CLAUDE MONET – “Poplars au bord de l'Epte, view from the marshes” - 1891 – oil on canvas, 88- 93 cm. - USA, private collection

One of my favorite Impressionist pieces. His greatest lyrical achievement is reached in this strangely irresistible picture. The composition so beautifully resembles the beauty of a Japanese haiku, asymmetric and touching, while the poplars' leaves sing in red, purple, and finally in a blue that would make Yves Klein green with envy. It's Monet in his full bloom, the artist who once told his family that he wanted “to paint as the bird sings”.

CLAUDE MONET – “Meules (Haystacks, white frost)”- 1891 - oil on canvas - Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington

Between 1890 and 1891, Monet created a series of 15 canvases representing a group of haystacks in the outskirts of Giverny. Wassily Kandinsky had the opportunity of seeing one of these haystacks in an exhibition in Moscow in 1895, and he was impressed to the point of suggesting it as the first abstract painting in the history of Art: "And suddenly, for the first time, I saw a picture. It was a haystack [or rather, a grain stack], the catalogue informed me, but I could not recognize it (.) I realized that there the object of the picture was missed (.) What I had perfectly present was the unsuspected -and until then hidden- power of the palette".

Gotta get a kick out of this. While the expression doesnt reflect the original, the hand certainly does, and, I think, in this more modern context, it makes a fairly strong statement.

The tan lines also exaggerate the 80's Olympia's nakedness, as was Manet's Olympia's nakedness seemingly exaggerated.

I also notice that in this piece the maid is not only notably attractive but also regarding the viewer.

The Pearl and the Wave. (1873). Paul Baudry

Academic paintings and traditional representations of the nude in 19th century France put woman on display for the pleasure of a spectator presumed to be male. The European artistic tradition was subject to conventions calculated to flatter the male viewer and to stimulate his fantasy of sexual domination. Nudes were depicted in allegorical form as mythological figures who flaunted an unnatural lack of pubic hair or any element that identified them as individual women and erased any potentially threatening signs of woman's desiring subjectivity.

T.J Clark’s analysis of acadmeic paintings of the nude by painters such as Alexandre Cabanel, William bouguereau, Felix-Henry Giacomotti, and Paul Baudry shows that the genre, as it is defined in the above terms, was in disarray. Although presented in allegorical form and lacking those elements which define them as sexual beings, the women in these paintings seem to collaboarte a little too eagerly with the male gaze, as if “they were actively soliciting it and desireing its sexual consequence.” (Bernhemimer, Figures of Ill Repute, 104) The critic J.A Castagnary wondered saracastically about the woman lolling on some rocks in Baudry’s The Pearl and the Wave (1863) if she might not be “a Parisian modiste.. lying in wait for a millionaire gone atray in this wild spot.” (Clark, PML, 295)