August 13-26, eight Academy students lived and worked at the Terra Foundation for American Art-Europe in Giverny, France as part of a two-week Artist in Residence Program. Daniel Bilodeau (MFA 2013), Adam Carnes (MFA 2013), Ivy Hickam
(MFA
2013), Jacob Hicks (MFA 2012), Gaetanne Lavoie (MFA 2013), Robert Plater
(MFA 2013), Amanda Scuglia (MFA 2013) and Valentina Stanislavskaia (MFA
2013) will continue to share their experiences here.
Over the course of two weeks I was lucky
enough to join a group of gifted artists led by Professor Jean-Pierre Roy, Daniel Bilodeau (MFA
2013), Adam Carnes (MFA 2013), Ivy Hickam (MFA 2013), Jacob Hicks (MFA 2012),
Gaetanne Lavoie (MFA 2013), Robert Plater (MFA 2013), Amanda Scuglia (MFA 2013)
and Valentina Stanislavskaia (MFA 2013), on a
residency in Giverny, France, the residence of revolutionary seer, Claude
Monet.
Monet was wholly indebted to
phenomenological truth, more than he was indebted to pre-conceived standards of
art affixed to institutionalization. He was never to give himself over to
the ways in which he was taught to see-though he was clearly taught, from an
early age, the precedence of French academic art. History is opened when
placed in the hands of someone willing first to learn, and then to seek change.
Initially to him, I assume, it
must have seemed ludicrous to speak the visual language of established artistic
tradition and call it mimetic truth-- as it seems ludicrous for any member of
contemporary life to refer to a Cimabue painting as the realistic mirror of the
human eye to the exterior world.
Traditions are born. They
swell, grow roots, share excitements, age, and then must be upended, just as
the dilapidated building, whose structure was once perfect, must be demolished
and rebuilt. To upend institutional thought is to teach us our thoughts
want and will always focus on progression. We are taught ideas as if they
are unchangeable, but to triumph is to change.
So Monet goes outside, to a
garden, and decides to paint the arc of time by way of color and
movement. He dabs in the changing light against a white linen the optical
equivalencies of water, weeping willow, chapel, haystack, human--knowing those
containing lines of structure are the lies of his mind wanting to create
demarcations and separations. What he comprehends is the melt of
visual unity.
He calls a work Impressionist
Sunrise, and his critics poke fun and name his friends and followers
“Impressionists.” The sonorous bell of the word rings, and the way
western society sees again moves. A new cathedral of thought slowly
builds awaiting its fall.
It is necessary to love the modes of thought
that shape us, that come before, and to thank them. It is our duty to
shape new modes of thought.
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