The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings

The other day I went to the Monet exhibition at the Royal Academy.

It's good. Very good. Much better than the lame, predictable poster for the show.

I've had an affection for Monet and the Royal Academy ever since my Mum took me to see the famous Monet in the 90's exhibition in 1990. Interestingly, Mum now says it was my reaction at seeing that exhibition that convinced her I was serious about this 'art thing'.

This new exhibition shows never seen before sketches and pastels from Monet, including some really early stuff and some preliminary sketches of some of his really famous works. It's a great exhibition and well worth a visit. It's small, but worth a visit.

There are some great caricatures that I didn't know Monet had started his career with. Alone they're not that stunning, but seen as the beginning to Monet's career they're fascinating.

Two pictures particularly struck me. They struck me because of their graphic qualities.

Seascape:Storm 1866

 

Towing A Boat, Honfleur 1864

Look at the drama. Look at the drama those simple compositions and simple colours convey (although you really have to visit the show to see the full effect). They're almost duotone images yet they're so rich in colour. The compositions are so simple, there's almost nothing in the pictures, yet the stories are so vivid. Really powerful stuff.

I love visiting art galleries. For me they're a huge source of inspiration - after all if you're a graphic designer the chances are you started out loving art and wanting to be some sort of artist. Art can teach you so much, light and dark, shape, form, spatial relationships, layering ideas, communicating messages, story telling and of course chiaroscuro.

Ladies who've just lunched.

One other thing about the exhibition. They had loads of Monet's sketch books which were fantastic, but obviously you couldn't touch them. So instead there was an interactive display. Most art galleries interactive things are shite. Complete bollocks. But this one was brilliant. You could flick through the pages and you could rotate them and you could zoom in and look at pages in really close detail. Brilliant.

A bad photograph taken by a bad cameraphone of a brilliant interactive display of a brilliant sketchbook.

Go and see the exhibition.

Comments

[Colman]

I hate art exhibitions, but I liked this write up, so I might go.

[$ophie]

I'm going to go too Ben. I'm definitely guilty of making the Monet-lillies connection and dismissing all his other works. Many of which are fantastic. Looking forward to it.

[The Dead Artist]

The seascape painting is brilliant. I've never seen that before.

[Marc]

Not meaning to be a typography nazi, but not only is the poster lame and predictable, that's an awful lot of fonts in a single communication.
=) Marc

[davidthedesigner]

Reminds me that I once overheard two Americans in a Paris gallery:
"Hey, this one's by Manet and the one over there is by Monet. They're almost the same."

[Ben]

Correct Marc, in fact that fucking poster is horrendous.

David, that's not as bad as the man I heard at a Cindy Sherman exhibition wondering aloud where she got all the similar looking models from.

[lauren]

i'm going to one gallery per day here. i had put the monet further down the list 'cos the poster looked poxy and i was afraid that it was going to be all water lillies and colour fields. thanks ben, i'll now put this show further up the list.

[Katherine]

I know you're a graphic designer - but I do find it somewhat odd to be discussing the nature of the poster for an exhibition by Monet!

Have you seen the Brian Sewell review of the exhibition? He was ever so slightly not impressed.

The sketchbooks are actually still in Paris - such a pity that they couldn't have shown us some for real. The interactive displays had hordes around them when I was there.