Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature exhibition
Tucked into the base of the Rocky Mountains, Denver seems like one of the last vestiges of civilisation on the western frontier. While the city maintains a certain “wild west” quality in its attitude, it has taken us all, residents included, by surprise in its evolution into a true American cultural and industrial centre. Prominent amongst its accomplishments in this progression out of the wilderness is the Denver Art Museum, one of the largest collecting museums active in the United States and regular host to blockbuster exhibitions on their world tours. The DAM’s reputation is such that it is the only US stop on the tour of one of the most significant global exhibitions of the year: Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature.
I was fortunate to score tickets to the exhibition before it sold out, and it was my first stop when I arrived back in the US after four months abroad. The exhibition is truly monumental, with over 120 of Monet’s paintings laid out over two floors of the museum, and it took me two hours to navigate, though I could have easily invested far more time. The curators chose a format that marries a chronological and thematic progression; the timeline of Monet’s life and career provide the spine of the exhibition, and grouped along this according to time and like kinds are the works, divided into relatively distinct rooms. Prominent among these sub-collections were the winter scenes from Le Givre and Argenteuil- a dazzling montage of lavender and ballet pink shadows, proving once again that snow is never really white- and the harsh seascapes of Normandy that allude to a tendency developed more fully in his later lift to drift ever-closer to abstraction. The final room, filled primarily with works of his contrived garden in Giverny, more completely elucidates the extent to which Monet can really be said to have descended into abstract representations; the final canvas of the exhibition is hardly distinguishable as a garden at all, let alone as distinct between the forms of lily pad, pond, and tree.
Pleasant surprises along the way included formal landscape works from Monet’s early training with Eugène Boudin, a snowscape from a trip to Norway, and view of the Pont-Neuf from 1871 so flat in its planes of colours it could almost pass for a Cézanne, if your glance is quick enough. The audio guides are insightful commentaries and interviews from a wide range of relevant professionals- the curators, exhibition designers, even a geologist, and the musical accompaniment serves as an element of atmospheric tranquility rather than a nuisance (soundtrack available for purchase in the gift shop). While I appreciated the absence of white walls in favour of jewel tones throughout, it felt occasionally that the pairing was too harsh a contrast, crimson against light blue river scenes, and the continuity of the visual narrative was thus disrupted.
To have an exhibition of such scope is certainly a rare occasion and a privilege not to be forsaken. Rarely are such a great number of an artist’s works drawn together to form an almost complete chronology and aesthetic progression, sourced from international museums and private collections alike. The educational opportunity presented by this exhibition was seized in full by the team at the DAM, and its success evidenced by the throngs of adults and children who visited. Critiques could be made about the size of the crowds, and even the overwhelming stature of the exhibition itself, as almost unmanageable in stature, but such grievances are small against the incredible achievement that was the experience of Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature.
MADE IN BED Contributor
Rebecca Howard