Monet : the early years /

Among numerous Monet exhibitions and accompanying catalogues, Monet: The Early Years surprises and illuminates. It offers a fresh, coherent reassessment of Monet's early career (1858-72) before he participated in impressionistic exhibitions. The organizers of the exhibit tracked down many less-known paintings, and all the contributors challenge conventional narratives of Monet's career, primarily through close looking informed by historical context and recent scholarship and through linking early and later paintings. Shackelford (deputy director, Kimbell Art Museum), the project's initiator, points out Monet's astute exhibition practices. Mary Dailey Desmarais delves into Monet's references to past and contemporary masters in his huge (unfinished) Dejeuner sur l'herbe, and Richard Thomson examines consistencies and inconsistencies in Monet's naturalism. Callen embeds the artist's innovative composition strategies in his choices of commercially available materials, horizon lines, and viewpoints, demonstrating how deliberately he prepared for painting what many believed to be purely spontaneous, emotional responses to his world. Like Thomson, Callen finds Monet's naturalism full of artifice. In his essay, Richard Shiff posits the ways in which Monet's work maintains significance as "enhanced, exploratory, sensory experience." A helpful time line follows the essays. Catalogue entries depend heavily on formal analysis, without complete provenance, exhibition history, or bibliography. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --Alisa Luxenberg, University of Georgia