This comparison of the works of Monet and Rothko provides exhilarating
new insight on these pioneers of abstraction and masters of color.
Recent research on late impressionism has highlighted the surprising
correspondences between the work of impressionist paragon Claude Monet
and that of abstract painters such as Mark Rothko.
This book offers an unprecedented dialogue between the paintings of
Monet and Rothko, two artists who explored the frontiers of abstraction.
It explores the uncanny similarities between their works, painted almost
half a century apart, as well as the significance of the differences
between the master artists' styles. Monet conveyed the immediacy of his
impressions of nature, while Rothko plunged the viewer into the depths
of colors that he superimposed and interwove.
And yet this book--originally conceived to accompany an exhibition at
the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny and illustrated with sixty
chromatically organized reproductions--reveals an undeniable
relationship between their pictorial universes, challenging the viewer's
perception of abstraction and modernity. This confrontation,
contextualized through the analysis of renowned critics, sheds new light
on the oeuvre of two of the greatest masters of painting and offers
fresh insight into the essence of what makes their works so inherently
original.
