지학사 영어(민찬규) 8과

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지학사 영어(민찬규) 8과

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A LOOK INTO MONET’S WORLD

When we talk about Impressionism in art, one name comes up more than any other:

Oscar-Claude Monet. Born in 1840 in Paris, Monet did not come from a wealthy family.

His father was a grocery store owner and his mother worked as a singer. Many people know the name Monet, but they don't know the man very well. Here are some interesting facts about him.

What were Monet's interests in art as a teenager?

Monet started drawing at the age of 5. His first drawings were of his school teachers. He often filled entire school books with drawings instead of doing his class assignments.

After his family moved to Le Havre, Monet became famous for his drawings of the town's residents.

Less well known is the fact that as a teenager his first interest in art was caricature portraits. At 15, he was known all over Le Havre as a caricaturist. His reputation was so well established that from all sides people came to him and asked him to draw

caricatures for them.

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Who did Monet love to paint?

Monet was a true family man. He enjoyed painting many things, but he loved to paint his family the most. That's one of the reasons why his wife is often shown in many of his most famous paintings. Another reason Monet may have painted his wife so often is that he did not have enough money to hire models to pose for his paintings. Monet's wife is featured in his painting Women in the Garden. There are three female figures in the painting. Interestingly, all of them are his wife, Camille Monet! At that time, Monet was so poor that he had his wife pose as all three of the female figures.

Why is Monet considered the first Impressionist?

Monet's Impression: Sunrise is a painting of a view from his window. He gave it that name because the goal was to create the feeling of a harbor instead of just painting all the shapes that he saw. A critic who disliked the painting wrote an article, "The Exhibition of the Impressionists," from which Impressionism got its name. The article criticized his painting, saying it wasn't even as good as wallpaper. Ironically, the term "Impressionists"

quickly gained favor with the public, and was also accepted by the artists themselves.

Even music and literature began taking on features of Impressionism.

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Why did Monet love gardening?

Monet loved gardening, as he wrote, "Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy. I perhaps owe it to flowers that I have become a painter." After Monet moved to Giverny in 1883, he himself built gardens and spent his later life

painting them. These gardens were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last 30 years of his life. He tried to express on canvas the constantly changing play of light and reflections on the surface of the water. In fact, many of his masterpieces were painted from what he saw in his gardens at Giverny. For example, one of his most famous pieces was a painting of the water lilies in those gardens.

Did Monet's cataracts affect his painting style?

Monet suffered from cataracts for much of his later life. During that time, he produced some of his most characteristic work. Scientists claim that the disease blurred his vision, which influenced his unique painting style, especially his later paintings. A professor at Stanford University used a computer to recreate a photograph of the same bridge in Monet's Water Lily Pond as it might appear to someone with moderate cataracts.

Surprisingly, the color and detail of the recreated picture look very similar to those of Monet's painting. Nevertheless, Monet's artistic style was well formed before his eye disease affected his vision. More important is that despite his failing eyesight, he continued to paint. This is when he painted Nympheas, one of his famous paintings of water lilies. Monet created countless works that are still loved today and many of his works are in museums around the world. If you get the chance to see more of his

paintings, look at the emotions in them. Claude Monet changed art forever, and you can see that in every brush stroke.

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Supplementary Reading

Roy Lichtenstein: A Copycat or a Creator?

The American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was one of the leading figures of the pop art movement. Although Lichtenstein was not a comic book fan as a boy, his works from the late 1950s were inspired by comic strips. He often incorporated hidden images of cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny in his abstract

paintings. In 1961, Lichtenstein began his first pop paintings using cartoon images and approaches derived from the appearance of commercial printing.

For example, in his first pop painting, Look Mickey (1961), he inserted dialogue balloons and hand-painted dots on Mickey Mouse's face and in Donald Duck's eyes. When it was first exhibited, it was severely criticized by art critics, to the extent that the title of its review article was "Is He the Worst Artist in the U.S.?" However, he did not give up his unique artistic style, and continued to develop it to paint Whaam! (1961), which is one of the best-known works of pop art.

Amazingly, Lichtenstein's Nurse (1964), a comic book-style painting, was sold for $95.4 million at Christie's in 2015, setting an auction record for the artist. Lichtenstein has been called a copycat by many critics since his works closely resemble the originals. However, he argued that there is no difference between high art and popular art. By embracing

“low” art such as comic books and popular illustration, he became one of the most important figures in the pop art movement.

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