Author Archives: Linnea

Linnea in Monet’s Garden

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Nympheas, 1907

Of course you have heard the hype and of course you like Monet, so if you haven’t heeded the call to go see Monet’s Late Work on view at Gagosian’s 21st street location, yet let me repeat them all and say: Go now. It’s cheaper than a museum (free) and shows works that museums rarely do (privately-owned). This being one of my first art excursions upon being back in New York, I was more than a little gleeful to find myself surronded by these late, great works. They are strangely wild, more so than you might give “pretty” Monet credit for. And the colors!
The colors almost beg you to paint, even if you should be someone like me: more of an enthusiast than an artist. From a distance all seems serene, giving an impression of reality. Up close, things in the pictures fall apart and you become filled with wonder at a surface that contains so many contradictions.
At least that was the joyful effect it had on me, reminding me as it did of Linnea in Monet’s Garden.There are few Linneas in the US and certainly very few in Georgia where I grew up so as a child, which is why I was given a copy of this book about once a year in honor of my name. However my trips to Paris have unfortunately been when the Orangerie hosting Monet’s circular water lily series was closed. Here I was finally in Monet’s garden.

L’Allee de Rosiers, 1920-1922

While I have been to the real garden of Monet in Giverny, it’s beauty doesn’t compare with the artist’s work. Somehow in the process of seeing and painting the same sights for so many years, Monet arrived a point in his later years when his paintings were so patently not about the object itself but about his experience with them, his experience with the paint, his desire for the right color, that he no more heeded his eyes than he did contemporary painting styles. He painted, as it were, from the heart, from years of experience, and with great love. It is a beautiful thing to see.

Kiki Smith at Pace Gallery

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Lodestar, Kiki Smith’s current show at Pace Gallery in Chelsea, features paintings on glass panels in black metal frames, arranged as a grouping that tells of the cycle of a woman’s life. The images run from young to old to the encoffined, often posed alone or sitting. Images of a single tree and bare branch enhance the sense of isolation. The monochromatic palette has a milky glow and the etched and rough style creates an earthy rather than ethereal environment.


Certainly the grouping seen as a whole is more powerful than any one image. I wan’t sure I liked Smith, but walking through this exhibition yesterday felt contemplative and rather touching. Perhaps this was merely because there were few people around on a Wednesday morning, but I greatly enjoyed having the run of the place and appreciated her work the better for it. Lodestar runs concurrently with Smith’s exhibition Sojourn at the Brooklyn Museum, but only through June 17–so hurry if you want to catch it.

Nature’s First Green is Gold

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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

This poem by Robert Frost was running through my head as I was hiking and camping the Appalachian trail this weekend. Now that I am back in the city and all the greens have been replaced by grays (sky, sidewalks, buildings), the wealth of green seems all the more precious and fleeting. In my mind, they seems as glittering and varied as they do in Klimt’s The Park, a riot of densely undulating color.