“Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious. This is real, is all it says.” – Patrick Bringley
At the start of the month my partner Jason and I got married in an apple orchard on a scorching hot day in front of our friends and family. We couldn’t have imaged a more beautiful experience and were so thankful to be surrounded by all our favorite people. Before Birds in Art season was in full swing, we made a grand escape to Maine for our honeymoon, which was filled with lobster, breathtaking views, and more lobster.
As luck would have it, I was able to explore the Museum of Fine Arts Boston during the same week that “Novel Notions” participants would be discussing All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley. Truthfully, it wasn’t luck, it was a meticulously planned honeymoon with a full itinerary where I snuck in the most coveted museum stop I could think of. I will admit I did have an ulterior motive that wasn’t just seeing a stunning museum for the sake of seeing a museum, or the connections I could develop with the book club pick. I wanted to absorb the gallery of Claude Monet’s work. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has the largest collection of Claude Monet’s work outside of France. While some of the artwork is part of the MFA’s permanent collection, others have been loaned from private collections to allow the public the privilege of viewing them.
Walking into the gallery of Monet was like taking my first real deep breath. Overwhelming, extraordinary, and beautifully startling. I know this sounds dramatic, but it was as if my brain had forgotten that it had seen art before. All it could process were years of memories set in front of the water lily backdrop that hung in my parents’ living room. It’s like I was seeing them for the first time. I feel confident that Jason thought I had lost my mind as I ventured through the gallery, getting as close to each work as I reasonably could, gazing longingly at a haystack or water lily.
Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1903, Oil on canvas
In All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, Patrick Bringley writes, “Monet’s picture brings to mind one of those rarer moments where every particle of what we apprehend matters — the breeze matters, the chirping of the birds matters, the nonsense a child babbles matters — and you can adore the wholeness, or even the holiness, of that moment.” While our honeymoon was filled with magic, taking in the brilliance of a single moment — an aspect of the world that cannot be contained and is so real it feels ridiculous to be in awe of it — through the eyes of Monet will always be the best gift the trip could have given me. I don’t think I will ever be able to beat it, unless of course I venture to France on an anniversary trip…
