For the ones who loved the interactive exhibit of Van Gogh’s most famous artworks that took over Miami in the past, good news! It’s impressionist master Jean Claude Monet’s turn to have his works become interactive art plays.
Monet sought to capture the feeling of nature, the sound, feeling, movement, and light in his environment and translate it to the canvas; here on Beyond Monet, his paintings become the environment, a park made of art. In the Beyond Monet exhibit in Miami, the audience can experience walking inside his art the way Monet himself walked through his lily pond.
Impressionism and Claude Monet
Claude Monet is one of, if not the most important and renowned artist of the Impressionist Movement. The popularization of the term ‘Impressionism’ comes from one of his early paintings Impression, Sunrise, a watery, blurry seascape of the port in Monet’s hometown Le Havre.
Impression, Sunrise, and many of Monet’s works were scandalous breaks of tradition in art in the 19th century and really, changed the course of art history forever. (Hint: Impression, Sunrise is one of the 400 artworks that visitors can see exhibited at Beyond Monet in Miami, alongside other iconic paintings as Poppies and the Water Lilies series.)
The Impressionist Movement is generally considered to have started in the 1860s when many of the future protagonists of the movement met in the art academy circuit and began to share a taste for a different approach than the one academia art had at the time; instead of the grandeur of mythological and historical paintings, these students, Monet among them, were interested in painting their everyday surroundings, landscapes and the daily life of their time.
Initial reception of impressionist art was mixed and derided as unfinished, non-technical work lacking in quality. After numerous rejections of their work by the Salon de Paris, the annual art exhibition in Paris, Monet, and other artists organized a Salon of their own in 1874. In a review about that exhibit, a critic derisively used the word ‘impressionist’ to describe the quality of the works, a term that ended up gaining favor with both the audience and the artists.
Impressionist art doesn’t have very many specific rules as previous schools of style could have had because it was formed and developed by artists that ran from the ordinary and the expected, seeking to create something different, looking at the world as it was and depicting it with a loser, freer brushstrokes, and composition. It became the most important artistic movement of the 1800s and changed painting as it was known then.
Monet’s style
Monet’s work is often considered almost synonymous with the Impressionist movement, characterized by a favoring of landscapes, exploring light and its shifting nature, attempting to depict reality through ambiance and well, the impression it had on him. Monet’s central method, like most impressionists, was seeking to capture their environment through emotion and perception rather than precision, favoring feeling over realistic detailing- the sunlight reflecting on the sea in Le Havre, the water lilies floating on his pond, or the rolling green planes of Parisian parks in lieu of the grand mythological depictions that were considered “great art” genres.
The details on Beyond Monet in Miami
Interactive exhibits in the way we think of them have been a thing in art since the 20th century when the formats of installation, performance and urban intervention started to take off. In the past decade, the installation logic and the advent of technology brought forth a new type of exhibit: interactive, immersive exhibit environments creating a whole new way to experience the artwork of past masters.
Using a combination of projected, high-quality images of historic masterworks, animation, sound, and installation, interactive exhibits have brought to life the work of artists like Renaissance master Leonardo Da Vinci and fellow francophone impressionist Vincent Van Gogh in multisensory ways never experienced before. Now, it’s Monet’s turn to join in the fun.
After strolling through Canada, Beyond Monet by Paquin Entertainment Group and Normal Studio brings water lilies and foggy sunrises all the way down to Miami, Florida.
At Ice Palace Studios in Miami, previously an ice plant from the 1920s, over 400 artworks of Monet will be exhibited in conjunction with a play of video, animation, music, and sound effects. The exhibit is spread out over 50,000 square feet of art-full area, an hour-long art experience.
Tickets are on sale right now to visit Beyond Monet and enter the famous impressionist world of Claude Monet in Miami.
- Location: Ice Palace Studios, 1400 N Miami Avenue
- Tickets: 23.99$ for children till 15 years old, 36.99$ for adults. Premium and VIP tickets are available. (Tickets are sold with timed 15-minute breaks from each other to avoid overcrowding.)
- Hours: Thursday through Sunday, 10 AM - 7 PM.