PAINTING ANALYSES

Claude Monet: Surface and the "Corrugation" Technique

Monet Water Lillies Claude Monet, among the best known of the Impressionists, is the only one of that group who stayed the course and followed Impressionism through its natural evolution.

The other Impressionists — Renoir, Sisley, Pissaro, Manet — eventually became disenchanted with Impressionism's limitations, and sought alternative ways to reclaim the solid form that the style often sacrificed. Monet, however, stayed true to his vision. His well known series of Water Lilies, painted at Giverny, demonstrate his willingness to experiment with spatial ambiguity. The subject of the painting is essentially the flat surface of the water, yet the sky reflected within the water suggests depth and transparency. Some of the late works from Giverny could easily pass as works of abstract expressionism. Shown above is Water Lilies, 1916 – 1926, oil on canvas, 79 x 168.

Technically, Monet's ability to manipulate pigment is unsurpassed in 20th century art. As did the other Impressionists, Monet employed a technique called "broken color." In this method, small individual strokes of color — for example, small spots of yellow and blue — are laid side by side, and at a distance are mixed by the eye to form green. The surfaces of their paintings are a tapestry of dots, dashes, and crisscrossing strokes. When colors are combined optically within the eye, the overall surface of the painting appears to vibrate more. And when broken color is combined with textured paint, the effects are enhanced. Light is reflected off the ridges and valleys of the paint to produce a scintillating effect. This is exactly the kind of effect that Monet employed in capturing the play of light and reflection upon the surface of the water.

MONET's "CORRUGATION"

A key feature of Monet's handling of paint is a layering technique called (by art historian Robert Herbert) "corrugation." The technique maintains a separation between the texture of the paint and the color we actually see.

Herbert explains: "First, he chose canvas with the weft threads thicker, more pronounced than the warp. By brushing quickly at right angles to the protruding threads, he covered only those threads with pigment, leaving the valleys between then relatively untouched. After the first such coating had dried, he repeated the process several times. Each succeeding coating was more effective, because the thickening of the ribs caught the paint more easily. The last layer or two were applied when the existing pigment was not quite dry, and this pushed the edges of the ridges out over the valleys — an effective way of denying them too rigid an appearance while adding to the textural vibration."

View more of Monet's work online at monetalia.com.