{"id":5656,"date":"2018-11-25T19:12:43","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T18:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lucidrealities.studio\/?p=5656"},"modified":"2019-12-16T15:24:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T14:24:34","slug":"smithsonian-step-into-monets-world-with-a-vr-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lucidrealities.studio\/index.php\/2018\/11\/25\/smithsonian-step-into-monets-world-with-a-vr-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"SMITHSONIAN | Step Into Monet\u2019s world with a VR exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visiting the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Orangerie<\/a>\u2019s \u201cWater Lilies\u201d rooms\u2014an oblong pair of galleries fitted with eight panoramic panels from Claude Monet\u2019s seminal series\u2014is an immersive experience in and of itself. But as Flora Eveno reports for Belgian news outlet RTBF, individuals stopping by the Paris museum can now opt to literally immerse themselves in Monet’s masterpieces through a virtual reality tour of the French Impressionist\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

The VR experience, called \u201cClaude Monet: The Water Lily obsession<\/a>\u201d transports visitors to the artist\u2019s Giverny home and, most importantly, his garden. Monet spent the last 30-odd years of his life chronicling this landscape in more than 250 installments of the \u201cWater Lilies\u201d series, Mental Floss\u2019 Kristy Puchko notes. The artist personally cultivated the diverse assortment of plant life scattered across the property, even importing his eponymous water lilies from Egypt and South America. (The move, incidentally, attracted the ire of local authorities who were less interested in Monet\u2019s vision and more concerned that the foreign plants would poison the area\u2019s water supply.)<\/p>\n

According to a press release, the roughly 8-minute immersion traces Monet\u2019s \u201cWater Lilies\u201d from inception to exhibition. \u201cYou stand in the shallow waters at Giverny, inspired as he was inspired by the dappled light and fickle seasons waxing and waning across the lilies and bulrushes,\u201d the visceral statement notes. \u201cYou are then transported to Monet\u2019s studio, where a virtual canvas is stretched taut above and around you and the artist\u2019s bold, searing brushstrokes build up across your vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Water Lily Obsession\u201d debuted at the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Orangerie this month, Blouin Artinfo reports, and will remain on view through March 11, 2019, as part of the museum\u2019s ongoing exploration of Monet\u2019s close relationship with French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. As Deborah Solomon wrote for the New York Times in 2016, the two were an unlikely pair: Monet was famously apolitical, never voting in an election, while Clemenceau, a consummate politician, had similar artistic fascinations as Monet, with Japanese tea bowls and woodblock prints adorning his apartment.<\/p>\n

Clemenceau encouraged Monet to continue painting during the twilight years of his life, even serving as a go-between for the mercurial artist and the eye doctor tasked with repairing his troublesome cataracts.<\/p>\n

On November 12, 1918, the day after the armistice ending World War I was signed, Monet repaid Clemenceau\u2019s kindness by bequeathing the nation a group of his \u201cWater Lilies\u201d paintings, which he hoped would serve as a \u201cmonument to peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not much, but it is the only way I have of taking part in the Victory,\u201d Monet wrote in a letter to the prime minister \u201c\u2026 I admire you and embrace you with all my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took nearly a decade for that promise to come to fruition, Alan Riding notes in a separate New York Times<\/a> article, but in 1927, the year after Monet\u2019s death at age 86, his panels were installed in specially constructed rooms at the Mus\u00e9e de l’Orangerie.<\/p>\n

Although the new experience is the Paris museum\u2019s first foray into virtual reality, Monet\u2019s work is no stranger to the medium. In 2017, VR artist Stephanie Riggs led the launch of \u201cMonet in Giverny: The Later Years,\u201d a colorful glimpse of the artist\u2019s life as seen through the lens of his early 1920s painting, \u201cThe Artist\u2019s House from the Rose Garden.\u201d Writing for Medium, Riggs explains, \u201cOnly once the landscape and the artist\u2019s point of view are established do the streaks of color appear, accompanied by Monet\u2019s own thoughts. Stroke after stroke, the painting comes into being.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClaude Monet – The Water Lily obsession<\/a>\u201d produced by ARTE, Lucid Realities and Camera Lucida in conjunction with HTC Vive Arts<\/a>, features a similar plunge into the process of creation. As ARTE notes on its website, the experience encapsulates Monet\u2019s late-in-life embrace of abstraction and cacophonic color. It also mimics the worsening eyesight the artist experienced during the creation of his \u201cWater Lilies\u201d series, allowing participants to better understand the toll wrought by such loss.<\/p>\n

Despite such bodily constraints, Monet managed to end his career with a burst of productivity most artists couldn\u2019t hope to emulate over an entire lifetime\u2014an accomplishment easily revealed by a stroll (virtual or physical) through the Mus\u00e9e de l’Orangerie.<\/p>\n

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