Monet's Impressions

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has created a stunning visual exploration of the work of Impressionist artist Claude Monet. The 22 paintings featured in the book are accompanied by 2-5 word phrases lifted from Monet's own writing. The phrases come from personal letters to family and friends as well as articles in which he was quoted. The phrases are translated from french; some of the phrases are taken verbatim, while others are translated more freely. While this may sound jarring, overall it is impossible to tell. The text is poetic and links beautifully with the images; moreover, the text pulls the reader's attention to specific details of Monet's paintings, helping us fully appreciate the beauty of his work. The accompaniment of Monet's words breathe life into the paintings and create a poetic, yet brief narrative of a vibrant, breathtaking day.

This book is a beautiful introduction to Claude Monet. It is engaging and an amazing resource for sparking interest in this artist, impressionism, inspiration, creative writing, or descriptive language. This book can be utilized in many ways; however, there is very little content. This book could has a very brief forward, a bibliography, and an image glossary in the back, but that is all the factual information in this book. This book could not really give us any more information on Claude Monet than we already have.

This book can also be utilized to help students explore the concept of visualization. If the text were lifted from the book and placed on chart paper, we could draw the images inspired by it. How would we draw "snow, a white immensity"? Everyone's interpretation would be different; however, by using such powerful words as "immensity", Monet has certainly gotten his point across.

While I highly enjoy this book, and am actually tempted to buy this for myself, I would caution against using it in the hopes of learning about Monet, rather it is a resource for creating an appreciation for his work or discussing descriptive language.

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