What’s left to say about a Monet show? Everybody else has already exhausted the Monet/money puns, as well as noting how the Impressionists were once revolutionaries whose art has become a byword for play-it-safe museum programming. Yet if you’re casting longing glances at the Hilma af Klint show going on at the Guggenheim in New York, consider that it has a thematic concern in common with Monet: The Late Years, which opens at the Kimbell this week.
While Hilma af Klint worked in seclusion and used séances as inspiration for her proto-abstract canvases, Monet was coming to abstraction by another route, as his eyesight started to go and a world war raged around his estate at Giverny. In this environment and mourning the deaths of his son and second wife, the aged artist threw himself into his work and remained relevant by remaking his painting style completely. The canvases from this period tend to be smaller (though some are ambitiously large like the works from his earlier years) and more focused on the vegetation in his garden. Monet: The Late Years includes a number of paintings that have never been seen in America. As the first major museum exhibit in 20 years devoted specifically to this period of Monet’s work, it may well have something new to say.
Monet: The Late Years runs Sun thru Sep 15 at the Kimbell Art Museum, 3333 Camp Bowie Blvd, FW. Tickets are $14-18. Call 817-332-8451.
