Западноевропейское искусство от Хогарта до Сальвадора Дали

Monet painted series of cliffs, of haystacks, of poplars bordering a river, of the Thames in London, and the Grand Canal in Venice. But the most impressive was the series of views of Rouen Cathedral. This building an example of Flamboyant Gothic dematerialisation of stone appealed to him as an analogue of his own Impressionist insubstantiality. Systematically he studied the effects of light and colour on the lacy facade. In 1895 he exhibited eighteen views of the facade and two other views of the Cathedral. Monet's moments had, in the process of being painted, become the work of art.

The painting known as Rouen Cathedral in Full Sunlight represents the moment just about noon when the low winter sun is still striking the southern flanks of the masses masonry, and has not yet entered the west portals, illuminated by reflections from the square in front. Dazzling as the cathedral paintings are, Monet was discouraged by the impossibility of registering with his hand what he saw with his eyes.

In 1899 Monet began a series of water landscapes that occupied him till his death twenty seven-years later. These late pictures are the most magical of all. He won his battle with nature by annexing it. He constructed an environment that he could control absolutely, a water garden filled with water-loving trees and flowers, and crossed at one point by a Japanese footbridge. Here in the gigantic canvases he submerged himself in the world of changing colour, a poetic fabric in which visual and emotional experience merge. Abandoning the banks the aged artist gazed into the water, and these paintings show a surface in which the reflections of sky and trees blend between the floating water lilies. In Monet's last works the stream of experience has become timeless. Monet symbolically conquered time.

Make sure you know how to pronounce thefollowing words:

Claude Monet; Impressionist; photographer; retrospect; Normandy; Japanese; Flamboyant; Gothic; Cathedral; Le Havre; Rouen; Seine; Thames; caricaturist; locomotive; instantaneous

Notes

Impression – Sunrise, Le Havre – «Впечатление Восходящее солнце»

Women in the Garden – «Женщины в саду»

Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris – «Вокзал Сен-Лазер в Париже»

Rouen Cathedral in Full Sunlight – «Руанский собор в полдень»

Tasks

I. Read the text. Make sure you understand it. Mark the following statements true or false.

1. The first exhibition of the Impressionists was held in 1872.

2. In Impression – Sunrise, Le Havre, Monet demonstrated that colour belongs not to the object but to the moment of the visual experience.

3. At the third Impressionist exhibition in 1879 Monet showed ten canvases devoted to the railway.

4. By the 1890s Monet had long deserted the Impressionist principles.

5. In 1899 Monet began a series of seascapes that occupied him ten years.

6. The fleeting effects that absorbed Monet's attention could not pause long enough for him to paint them.

II. How well have you read? Can you answer the following questions?

1. Where was the first exhibition of the Impressionists held? Why was this exhibition greeted with public derision? What picture gave name to the whole movement? What does it represent? What did this revolutionary painting intend to correspond? What did this revolutionary painting intend to correspond?

2. What did Monet constantly observe in Le Havre when he was a boy?

3. What did Monet submit to the Salon in 1867? What is depicted in this painting? What did Monet establish in this painting? What was hard for Monet's contemporaries to accept? What was Manet's attitude to this painting?

4. Where was Monet during the disorder of 1870-1871? What did he study there?

5. What did Monet set up in 1873? What did Monet depict in the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris? What offered to Monet a tissue of changing light and colour? What colour did the Impressionists eliminate from their palette? Why was the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris the product of several sessions?

6. Why did Monet have to work in series? What series did Monet paint? What appealed to Monet? What did Monet exhibit in 1895? What does the painting known as Rouen Cathedral in Full Sunlight represent?

7. What are Monet's most magical pictures? What do they show? What battle did Monet win? What environment did Monet construct? What did Monet symbolically do?

III. i. Give Russian equivalents of the following phrases: