Art & Critique

Claude Monet: Poppy Fields

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.

Field of Poppies Buy From Art.com

The above painting reveals three spatial levels: the poppies in the foreground, followed by the trees in the middle and the mountain range and the sky in the background. (the following discussion relates to a variation of the above painting, not available on art.com) The sky is mostly clear, and the few clouds are dispersed in such a way as to welcome the viewers and drag them into the experience; the clouds also mark the perspective, substituting a path, that would disrupt the pristine looking meadow. Their very convenient allocation leads me to question whether the artist incorporated them for these particular needs, or simply copied what was in the sky on the canvas. Since it is customary to assume that nothing is accidental in art, I will state that this was the artist’s plan — and its obviousness in this painting makes the piece an intellectual feat. The artist’s hand is visible along with his mind.

Field of Poppies at Vetheuil Buy From Art.com

The next painting displays a different kind of forethought: the poppy field appears so strictly rectangular as to once again imply human intervention and care, in either form. Also, the rectangular shape replicates exactly the groomed fields I have seen on various city squares. All of these peculiarities add up and raise the viewers’ awareness of the extent to which the artist’s mental faculties are involved in the process of painting, additionally to the spiritual inspirational forces. The purpose of my emphasis on the mind’s part in painting is to indicate how the viewers’ mind, correspondingly, becomes the main actor in modern appreciation of these works of art.

Field of Poppies Buy From Art.com

I believe that the additional aesthetic value arises from the consciousness of the contemporary viewer. As I already mentioned, city people have not got the opportunity, or the will, to indulge in such views. Thus, this painting, additionally to the traditional impressionistic accreditation, can also be categorized as romantic, the subject of romanticism being nature. This may seem like a blunt anachronistic judgment, but for this piece to make sense, it has got to be viewed in wider — or longer — temporal context. If I inject the city into the interpretation and the meaning(going forth in time), then, including in it another, paradoxically a chronologically inverse style of painting(going back in time), is the next logical step. It makes sense to compensate for an future interpretative layer with a past stylistic one: two anachronisms cancel each other out. On the one hand, perhaps we are to pity for the fact that we seek in art what we are losing in nature but, on the other hand, the art we look at becomes richer with urban meaning. You win some, you lose some… I can’t shake off a bittersweet nostalgic feeling, but at least it is reciprocated by the paintings in front of me.

Read More Reviews:

• Robin Neudorfer: “The Structure of Trees”
• Cindy Revell: Illustrations — Ads and Editorials
• Don Li-Leger: Karma and Aura
• Introducing Participants — Poll 1
• Todd Bonita: Marine Scenes with Boats
• Takeyce Walter: River Landscapes
• I-Ming: Impressionist Paintings
• Rembrandt: Bathsheba with King David’s Letter
• El Greco: The Holy Family (with Saint Anne)
• Cindy Revell: Furniture and Functional Art

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under Claude Monet, Impressionism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.