Liz Lidgett 0:01
Welcome back to Ten Minute Masterpieces where we explore curious stories behind the world's most renowned works of art. I'm Liz Lidgett. I'm an art advisor and gallery owner in Des Moines, Iowa.
Liz Lidgett 0:11
Today's Ten Minute Masterpiece is not a single artwork, but actually a prolific series of paintings, Claude Monet's Water Lilies. Monet was one of the pioneers of Impressionism, a movement of art that emerged in France in the 1870s. Impressionism rejected the rigid rules of traditional art and developed a new way to observe and depict the world. Impressionists cast off the idea that portraits needed to look realistic. Instead, Impressionists, like Claude Monet, created fleeting impressions of light on their subjects and surroundings, which were often found outside.
Liz Lidgett 0:45
Monet usually painted en plein air, a French term that means outdoors. And his favorite en plein air location, where the picturesque gardens at his home in Giverny, on the bank of the Seine River about 50 miles northwest of Paris in the Normandy region. With the help of a team of gardeners, Monet laid out the property at Giverny, as if it were one giant painting filled with weeping willow and bamboo trees, exotic flowers, a Japanese style footbridge, and most famously, a network of water lilies. Monet said of Giverny, "My finest masterpiece is my garden".
Liz Lidgett 1:21
Monet painted more than 250 paintings in the Water Lilies series, all of which focused on the surface of the water. The blue of the sky and the blue of the water seemingly become one. Only the presence of the floating water lilies helps the viewer understand that the sky is a reflection. The artist once said of his beloved water flowers, "One instant, one aspect of nature, contains it all". Monet painted Water Lilies on and off throughout his career, and he dedicated most of the last 30 years of his life to gardening and painting at Giverny.
Liz Lidgett 1:54
The expression "when it rains, it pours" rings true in Monet's later years. In 1911, Monet's wife Alice died of leukemia. In 1914, Monet's oldest son died. And from 1914 to 1918, the great war now known as World War One raged all around Europe. Monet could often hear artillery fire from nearby battles on the Western Front, a painful reminder that his youngest son was serving the French army in the brutal war. Some art historians note that Monet's Water Lilies from the last decade of his life had no horizon lines, no beginning or end. His end of life Water Lilies were monumental in scale, most measuring at least six feet tall and wide. These creative choices were perhaps a reflection on how vast and impossible intense grief can feel.
Liz Lidgett 2:41
The war ended on November 11 1918, what is known as Armistice Day. The following day, Monet offered eight of his large scale Water Lily paintings to the French government, as memorial of the French lives lost in the war. These paintings are on permanent display at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. Monet worked with the museum architect to design the display space for the eight gigantic canvases that span 300 total feet in length. The large scale Water Lilies hang in two adjacent oval rooms, often referred to as the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism. The rounded double galleries create an infinity symbol, which was a significant and intentional choice by Monet in the gallery design. In Monet's words, "Viewers of the Water Lilies at Musée de l'Orangerie should have the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon or bank."
Liz Lidgett 3:33
In Monet's final years, his Water Lilies series became more and more experimental, sometimes because of his artistic choices, but also because his vision became impaired by cataracts. This condition causes cloudy areas in the lens of your eye, the part that helps to focus light. Signs and symptoms of cataracts can include clouded, blurred or dim vision, seeing halos around lights, double vision, and fading and yellowing of colors. Monet was frustrated with his deteriorating vision, and how it impacted his painting process. He worried about his paintings, often reworking or destroying them. But in 1921, Monet poignantly told a reporter, "Alas, I see less and less. But I will paint almost blind as Beethoven composed completely deaf."
Liz Lidgett 4:19
In his last ten years of life, Monet's Water Lilies became more abstract studies in color and form, opening the path to modern abstract painting. When Monet died in 1926, the art world in Paris in America was changing. Monet and the Impressionists were pushing the boundaries of color and light. These artistic pioneers were breaking traditional barriers to achieve greater freedom of expression in their artwork and their lives. In doing so, the Impressionists opened the door for future generations of artists to push boundaries and explore new ways of seeing and depicting the world.
Liz Lidgett 4:53
Here to talk about Monet's Water Lilies is one of the artists we represent at Liz Lidgett Gallery. Kit Porter is a mixed media artist living and working in Beaufort, South Carolina. Her paintings focus on the fragmentation and breakdown of objects in nature, like flowers and marine debris. Kit explores how these objects are shaped over time by their environments.
Liz Lidgett 5:13
Kit, I'm so thrilled that you are here with us on the podcast today.
Kit Porter 5:18
Thanks so much for having me.
Liz Lidgett 5:19
I want to have you introduce yourself and then tell us a little bit about your work in your own words.
Kit Porter 5:25
My name is Kit Porter, and I consider myself a painter of fragments. My work explores the fragility of life by depicting scenes in nature, like vast fields of wildflowers. I started painting fragments of things that I was finding on the beach -- could be plastics, or shells softened by sand, and broken by waves and faded by sunlight, just exploration of shape that was changed by time as a direct result of its environment. When looking at my work, it's definitely more on the abstract side. But I hope to kind of evoke a sense of abundance that one would have when standing in front of a vibrant field of wildflowers,
Liz Lidgett 6:12
With your work with flowers and things that have been broken down by water, it just all brought me to Monet's work, and making those connections with your work and his. So we're going to talk about Monet's Water Lilies and that entire series,
Kit Porter 6:26
Certainly, well, when I look at his work, and particularly in this Water Lilies series, I feel peace, tranquility, meditation, and I can only guess that that is a feeling that he felt when he was in his gardens, which were his happy place. The work itself is so meditative, I think about him entering this meditative sort of trance-like state that I get into when I'm painting.
Liz Lidgett 6:59
I totally agree. I think that the process of an artwork is just as exciting and meaningful as the actual work itself.
Kit Porter 7:06
I think in a lot of ways process really trumps subject, because in my work, and really in Monet's work and his Water Lilies, subject becomes secondary to process.
Liz Lidgett 7:19
If I can get personal with you for a second to you and I met for the first time over the phone, and I wanted you to join the gallery. And I think you had found out maybe two days beforehand, before our call, that you had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Kit Porter 7:36
Yeah, I think it was that week. It's interesting to think back, there were certainly days when I didn't feel great. And I thought, "Well, I'm just gonna go sit in the studio for a little while", and I would sit there and then after a few minutes, I would go, "Well, maybe I'll just pick up a brush for a second". And I would feel really bad, but I would just kind of start messing around a little bit, not putting any pressure on myself to create anything. And then hours would go by because, as you do when you're an artist, and you enter that flow state of creativity, I wasn't thinking about how bad I was feeling. I was just creating, it was flowing. I really, I think I painted every single day of treatment. I mean, even after having surgery, I was in the studio the next day, because it's therapeutic.
Liz Lidgett 8:24
I think about this in regards to Monet as well. He was potentially losing his eyesight. But both of you felt like despite what was going on with your bodies that you had to keep creating, because that was so a part of you. Can you talk to me a little bit about that.
Kit Porter 8:41
I plan to paint every day for the rest of my life, whether I get really sick again or start to lose my eyesight. When you're an artist you don't retire. You paint no matter what. And going through that really changed a lot about the way that I painted. I started thinking, "Why is my work shifting?" And then I was going "Oh yeah, remember, you're going through this major life thing". And it took me a minute to really understand why my work was just becoming more vibrant, and colorful and beautiful. And I really attributed that to the people that were coming together around me and surrounding me with love. Taking it back to Monet. I can imagine that painting -- it's his way, my way, an artist's way of experiencing the world.
Liz Lidgett 9:31
You just said that so beautifully. What do you hope people know or feel about from your work?
Kit Porter 9:38
It's interesting because I don't really want them to feel any certain way. As artists, we spend so much time with our work and we think we know it so intimately and we do in a way but once it leaves the studio and once it's in front of somebody else and they have their own personal history and they bring into the work. Then it's not ours anymore. It takes on its own life and it becomes a part of whoever is standing in front of it. It means nothing if we keep it to ourselves and don't share it.
Liz Lidgett 10:13
I'm so thankful that Kit shared her personal journey with us as an artist. And as a breast cancer survivor, Kit was going through a really tough time, but she came back to the canvas every day. That's where she found her comfort and her meditation, and Monet did as well. Monet shared the peace and tranquility of his private gardens with the rest of the world. By doing so he invited others to feel the solace and comfort he felt while painting. I find this act of artistic generosity so touching, how he shared his art to heal the soul of a country that was so deeply affected by World War One.
Liz Lidgett 10:48
These artists are separated by several generations. But Kit and Monet are easy to talk about in the same conversation because of how they approach their work. Kit's work is about how objects are shaped by their environments. As she went through her breast cancer journey, Kit's work was changing too. This was also the case for Monet. His work reflected how he was losing his eyesight at the end of his life.
Liz Lidgett 11:10
I'm struck by the idea that what happens in an artist's life ends up on the canvas in really profound ways. What inspires me is how they both kept painting through hardship, and how returning to the canvas was a necessary part of their healing journeys.
Liz Lidgett 11:28
Ten Minute Masterpieces is a production of Liz Lidgett Gallery and is produced by Maribeth Romslo Special thanks to Kit Porter. Check out our show notes for credits to this episode and links to more info about Claude Monet and his Water Lilies.
Liz Lidgett 11:41
Join us next time when we take a look at Gordon Parks and his photograph called At Segregated Drinking Fountain. Until then, I hope you take ten minutes and look at some art today. You might just discover your favorite masterpiece.
