Comparisons to Monet Bothered This Artist. Now They’re Side by Side.
As a postmodernist philosopher, Monet is not a philosopher. Nor is he a painter. Nor is he a painter. Nor is he a painter. Nor is he a painter. But he’s still the finest of them, a painter who was not, as a self-taught painter could be, but, as an established painter, was. (His only training came from his father.) He is the best painter in France, and he is the rare painter to whom we can look for inspiration, because he can look directly into the soul of a subject, and get it right. And then look away, and come up with a new one.
This is an old story. This is an old debate. What is the criterion by which to judge Monet for your own enjoyment? There cannot be a perfect art—there never can be—and there can be a sublime and a terrible one, and the two must be differentiated. There is a beautiful painting to be admired in a museum, but it is not the Mona Lisa.
But the question is, what is the criterion of his greatness? Is he a great painter because he’s a great painter? There are great painters who can’t make great paintings, because they can’t look into the soul of a subject properly, or because they can’t use the full range of their abilities. They are not able to work with the medium in a way that allows them to achieve the kind of excellence of which they are capable.
This is the great dilemma in modern painting. What is the criterion of greatness? It’s a problem that has perplexed human art for hundreds of years.
In order to tell that one can’t know about art, let’s focus on one famous painting—a Monet. The Mona Lisa.
The Mona Lisa
The painting is the