A few days ago, we went to the “Unknown Monet” exhibit at the Clark in Williamstown, MA. We loved it.

For reasons I don’t understand and in a way I couldn’t predict, Monet has always touched me. Renoir I find merely pleasant, Gauguin cartoonish and obscure, Seurat gimmicky, but Monet I become inarticulate about. (And, I do recognize that I’m being way over-articulate – i.e., ignorant – about those other masters.) The Clark exhibit showed early drawings and pastels by Monet that I found revelatory and beautiful. With a few lines — clear in ink and smudged in pastel — Monet showed light. He also did this other thing I like, although I’m not sure it’s an aesthetic response: He made me yearn to be in the places he depicted.

So, yesterday I read a review of the exhibit in the Boston Globe by Ken Johnson. He was not sold by the exhibit. The works were not impressive and do not contribute to our understanding of Monet, although Johnson was pleasantly surprised by the caricatures on display, which were the least interesting part to me.

It’s a terrific review. I learned a lot from it. Johnson’s main concern is one that I’m sure is obvious to people who study art as opposed to occasionally going to a museum, but it helped me both understand and appreciate Monet: Breaking with tradition, Monet didn’t build his paintings on drawings. Thus, he was able to see light, not outlines. (I’m paraphrasing crudely. Read the review.) Johnson thinks that the drawings at the exhibit prove that Monet just wasn’t very good at drawing. The drawings are, to him, workman-like at best, and thus do not contribute to understanding Monet’s ineffable paintings.

So, do I now like the drawings less? To some degree, yes. Sort of. Skill matters to how I see art. Now a critic who has better grounding to evaluate the skill required has downgraded it. That does change the way I view the drawings. But skill is just one component. The drawings still have a transcendent quality: I look at them and wonder how a person could bring forth these scenes with just a few lines. The scenes remain living, drenched, inviting, loving.

Johnson’s review does the proper job of criticism. He contextualizes, bringing to bear knowledge and wide experience. He has changed the way I see the Monet’s drawings and pastels. We see through education and experience. But, ultimately in this case, the review hasn’t changed the way the drawings and pastels speak to me. If I learned more, though, perhaps …[Tags: monet art ken_johnson ]

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