Cows are sizable animals, yet in two of these paintings the artist makes them appear small. This contrast characterizes them as helpless, as if a part of a machine controlled by an invisible giant, possibly a tyrant. We realize that the machine is the cattle industry whereas the giant is the man behind it. I think that in this setting the images will elicit different emotions from different people: remorse and pity from some, curiosity and indifference from others. I don’t think, however, that the artist intended to judge the audience. Instead he focuses solely on the theme; he presents his inarticulate models as either content and oblivious, when in a rural environment, or, as irritated, confused and alert when in a large-scale farm or auction theater.
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I imagine the trees in the painting below as statues, obelisks or monuments. Perhaps I simply became accustomed to seeing such wide flower fields in an urban environment. In a way, for a city guy like me, these poppies are idyllic and inaccessible; I can picture them only on a town square, surrounded by concrete — but not in their natural environment. I suppose this is a degradation of sorts, or, from a different perspective, an integration of nature into the urban in the mind of city people. Seeing flowers in nature is a rare occasion for urban population and I am sure at least some of you can sympathize. But what I would like to discuss is how these poppy fields, despite the stifled association, and maybe because of it, gain in aesthetic value.
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It was probably since Monet’s celebrated “Impression: Sunrise” that water reflections became a trademark device of the artist. Moreover, it is thanks to him that these mirroring effects may be considered an important element of impressionism as a whole. It seems that the mutability of water, or simply put, the ripples, are inherently impressionistic — and they were such long before the term was ever coined. Taking into account these two main qualities, which basically translate to movement and rhythm (the ripples) and color (the reflections), water indeed makes the most obvious choice of subject matter for an impressionistic painting.
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These poplars are a difficult to approach: they produce a somewhat alienating grid not unlike prison bars, particularly in the version where the trees are dark. In a way, everything around them may be considered as a beautifying counteraction, except that the trademark water reflections only serve to extend the prison effect. I think that this was a bold and honest choice of subject matter on Monet’s part, to portray nature in its less pretty moments, and it is truly admirable that he managed to extract and capture the little beauty that there was to find in the poplars you see below. Because lets face it, they are quite ugly.
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First, I would like to say that I prefer these to the Roeun Cathedral series. They are very different, opposing even, if viewed in the urban vs. agricultural context, so perhaps you may say that the comparison is irrelevant. Still, it seems to me that Monet’s color effects agree much better with wide and open landscapes than with elaborate Gothic architecture. In the latter case I have been getting a sense of hyper tension, ensuing from overabundance of detail coupled with the usual palette swamping. In a way, there is a thematic imbalance between the painter’s style and subject in the Rouen Cathedrals. Back to the haystacks, I think that in these series the artist may have found the perfect combination of subject and style; they feed off each other in curious ways, and I will try to build an argument expounding this interaction.
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