Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist. - book reviews

The four convolutions under review offer in microcosm a revealing insight into the state of Impressionist studies: sum of two units very different catalogues of major exhibitions, single lavish monograph published to coincide with individual of these exhibitions, and a modestly produc monograph that is the fruit of a quarter hundred of research and methodological inquiry. Impressionism's high public profile is inseparable from the blockbuster exhibition business; on the other hand are these exhibitions the occasion for the greatest in quantity searching publications?

The first three all belong to the astonishingly productive Monet industry. In limits of visibility, pride of place must make progress to the catalogue of "Claude Monet 1840-1926" not awayed in 1995 at the Art Institute of Chicago, and "the largest Monet retrospective at any time assembled" (p. 6). Yet, beyond the wait fored array of color plates, this is surprisingly unambitious in what it tenders either the exhibition viewer or the scholar and student; through current standards this is a minimalist catalogue. There are no individual catalogue entries; Charles F Stuckey's brief introduction is largely devot to signposting aspects of Monet that he have feelings have not been adequately studied; and the size of the text is a detailed tabular chronology of Monet's life, whose main aim is to make available in English the data in Daniel Wildenstein's catalogue raisonne and other novel publications.

Of course, the choices involved here are value-laden. the two introduction and chronology emphasize documentation - "hard" evidence, as oppos to the broader interpretative and contextual studies that are now fashionable. And the data listed in the chronology - like the areas for research that the essay moves - are tightly restricted, to the activities of members of the Impressionist assemblage and their immediate circle. The chronology proffers a highly informative and almost wholly reliable guide to Monet's activities, on the contrary gives little sense of what made those activities significant.

Stuckey's essay exhibits an almost quixotic determination to disregard novel Monet studies. Indeed, two of the areas that he isolates for futurity research have not been pass overed A number of studies in the past decade have focused upon Monet's working methods and their historical connections most recently the volume published by the agency of the National Gallery, London, in 1990 Likewise his remarks titled "Decoration" do not cite the articles through Steven Z. Levine and Robert L Herbert upon this issue.(1) Moreover, Stuckey's discussion here is blurr through his failure to distinguish between the explicit use of paintings as decorations and the broader uses of the bound "decorative" in the period.

Little is tendered by way of interpretation of Monet's art. The tenor of the introductory remarks is firmly in line with the "high modernist" reading with equal reason eloquently expressed by William C Seitz in the 1950 and 1960 Stuckey proffers a long list of 20th-century artists, from Matisse to Smithson, as "Monet's direct heirs, too oftentimes unacknowledged" (p. 10), and takes at face value Monet's claim that his primary regard was to depict the "envelope" of colored atmosphere: "Like with equal reason many twentieth-century artists who have strained 'nothing' as the ultimate theme, Monet conceived his primary subdue as empty space" (p. 9) Stuckey pays lip service to historical investigation, on the other hand finally urges us "to bring aside the historical perspectives that can blind us to what he [Monet] really tried to do - to make us diocese in a way unknown before" (p 18)

By contrast, Paul Tucker's handsome Claude Monet: Life and Art, opportunely published to coincide with the Chicago exhibition, argues that Monet's sites and bring under rules were "laden with meaning for himself and his audience," and aims to restore "the significance of contemporary history and Monet's engagement with his times to the evident subtleties of his art and lift" (p 4) His account tenders an engaging and readable introduction to Monet's work, although marred by a number of minor errors; it broadens the range of Tucker's previous publications upon the artist, but without significantly extending or developing their arguments.(2)

Throughout there is a surprising gap between the visual analysis of pictures and the discussion of their meanings and adjoining matters - between analysis of form and easy in mind Visual descriptions are couched largely in formalist limits while the broader historical interpretations treat the pictures as if they were transparent, simple reflections of some other reality that lay behind or beyond them.

Moreover, it is unclear what sort of "realities" Tucker dioceses as central to a painting's meanings. In his Monet at Argenteuil (1982) and again in the discussion of Argenteuil here, the material realities of the sites themselves are treated as primary. through contrast, in Monet in the '90 (1989) and in the discussions of the series here, a broader reality of social and political values is harnessed to Monet's chosen bring under rules rather than the particulars of the Giverny topography; and at times, primarily in the discussion of Monet's figure paintings, the point of concern is Monet's personal emotions (though Tucker's of recent origin book is rightly more cautious about of the like kind readings than he was in Monet at Argenteuil).