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- [00:09]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Impressionist artist Claude Monet said, I am overcome with admiration for Venice. Venice, as in Italy, Claude Monet is famous for painting landscapes of France. But a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum encourages you to remember about Monet and Venice. At the turn of the 2018 was feeling dissatisfied with his work, which his wife Alice called, quote, the endless water lilies. The couple decided to take a trip to Venice. It was Monet's first and only time in the city, and he was inspired by the city's canals and gondolas. During their short stay, Monet created a flurry of paintings, 19 of which are on view beginning tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum, the first time they've been presented together in more than a century. The show is called Monet and Venice. Curator Lisa Small is here to tell us more about it. To talk to you again.
- [01:05]
Lisa Small
Hi, Alison. Thanks for having me.
- [01:06]
Alison Stewart
So manet lived from 1840 to 1926. What part of his life and career as an artist did he visit Venice?
- [01:15]
Lisa Small
This was in his late career, as it's referred to. It was 1908. He was 68 years old. And as you said, he had never been to Venice before. And his wife actually encouraged him and convinced him to go against his wishes. He was reluctant.
- [01:32]
Alison Stewart
What were the circumstances of their relationship and their lives this time in 1908 when they decided to go to Venice?
- [01:39]
Lisa Small
Right. Well, Alice was his second wife. They'd been together for a long time already. And he had already started working on the water lily paintings, which, of course are very well known as sort of the culmination of his impressive career. But he went through a little bit of a rough patch with them. He was dissatisfied. One of his dealers came out to giverny to look at them for the first time and said, you know, I don't think I can sell any of these. I'm a little. I know to imagine saying that about water lily paintings, but, you know, this made Monet rather distraught. He destroyed some of them. He was sort of at an impasse. And it was that then he had a planned exhibition of them which he canceled because of that, you know, sort of response. And it was at this point that Elise got an invitation from a friend of theirs that they had met in London several years earlier, Mary Hunter. She was renting a very grand palazzo on the Grand Canal. It belonged to the American Curtis family, Daniel and Ariana Curtis very famous palazzo. They hosted Henry James, John Singer Sargent back in the day. And Alice said, we're gonna go. You have to get out of the garden. We're gonna go have this restorative trip to Venice. And she convinced him.
- [02:57]
Alison Stewart
You have a map in the show where Monet and Elise stayed when he painted. Once the couple arrived, how did they spend their average day in Venice?
- [03:07]
Lisa Small
Well, when they first got there, I think like any first time visitors to Venice, they were overcome with the magic and the enchantment of that city. It's sort of an impossible city to understand when you see it for the first time, the way it's built. And so they spent the first week doing what tourists do. They took gondola rides at sunset. And during the day they went all through the different canals, visited churches. Monet was extremely taken with the Grand Tintoretto paintings in the Palazzo Ducale and other places. So they sort of did the tourist route. Monet had bought one or two guidebooks, as one does, that sort of helped orchestrate the trip. And it was a vacation of sorts. But he knew that he couldn't go anywhere without being ready to paint. And so he arranged to have supplies sent or sent to be there with him. And so after a week or so, he got the supplies and he began what would become his very regimented daily painting schedule.
- [04:15]
Alison Stewart
It was so interesting. You have video of him painting?
- [04:19]
Lisa Small
Yes, in Giverny, but yes, painting.
- [04:21]
Alison Stewart
But it was interesting to see him paint. He's older in age, he's got a beard. I think he's got a cigarette.
- [04:26]
Lisa Small
That's my favorite part about that clip, that the ash gets longer and longer and you know it's going to fall into his palette.
- [04:32]
Alison Stewart
What did you observe by looking at that video?
- [04:36]
Lisa Small
Observed at that point? That was already in 1915, so that was some years after the Venice trip. But what you're seeing is an artist, you know, in full command of his talent, his skill, and really in the place he loves best. He's behind the pond that he built in Giverny, specifically, as he described it, as a motif for his paintings. So he's in his own world there.
- [04:59]
Alison Stewart
It's interesting because Venice is obviously famous for water, its canals. Monet is famous for how he painted water. How do they meet in these paintings?
- [05:09]
Lisa Small
Yeah, well, that was an interesting thing and something that really was underscoring a lot of what we were thinking about in this exhibition. He was a painter of water all of his career of water, of reflections. And so in a way, it's kind of funny to think that he never had gone to Venice, a place that is literally defined by the juxtaposition of stone and water and the reflections. So I think he found there, in that city that had already been painted so many times, a kind of ideal iteration of things that he had been looking at, whether he was along the Seine, at his pond in London, you know, a similar kind of compositional motif that he favored.
- [05:55]
Alison Stewart
I understood he did some of the paintings from gondolas.
- [06:00]
Lisa Small
Yes.
- [06:00]
Alison Stewart
And that the idea having been in a gondola in Venice, I'm like, how.
- [06:04]
Jordan Loft
Do you draw a painting from gondola? From a Venice?
- [06:08]
Alison Stewart
From a gondola, I should say.
- [06:09]
Lisa Small
Yes. I mean, he was already very good at the early part of his career. In the 1870s, he built himself with a studio boat.
- [06:18]
Alison Stewart
A studio boat?
- [06:19]
Lisa Small
Yes, he had a studio boat that he set up. It had a little cabana in it or something. And he would take it out onto the Seine so he could reach parts of the river from which to have his. That vantage point. So he was already very well versed in how to navigate and be on a boat painting. And so when he went to Venice, naturally, the gondola served that purpose. And what's so interesting about that, I mean, one of the reasons we know so much about his trip there is because Alice was with him, and she wrote daily letters back to her daughter. Daily letters. And not only was she with him, but she was sat beside him most of the time while he was painting, including in the gondola, there's a letter where she talks about, you know, her hands are so cold. Remember, it was fall when they were there. She's, you know, they're bouncing up and down. The waves are churning. And she recounted one wonderful anecdote, actually. The painting that Brooklyn owns of the Palazzo Dicale, seen from on the lagoon. Monet was extremely upset because the gondoliers that he hired every day to take him out to that spot couldn't find the same place every day from which to sort of anchor the gondola. And one day he just returned to the hotel in High Dudgeon because it was not going well.
- [07:44]
Jordan Loft
I'm speaking with Brooklyn Museum curator Lisa Small. We're discussing the exhibition Monet and Venice. It opens tomorrow at the museum. I want to talk a little bit about how it's set up. When you first walk in. Before we actually see any paintings, we treated to a room full of screens which show videos of Venice. Why did you want the show to begin this way?
- [08:05]
Lisa Small
Well, there are a bunch of reasons, different kind of drivers for that. First of all, it's a really beautiful space adjacent to, to our special exhibition space, but not really a conducive one for painting. So we knew we weren't gonna start the exhibition proper there. And really what I wanted to do is I wanted to take a moment and transport our visitors to Venice. Many of our visitors will have been there, but many of our visitors may not have been. And as I said, it's sort of a place that you kind of have to see to believe. And so I really wanted to set a moment where between the beautiful footage and the soundscape that we have, we could evok the feeling of being in that magical place. And you know, the funny thing is, of course, Venice hasn't really changed all that much in its appearance between 1908, when he was there and today. So we kind of wanted to begin with a really beautiful meditative mood. And, you know, to be perfectly honest, also, you know, there's a big, you know, these kinds of so called immersive experiences have become extraordinarily popular, particularly those that are based around artists. The experience I did not want that. It was not about that, it was about Venice because we have the paintings in the very next room, so there is no reason to blow them up.
- [09:27]
Jordan Loft
And I also noticed the lighting is a little bit low.
- [09:30]
Lisa Small
Mm.
- [09:30]
Jordan Loft
Why did you choose to go that route?
- [09:33]
Lisa Small
Well, we. Well, first of all, in the exhibition we have a mix of works on paper and paintings. And you know, every time you have a work on paper, you have to be careful about exposure from fading. But even with the paintings throughout, we did want to create a kind of, you know, for lack of a better word, an atmospheric effect. We had. We've got really good lighting, the kind of lighting that will spotlight the paintings and really make them glow from within. I had a visitor just the other day, say, walking in the room. It was as though it was a room full of windows and you were just looking out on these glowing scenes and it was really beautiful. So, yeah, in these paintings there really.
- [10:16]
Alison Stewart
Aren'T that many people in the paintings. Why did he choose to paint the city this way?
- [10:23]
Lisa Small
Yeah, it's interesting because Venice is filled with people. And it was filled with people then. You know, by the 1880s and 90s in Monet's career, he had already pretty much stopped painting figures, figural works. He had become more and more just obsessed with the idea of what he called the envelope, this, the colored air and atmosphere that was between him and the motif. So people really weren't his major interest. And so for Venice, I think he wanted to conjure that very unique atmospheric envelope that you get in Venice and in Venice in the fall, the haze, the mist. And in fact, we also know from Alice's letters that he very stringently avoided people. You know, he would go check out views from certain buildings, and he was like, no, this isn't gonna. Because there's a big landing, you know, boat landing there. There's too much traffic. He literally, you know, purposely cut all of that out of his imagery.
- [11:27]
Alison Stewart
What about the colors that he chose to use?
- [11:30]
Lisa Small
Yeah, there's a lot of pinks and greens and yellows. Yeah. I mean, I think it really had to do a lot with this particular quality of light that he discovered there. You know, I think he was trying to, again, evoke that kind magic mood of Venice, and the pinks and the blues really lent themselves to it.
- [11:55]
Jordan Loft
My guest is Brooklyn Museum curator Lisa Small. We're discussing the exhibition Monet and Venice, which opens at the museum starting tomorrow.
- [12:06]
Alison Stewart
The Brook Museum owns one of the.
- [12:08]
Jordan Loft
Venetian paintings in this show, the Palazzo Ducal. Tell us a little bit more about this painting. And by the way, if people want to see some of that work, a little bit of the work, they can go to our Instagram llofit@wnyc. It's in our stories.
- [12:21]
Lisa Small
Yeah. Our painting of the Palazzo Ducale was really one of the. It was the seed of the show that we developed. Yes. Because we've had that painting since 1920. It's one of the first Monet paintings to be in a public collection in New York city. And in 1920, it was, if you can believe it, it would have been considered a rather daring acquisition because it was still very radical modern art at that time. So it was really lovely to think about a. That would put that image front and center. So we're really delighted that it's kind of our signature image.
- [12:57]
Jordan Loft
But he painted it six times.
- [12:59]
Lisa Small
Well, he painted the motif of our Palazzo Ducalle. He did. Three times.
- [13:04]
Alison Stewart
Three times.
- [13:05]
Lisa Small
Okay. We tried. I mean, you know, I like to talk about the curatorial triumphs, but one of the disappointments was we were not able to secure the loan of either one of the other two versions.
- [13:16]
Jordan Loft
You have one, you have your own.
- [13:17]
Lisa Small
Yes, exactly. Exactly. So he did three of those. But the views of the Palazzo Dicali from a distance, we have about. We have four of them in the exhibition. Three of them are together, and one of them is off to the side. And what's lovely about that is you really get to do some close looking from picture to picture, and notice those Subtle shifts in the pinks, you know, in the blues. How many gondolas are in this picture versus that picture? It really becomes an almost film still, like, cinematic experience, especially in our last gallery.
- [13:52]
Jordan Loft
You got to go to Venice for this, I'm assuming? Yes, I did.
- [13:55]
Lisa Small
I did.
- [13:56]
Alison Stewart
What were you looking for?
- [13:57]
Lisa Small
Well, the first time we went to Venice, we were really looking to follow in Monet's footsteps. You know, we wanted. We know that he started these paintings as he would always do, en plein air, outside in front of the motif. And so we really wanted to see what he saw and kind of, you know, have that experience. So we were really, really fortunate to be able to gain access, for example, to the Palazzo Barbar, where he stayed, which is still privately owned, and be out on that, the water gate, and look out over the window and kind of get a sense of what he would have seen out that window. We were also very fortunate to go into the room at the. It is now called the Hotel St. Regis. Very posh hotel in Venice. I did not stay there, but they let us go into the room that has the window that was in the room of the hotel when he stayed there, and we could look out the window. And we spent a lot of time, like, with the pictures, really trying. Like, was he here? Was he perhaps on the veranda below? And it just gives you chills, like, to look out and see the exact view that he saw.
- [15:08]
Jordan Loft
As part of the exhibition. There's also a musical mural made by your composer in residence, Niles Luther, and it comes to life in the final. The big, giant gallery room. This big semicircle.
- [15:20]
Lisa Small
Yes.
- [15:21]
Jordan Loft
Tell us a little bit more about the musical component to the show.
- [15:24]
Lisa Small
Really important, and I'm thrilled the way it turned out. Niles Luther is our composer in residence, and for this project, he was in Venice with us on one of the trips and followed along in the footsteps of Monet. And he was really inspired by the paintings and also by the personal story of Claude and Alice, their love story, their time there together, that was so he enjoyed so much. And then they loved Venice. They wanted to return. But then not long after they returned to Giverny, Alice became ill and died. And he was never able to return. And in fact, he finished the Venice paintings in his studio in Giverny, which is something that he would do, finish paintings in the studio while mourning her. And so there was this really rich story, and Niles was so inspired by that. And he wrote this extraordinary symphony called Souvenir de Venice d' Apres Monet Souvenirs of Venice after Monet. And we have it playing in the final gallery surrounded by about 14 of the Venice pictures. And it just adds such a rich emotional layer. People go in that room and start tearing up. I've seen it happen multiple times, even in the few days of the press preview and yeah, it's just very, very moving. And I think there's also something interesting about looking and listening and how your perceptions of something you're looking at visually change and are affected by music you may be hearing at the same time and then vice versa. You're hearing music and seeing something. So it dovetails really well. And I'm just really excited to have our visitors have this different angle.
- [17:12]
Jordan Loft
And the museum was nice enough to share a sample of the composition that Niles made, which you'll hear at the exhibition. The exhibition is called Monetary and Venice. I have been kind enough to speak with Lisa Small, the museum curator. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for letting us play this piece of music.
- [17:31]
Lisa Small
Thank you so much. Alison Sam.
- [18:36]
Alison Stewart
And that is all of it. All of it is produced by Andrea Duncan Mao, Kate Hines, Jordan Loft, Simon Close, Zach Goderer Cohen, El Malik Anderson and Luke Green. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Our engineers are Juliana Fonda and Amber. Bruce Chase Coupon engineered our music segment. Our intern is India Ra. Luscious Jackson does our music. If you missed any segments this week, catch up by listening to a podcast available on your podcast platform of choice. If you like what you hear, please leave us a great rating. It helps people find the show. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time.
- [19:20]
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- [19:51]
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