Parisians Throng to Cultural Event of the Year, RP, February 2011

Parisians throng to cultural event of year
Published: February 27, 2011

http://republicanherald.com/news/parisians-throng-to-cultural-event-of-year-1.1109961

I am not one in a million, I am one of almost a million visitors, who, in a period of 125 days, flocked to see an exhibit devoted to the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926).

Held in the Grand Palais (palace), a glass-roofed exhibition hall on the Champs Elysees, it brought together paintings from all over the world, some never before exhibited in France. Only one exhibit in French history ever did better, and that was in 1967, when the treasures of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen were brought to Paris, attracting 1.2 million visitors, over a period of seven months. To see Monet, we had only four, and I got in just under the gun, with less than 48 hours remaining to visit one of the most popular exhibits France has ever known.

To be sure of getting inside the fine arts gallery of the Grand Palais, on Jan. 23, I was up at 5 a.m. Before 6 a.m., I headed out the door, walking up the hill towards the metro in a fine, freezing rain. At the top of the hill, the vendors at my local outdoor market were already setting up their stands, unloading fresh fish, vegetables, meat and much more, from trucks double-parked in the street. I hurried underground and hopped in a train, after a few stops, changed to another and then emerged above ground at the station "Champs-Elysées-Clemenceau." Not yet 6:30 a.m., and already the waiting time - outside in the freezing rain in the dark Parisian night with dawn still far away - is two hours before we can even hope to get inside. Later in the day, waiting time will increase to five.

Beginning 9 a.m. Jan. 21, the doors of the Grand Palais remained open through 9 p.m. Jan. 24, when the Monet exhibit closed. Publicity stunt, marketing ploy or simply a response to overwhelming demand? Suffice it to say crowds have been filing in 24/7, and at 6 a.m. Sunday, entire families, many with sleeping children in strollers or parents' arms wait in the rain, wait quietly and patiently, to pass from darkness into the glistening light of the world of Impressionist painter Claude Monet.

My first reaction, once I'm finally inside, is one of disappointment because I can hardly see a thing. The crowd is five or six deep around Monet's early works, landscapes painted in the forests around Paris by a very young painter influenced by the Barbizon school. Its members were a group of French artists who carried their easels outside to paint directly from nature. The young Monet joined them, painting forests and fields in a style similar to that of his elders, painters such as Corot or Courbet.

In the next two rooms, the crowd continues to shuffle along. After hours of waiting in the cold and rain, many of us are feeling irritable, wondering if the wait was worth it, but we certainly don't feel cold. The gallery is stifling and we're wearing winter coats. I'm asking myself if, at this pace, I'll be able to make it through to the end without collapsing in a dead faint.

Then, for some strange reason, much like when a traffic snarl suddenly dissolves, in the next room, awash in Impressionist light, the crowd thins out. Finally, we can breathe easy, we can even stop and contemplate a favorite painting, as we follow Monet on his lifetime "tour de France." Like many Impressionist painters, he embarked on a journey to see, not the beauties of his country, but the beauty of light on land and water in every corner of France. Be it on the beaches of Normandy or Brittany or on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in the heart of Paris or deep in the French countryside, Monet's quest was always the same, to capture the fleeting movement of light using a painting technique worthy of its splendor.

By 1870, while living north of Paris in a village on the banks of the Seine, Monet had worked out the rudiments of that technique, short brush strokes used to apply thick dabs of paint, the juxtaposition, rather than the mixing, of colors and the fragmentation of form under the effect of light and atmospheric conditions. The winter of 1871 is particularly harsh and the fast-flowing Seine freezes over, its surface broken up into bobbing chunks of ice. Despite the cold, Monet visits the river at all hours of the day, instituting an essential Impressionist practice, as he returns to the same scene several times each day, and several days in succession, in pursuit of a fleeting atmosphere.

All his life, until his dying day, Monet continued his quest to capture light on canvas. When he retired from his travels, but not from painting, he set up his easel at his home in Giverny, painting over and over again the water lilies floating on a pond in his beloved garden. Today both home and garden are open to visitors, and many tourists from around the world take the train from St. Lazare Station in Paris to travel to Giverny.

But that is not the only way to discover Monet's home. Another option is to push open the doors of the Pottsville Free Public Library. Inside you'll find a children's book which appeals to the child in all of us - "Linnea in Monet's Garden" by Cristina Bjork. Also available is the 1992 award-winning animated film based on the story. Next to the real thing, there's no better way to visit Monet's garden and get better acquainted with his work.

And instead of standing for hours in the rain and cold, like us Parisians, residents of Schuylkill County can hop in their car and drive to the Reading Public Museum, which has its own collection of French Impressionist paintings. That's where I discovered them when I was a child. For those ready to drive a little farther, there's also the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, where the homegrown variety of Impressionism is on display. Its Lenfest Collection is devoted to the Pennsylvania Impressionists, who painted the Bucks County countryside and industrial sites, such as the furnaces of Bethlehem Steel. I'll add that many of the Monet paintings in the Paris exhibit were borrowed from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and will soon be returning home.

So was it worth it, my two hours in the dark and in the rain? Yes, definitely, and I thank the French for Monet-and for the crazy idea of keeping a museum open 24/7.

(Honicker can be reached at honicker.republicanherald@gmail.com)