Since July 31st , the Giverny Museum of Impressionisms has been home to an exhibition entitled “Photographing Monet’s Gardens”, bringing together five contemporary visions of the famous French impressionist’s gardens. Elger Esser, Stephen Shore, Bernard Plossu, Darren Almond and Henri Foucault have come together to offer a fresh, modern, multifaceted interpretation of what is now a tourist hotspot but which, for the master of Impressionism, was the main setting of his paintings over the last twenty-five years of his life.
Claude Monet settled in Giverny in 1883 at the age of 43. Seven years later, he bought the house and garden which he redesigned to his personal taste. A few years later, he had the lily pond created on the other side of the road. “There is no need to know how he created his garden. It is quite clear that he arranged it, following what his eye told him, in successive stages, guided by the invitations each new day brought, to feed his appetite for colour,” wrote his friend and biographer Georges Clemenceau.
From 1977 to 1982, commissioned by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, American photographer Stephen Shore recorded the rebirth of Monet’s garden. His photographs are on show for the first time in France.
From 2010 to 2015, Darren Almond, Henri Foucault, Elger Esser and Bernard Plossu were given carte blanche and took over the painter’s garden. They explored every inch of it, contemplated it day and night, in spring, summer, autumn and winter, and studied the magic of the place, its ephemeral beauty endlessly renewed. The garden is a source of inspiration but also a space for experimentation.
EXHIBITION
Photographier les jardins de Monet
Cinq regards contemporains
Through November 1st, 2015
Musée des impressionnismes Giverny
99 rue Claude Monet BP 18
27620 Giverny
France
T : 33 (0) 232 51 94 65
F : 33 (0) 232 51 94 67
[email protected]
http://www.mdig.fr
