In both Close's works and the Antioch mosaics, there is a complex dialogue between a highly ordered system and extraordinary artistic improvisation. Terms like "realism" and "representation" become relative and in each case, whether painting or mosaic, we discover that the medium creates its own distinct reality.
A limitless expanse of water lilies covers the walls of a room at the Orangerie in Paris producing a sense of awe at the culmination of Monet’s years of tedious focus upon his pond and the water lilies at Giverny: the
Grandes Decorations (1921). Many people assume that his love of observing nature and efforts to capture the different effects of light on a setting, particularly the water in this case, inspired the enormous panels that create such an impressive effect. In fact, C.P. Weekes, author of
The Invincible Monet stated, “Even his pictures, which to modern eyes appear the essence of romance, were to him scientifically exact reproductions of the effect of light on nature at any given moment” (Weekes 226). This study was a common theme in the multiple canvases of similar views as Monet explored the effects of light at different times of the day and seasons on the pond at Giverny, similar to what he had accomplished in other series. However, Weekes is wrong in his assumption that the
Water Lilies existed devoid of any romantic influence. In fact, the reflections of the water lilies on the water are not a result of sunlight; instead, they symbolize Monet’s personal artistic reflection on his love for Alice Hoschede. Investigation of Monet’s progression, which focuses on the vast beauty of the reflection of the water lilies in his garden, proves that the loving relationship he had with Alice parallels his paintings, proving that this series was far from a simple study on light.
2. Describe the techniques of each artist
Maggie- see both the device thatvmakes the illusion and the illusionvitself. I'm as interested in thevdistribution of marks on a flat surface...as I am with the thing that ultimately gets depicted... [It's] shifting from one to the other that really interests me.
Most lyrical of the impressionist painters, Claude Oscar Monet {moh-nay', klohd}, b. Nov. 14, 1840, d. Dec. 5, 1926, was also the most committed to recording transient effects of light and atmosphere. This aim led Monet and his colleagues to develop the techniques of impressionism. Monet advised his fellow painters to concentrate on the play of light and color of the objects that they had before them. The goal was to capture temporary phenomena, and this was pursued in a systematic manner, according to the laws of optics and complementary color relationships; yet the result was often a sheer celebration of painting itself, an expression of Monet's delight in the colors, textures, and shapes of the landscape
3. Find 2 quotes about each artists work, and reference them correctly.
"Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment."
—
Claude Monet
Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."
—
Claude Monet "It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly."
—
Claude Monethttp://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/110017.Claude_Monet
I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.
Chuck Close
I did some pastels and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings.
Chuck Close
I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant.
Chuck Close
4. Note 3 similarities of the work of both artists.
http://www.artnet.com/artists/chuck-close/
The colors used by Monet. Impressionist painters have a specific way of using colors. As most Impressionists Monet uses his own palette to paint shadows, black...
Claude Monet in Museums in the USA, Europe, Japan... Here are the original masterpieces.
Monet in Venice, Italy A unique painting campaign with his wife to capture the light of the Grand Canal,
San Giorgio Maggiore, the Doge Palace.
5. What are some differences between the artist's work. (at least 3)
Work practice
Topic selection
Style
6. Describe your response to the work of both artists.
I like Claude Monet' s works of nature and peace.
but chuck close's work more abstract works, look at her work requires imagination to understand her work in the expression of what that means
7. Add any other comments you would like.
Close had been known for his skillful brushwork as a graduate student at Yale University. As he explained in a 2009 interview with the Cleveland Ohio Plain Dealer, he made a choice in 1967 to make art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush. "I threw away my tools", Close said. "I chose to do things I had no facility with. The choice not to do something is in a funny way more positive than the choice to do something. If you impose a limit to not do something you've done before, it will push you to where you've never gone before."
[2]Close's first one-man show was in 1970. His work was first exhibited at the
New York Museum of Modern Art in early 1973. In 1979 his work was included in the
Whitney Biennial. "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like
Richard Estes,
Denis Peterson,
Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs. The everyday nature of the subject matter of the paintings likewise worked to secure the painting as a realist object."
[3]One photo of
Philip Glass was included in his black and white series in 1969, redone with water colors in 1977, again redone with stamp pad and fingerprints in 1978, and also done as gray handmade paper in 1982.
Close suffers from
Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he is unable to recognize faces. Due to this disorder, Close was first driven to paint portraiture. By painting portraits, he is better able to try and recognize and remember faces.
[4]Although his later paintings differ in method from his earlier canvases, the preliminary process remains the same. To create his grid work copies of photos, Close puts a grid on the photo and on the canvas and copies cell by cell. Typically, each square within the grid is filled with roughly executed regions of color (usually consisting of painted rings on a contrasting background) which give the cell a perceived 'average' hue which makes sense from a distance. His first tools for this included an airbrush, rags, razor blade, and an eraser mounted on a power drill. His first picture with this method was
Big Self Portrait, a black and white enlargement of his face to a 107.5 in by 83.5 in (2.73 m by 2.12 m) canvas, made in over four months in 1968, and acquired by the
Walker Art Center in 1969. He made seven more black and white portraits during this period. He has been quoted as saying that he used such diluted paint in the airbrush that all eight of the paintings were made with a single tube of mars black acrylic.
Later work has branched into non-rectangular grids,
topographic map style regions of similar colors,
CMYKBig Self Portrait is so finely done that even a full page reproduction in an art book is still indistinguishable from a regular photograph. color grid work, and using larger grids to make the cell by cell nature of his work obvious even in small reproductions. The
Close has also continued to explore difficult photographic processes such as
daguerreotype in collaboration with
Jerry Spagnoli and sophisticated modular/cell-based forms such as
tapestry. Close's photogravure portrait of artist
Robert Rauschenberg, “Robert” (1998), appeared in a 2009 exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, featuring prints from Universal Limited Art Editions.
[5] Close's wall-size tapestry portraits, in which each image is composed of thousands of combinations of woven colored thread, depict subjects including
Kate Moss,
Cindy Sherman,
Lorna Simpson,
Lucas Samaras,
Philip Glass, and Close himself.
[6] They are produced in collaboration with Donald Farnsworth of
Magnolia Editions in
Oakland, CA.
[7]Reference
http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Art/Monet/Monet.shtml
http://giverny.org/monet/welcome.htm
http://www.artnet.com/artists/chuck-close/
http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/art/ChuckClose/
www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/close/paintings-i/
http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80220
http://www.worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/Past/close.html
