Monet at the Grand Palais

Life today has become so saturated with superlatives that when something is described as a "once in a lifetime" experience it is all too easy to be skeptical. When newspaper columnists wrote of the monumental scale and unique viewing opportunities presented by the Monet exhibition currently being staged at the Grand Palais in Paris, one couldn't help but think their words no more than overenthusiastic marketing hyperbole. Yet seeing beyond the spin there was still a magnetic pull, a recognition that an awful lot of Monet paintings in one place might be a pleasurable thing to go and see. And thus I went.

It does indeed do the soul good to see such an abundance of colour and shifting light as a contrast to January's leaden grey skies and chill winds. Even images of a magpie in the snow and icebergs in the Seine were imbued with such attractive depth by Monet's brush that they provoked more of a warm glow than a frosty shiver. Monet's paintings reward careful, measured perusal, each one displayed in the Grand Palais in its carefully organised place, taking up position in the well-ordered spread of the artist's career. In each individual one you could find something to admire, something beautiful.

The sheer scale of the exhibition did not detract from the uniquely beautiful elements of each component painting, but it was the enormity of this undertaking to gather so many Monet works in one place at one time that gave the whole experience its powerful undercurrent of constantly present awe. It was the artist's habit to pay great attention to detail, often painting on a number of canvases simultaneously to create many different views of the same scene. He moved from canvas to canvas to capture subtle shifts in light or weather. All of these differing views were presented side by side in Paris, a remarkable thing considering the fact that the individual paintings now reside out there in our contemporary global village, many thousands of miles apart. So the viewer is faced with a sight that has not been seen for decades - storm tossed tempest alongside tranquil mirror sea, late afternoon sun on a haystack beside the same haystack in the pink morning dawn, a painting usually now in Melbourne reunited with its companion piece that has been hanging alone in St. Petersburg. I almost had to pinch myself to prove that it was real. There were paintings grouped together that clearly belonged together, documenting the way Monet worked and making clear all that he wanted to achieve with his art, yet they were together here, now and only briefly. The chance to see them displayed in this manner really did seem to be a "once in a lifetime" opportunity.

Seeing key works side by side provided an insight into the mind of Monet and his motivations, whilst seeing the full array of his paintings throughout his life demonstrated the development of his artistic style. We all know his large scale pieces, impressionist waterlily marvels and Le Dejeuner sur L'herbe, both of which had due prominence in the exhibition. However, the curators had also allowed us to follow Monet's perambulations around France and beyond, taking in his visits and revisits to places, his fresh looks and progressions in outlook and method. In doing so we could come to appreciate how Monet reached his own individual artistic position. His output encompassed portraiture and still life as well as landscapes, shifting gradually with the advancing years from very naturalistic precision to something more... passionate, perhaps, pushing his love of light and its shifting playfulness way out to seek new boundaries and finding a new approach to presenting myriad details. A life's work, all in one place, and the we were carefully led through its twists and turns in a way that allowed us to interpret it, explore it and reach an understanding of it.

Visiting the Monet retrospective at the Grand Palais was a profoundly satisfying experience. The early reviewers of the exhibition were justified in their free-flowing praise. The scale and scope of the show deserved no less. There was no alternative to being there, though. No secondhand review could truly do justice to the immediate moment of being faced with Monet, completely immersed in Monet and the wonders that he lived to produce and yet not floundering in the epic volume of it all. Through careful selection and well ordered presentation the curators seemed to have ensured that each individual visitor could manage to pluck a personal response from the vast array of rich material. Seeing the whole exhibition together one could not help but see real meaning. Appreciating beauty in Monet's work is not difficult, but being gently led towards a deeper understanding of it is something truly monumental.

Monet exhibition website - English version.