The Process of Seeing to Creating an Artwork in Claude Monet’s Impressionistic Collection Paintings

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Art university of isfahan

2 art university of isfahan

Abstract

 
Claude Monet is known as the pioneer of the first completely modern movement in painting by presenting a different painting. In this work, instead of a completely naturalistic description of a sunrise scene, he records the immediate impact of the landscape on the eye by focusing on the transformations of light and color. In this way, nature in Claude Monet's works is more than the subject, it is an excuse for experiments that make him to leave the workshop and bring him a scientific and new vision to light and colour in contrast to the typical workshop painting style.
In sunrise scene, Claude Monet shows a way of perception and vision that critics use the word "impression" to describe it. In his impressionist paintings, he is searching for a way to record the immediate visual perception of the subject, which in this regard changes the previous fixed principles in the field of painting and in general the thinking of the audience of the work. So that it provides a new description and interpretation of the usual and familiar category of nature.
The nature in Monet's paintings shows that the painter is more concerned with describing nature than trying to find a way to record the immediate visual perception of the subject. Monet's special way of seeing nature makes it dependent on the individual experience of the artist from an independent and unchanging presence.
His emphasis on visibility shows that the nature of the subject depends on the fleeting light conditions and that the subject of the painting is not visible to everyone in the same way. In this regard, by using the new theories of the emergence of colour and following the previous achievements of Barbizon painters, he turns nature from a completely naturalistic treatment into an excuse for another way of seeing and representing nature. By focusing on the change that governs nature and also human perception, Monet diminishes objective reality in contrast to sensory perception. Focusing on the transitory and fleeting states of nature, he reveals an invisible and absolutely necessary field to make nature visible.
  The idea of series paintings by prioritizing the atmospheric conditions, for the first time diminishes the importance of the subject of the painting and encourages the painter's eye to push back the main subject and focus more on the invisible field, which makes the subject visible.
At this time, the visible subject finds the rule of a reflecting mirror, which records the invisible conditions of every variable in a random state. With this preparation, Monet reveals the issue of how the subject of the painting has an existential cause related to an invisible realm. Based on this, Monet changes the framework of attention from the visible subject to the realm of invisibility, which, above all, requires the use of a method different from the common method.
Unlike the previous painter, Monet is much less concerned with the description of the subject, beyond that, he is trying to achieve a pure visual-pictorial expression and to induce a sense of the subject to the audience. In This kind of painting, subject turns from a stable presence based on the pure principles of design into forms resulting from the capture of a moment, which their display requires concentration, speed and a special attitude of the painter. In this definition, the sense of the subject is more real than its solid shell, and in this way, the constructionist of nature is discarded and the solid structure of the form transformed in the rapid effects of light and colour.
The difference that Monet creates in the history of painting is that this time he gives priority to the background environment. By changing the frame of attention from the main subject of the painting to the surrounding environment, Monet transforms the interaction between nature and the environment.
Also, by using visual methods, he looks at a place in the image space that has been considered an unimportant background until now. In this regard, the paintings of Monet's collection realize the visualization of the invisible conditions of visible elements. This collection shows the constantly changing level of the interaction of elements and the surrounding environment, and more than the subject, it tries to capture an invisible position. Monet solves this issue in his painting by recording momentary perceptions, immediacy in execution, focusing on transitory and accidental states, and constructing the structure of objects and analyzing shapes in favour of representing the transformations of light. The broken colour technique, by ignoring the consistent linear format of the shapes, turns the canvas in to a field of continuous colour vibration and colour effects.
Therefore, Monet's painting is the field of showing the simultaneous possibilities of visible and invisible, continuity and discontinuity. The elements of nature appear in Monet's painting through an invisible frame, and then, drowning in the distant dimension, they always stay back and remain invisible. Monet captures the visual effect of light without paying attention to the subject and presents relationships in the painting that until then had an unclear and dumb understanding.
By introducing a new kind of perception and vision, Monet shows that; Rather than describing nature, the painter is trying to find a way to record the immediate visual perception of the subject. Monet's special way of seeing nature turns nature from an independent and static presence to the individual experience of the artist and his emphasis on his way of seeing and perceiving the moment and the transitory and dynamic conditions of light and atmosphere. This nature is the nature that the painter's eyes see. A method arising from the transformation of the painter's way of seeing, which leads to the transformation of the objective reality and negation of the validity of the subject. Therefore, Monet's paintings show the process of transformation of his look. So that the painting canvas is the field of emergence of the painter's perception in the face of the universe.
 
 
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