Monet: The Water Lily Pond | Hacker News Reader

Monet: The Water Lily Pond

artsandculture.google.com

The Monet room on the fifth floor of MOMA in New York, with its two enormous Water Lilies’ works on opposing walls, is a deeply beautiful space. You should go there.

Here’s what’s remarkable about Monet. Zoom in. Look closely. Regardless of how close or how far you gaze, you get a different painting, different scenes and subjects, and possible interpretations. It’s wild.

Follow OP’s link here, zoom in, and see for yourself.

> Follow OP’s link here, zoom in, and see for yourself.

I can't seem to zoom in because the page hijacks my scroll and has disabled zoom.

You might be able to work around this deliberate bug created by Google engineers by enabling zoom in your browser's accessibility settings. At least that's how I did it on Chrome back in the day.

Yeah. It might as well be in flash.

If you have the oppotunity you have to visit Monet's garden north of Paris.

Totally worth it to go up to the top of MOMA and gaze a while. Pro tip: you know you stayed long enough once the security guards start eyeing you suspiciously! ;-)

As an artist who does digital abstract art, I've always loved Monet's (and Van Gogh's in a different style) ability to create a mood with from close up what appear to be random brush strokes and dabs. It's a magical ability I could never even vaguely approach. The ability to paint outdoors and capture fleeting lighting effects a camera would have trouble with (since a photo is only an instant) is also amazing. If I had $10M to spend and had an option for a Monet or Van Gogh, or a Bored Ape, how is that even a decision? 100 years from now people will still love the former, and the latter will be remembered alongside Pet Rocks if at all.

I went to Monet’s garden as a kid and saw amongst other things the bridge. It was pretty special, even as a semi-reluctant child.

The thing I loved about Giverny's pond is how even with a hundred tourists and the distant sound of the road, you feel snuggled up in a little green cocoon. Even the benches and bridges are green. There's no space on the banks for a person to peek out, so all you see is green and some dull brown. Then there's a pop of pink, or purple, or white, or red, or yellow flowers. And between it all, the clear blue sky and white clouds reflected off the water and up above. At least visually, civilization is gone. It's almost foreboding; it doesn't seem made for leisurely laying on the grass by the pond. Rather it's for looking out on from some hidden corner, as if to say, this place doesn't belong to you; this is mother nature's home, and you're a guest here.

I’m quite happy to hear that, as my wife and I will be visiting Monet’s garden later this month, along with our semi-reluctant son. (He’s 10. )

My mum was an art teacher which probably helped. I think I'd seen some of Monet's art in things she'd shown me, or the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay (both if which I seem to recall enjoying for about 10 minutes max).

Seeing in real life the place that one of the paintings was made was interesting to me as I liked Monet in general and it was interesting to me to be in the place that this person had also been in many years ago.

There are things that are great, but not very popular.

Other things are popular, but not all that great.

It's so satisfying when something is popular AND great.

(I could give examples, but that might just incite a flame war. Obviously I think Monet is in that last category.)

Thanks for posting this link. I'm glad I got to see artsandculture.google.com before Google killed it.

There's a lot of really cool stuff:

https://artsandculture.google.com/explore

I had always thought that the reflections of the willows were little waterfalls - the whole painting takes on a completely different feel now that I know

This is currently(?) on display in the Pola museum of art in Kanagawa. I saw it last month. https://www.polamuseum.or.jp/en/collection/006-0340/ If anyone has the chance to go to this museum I'd recommend it for the forest sculpture walk alone.

Does not seem the exact same painting. Some of the serie are very similar.

The white text over the painting is hard to read.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com