Monet and the art of innovation
TV PICK OF THE WEEK
Art On The BBC: Monet, The French Revolutionary
The excellent Art On The BBC series has been exploring some of the greatest artists of all time, and this week art historian Katy Hessel has trawled through the archives to create a television history of Claude Monet.
Monet is known as the father of Impressionism, the movement that arguably kickstarted modern Western art, but his work has become so commercialised – used on everything from chocolate boxes to waste paper bins – that most of us have little sense of the radical artist he really was.
Hessel rediscovers Monet as an artist driven by a burning ambition to reinvent his technique and reshape art again and again. She learns how Monet set light to the Impressionist movement that shocked and confused both the public and critics, and created his Series Paintings in an extraordinarily ambitious attempt to capture the nature of time.
The subject of Monet has fascinated many well known names. We’ll meet Monet portrayed by Richard Armitage as a strapping, young firebrand thumbing his nose at the art establishment, in a 2006 costume drama romp, while Andrew Graham Dickson and Waldemar
Januszczak investigate the unexpected electrifying impact of the modern industrial world on an artist synonymous with pastoral poppy fields and idyllic river scenes.
In contrast, Simon Schama opens out Monet’s story with a deep investigation of the dazzling influence of Japanese art on his work… while Robert Hughes simply takes us on a breathtaking journey through Monet’s extraordinary gardens at Giverny.