Impressionism: Depicting the Sense of What is Invisible
Something wonderful happened last weekend. I got so caught up in the world of writing poetry, that I ran out of time to go to visit the Getty museum as I had planned. As synchronicity would have it, that inspired me to go looking through the online collections of some of the most renowned museums of the world. I got curious about the Acropolis museum and refamiliarized myself with ancient Greek pottery. Then I checked out the Prado Museum in Spain, and was reminded of the work of artists like Goya, Rafael, Titian, El Greco, and Velasquez. And then, I ended up browsing through the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
It so happens that April 15 was the 150th anniversary of the first exhibition of the Impressionists and Musée d’Orsay has assembled an exhibition of the original 31 artists who broke ground and gave rise to this revolutionary movement. Artists like Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Van Gogh, who were rejected by the establishment, because their work didn’t conform to the standards of the day, broke free and organized their own exhibition. What’s more, when criticized and called “impressionists” to ridicule them, they appropriated the label, and made it their own so that today, 150 years later, their work is considered, among the most respected and valuable of all time.
"When criticized and called “impressionists” to ridicule them, they appropriated the label, and made it their own so that today, 150 years later, their work is considered, among the most respected and valuable of all time."
Thinking about all of this brings me back to my college days and coincidentally, this month marks the 35th anniversary of my college graduation. I was an art history major and photography minor at Yale, where I worked at the Yale Art Gallery and ran a student art gallery on campus named Maya's Room. I had a brief brush with gouache drawings of kiwi plants inspired by Georgia O'Keefe’s flowers that look like landscapes. I spend the spring of my junior year abroad in Paris, living over a boulangerie (bakery), studying French at the Sorbonne, practicing photography at a local photography studio, and interning at Zabriskie Galerie just as the Centre Pompidou opened. These were great times for me when I explored my creativity, and might as well have become an artist if I didn’t somehow get the idea that I had to go to business school and become a nonprofit CEO. As Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way puts it, I became a "shadow artist," supporting others to pursue their art, but while I took a more practical route. I tried out my high school French and visited the sites: Giverny, Versailles, Notre Dame, the Seine, the Jardin des Tuileries, Pere Lachaise, Gare St. Lazare, Opera, the Eiffel Tower, the whole nine yards.
That time in my life is very much like this one. A veritable renaissance, a burst of creative activity where I'm inspired to create something utterly new and iconoclastic. The impressionists jumpstarted modernism. They decided to forgo a literal depiction of their ideas to convey a deeper, more meaningful message: the essence of the idea. The energy of the idea. They chose to convey the spaces between the lines, something no one had thought to do before.
"The impressionists jumpstarted modernism. They decided to forgo a literal depiction of their ideas to convey a deeper, more meaningful message: the essence of the idea. The energy of the idea. They chose to convey the spaces between the lines, something no one had thought to do before."
Time will tell. Who will be the iconoclasts of our day? Who will be like the Impressionists, the ones who invent new schools of thought that will change the world? Like the Impressionists, I am also interested in the energetic realities of our world today, perceiving with other senses than the eyes. Seeking to understand the invisible forces that operate under the surface and may be easily criticized because they are very new and quite different. The Impressionists appropriated their criticism and went on to be remembered long after their naysayers were silenced and forgotten.
It is my hope that inspired creators today would likewise have the courage to be fully expressed, not just for shock value, but in pursuit of Truth, and that their insights would usher the world into a new era of joy and freedom.
I want to hear from you! Please comment below... who are your favorite artists and why?
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