Lance Esplund reviews in the Wall Street Journal the Monet show at Gagosian put together by Paul Hayes Tucker and finds the moment when Monet “invented” mid-century art:
But something extraordinary happened around 1907, a sea change evident in a startling vertical “NymphĂ©as” painting in the first gallery. A blaze of yellows and reds, with the green and white lily pads seemingly hovering like spaceships above the pond, the painting suggests not a paradise but an inferno. Here Monet retains only vestigial references to the pond and instead, invoking J.M.W. Turner, or perhaps an El Greco Crucifixion, shoots us skyward, making the primary focus of the painting our ascent and the fiery colors of the sky that are reflected on the pond’s surface. Eliminating the horizon line and similar elements that landscape painters had traditionally used to orient the viewer, Monet suspends us in an inverted, inward and otherworldly space. Continue Reading