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At the Milliner’s Shop, Edgar Degas, between 1905 and 1910.
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Stanford opthamologist Michael Marmor has written two
books on eye disease and famous artists. He focuses on Edgar Degas and Claude Monet
and raises the question of whether their declining eyesight materially changed
their painting.
Degas suffered retinal disease as he aged and Monet had
cataracts. (While cataracts are easily repaired in the 21st century, retinal
disease is a trickier process.)
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Woman with Loose Red Hair, Edgar Degas, undated
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Marmor used Photoshop to blur and reduce saturation in some
of the artists’ later work to give some sense of what they might have seen.
“These simulations may lead one to question whether the
artists intended these late works to look exactly as they do,” said Marmor, who
concluded that “these artists weren't painting in this manner totally for
artistic reasons.”
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Water Lilies, Claude Monet, painted between 1917-19, when his cataract process was well underway.
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No artists achieve exactly
what their mind’s eye lays out for them. The difference between intention and
execution is the artifact the world understands as “style.” And no artist
paints as he or she does totally for artistic reasons. The Impressionists, in
particular, were painting in a period of rapid technological change. New
pigments, the invention of the paint tube (leading to plein air painting), gaslight, chemical dyes which literally
changed the way the world looked, industrial air pollution and a host of other innovations
affected their painting.
“Contemporaries of both have noted that their late works
were strangely coarse or garish and seemed out of character to the finer works
that these artists had produced over the years,” Marmor wrote.
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The Rose Walk, Giverny, Claude Monet, painted from 1920–22, when his cataracts were overripe.
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Of course many artists throw over the traces in their old
age. It’s the “I don’t give a #$%” phase, where all the aspirations and conventions
which have guided one’s work over decades suddenly become tiresome and one just
sublimates oneself in the paint. May I live long enough to experience it
myself.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.
