Change is Good: Arches vs. Fabriano Paper

A Calming Influence, 24” x 19,” Watercolor on Fabriano 300 lb. Cold Press

It has been a while since I have written an article on my blog!  Who knew how much the world would change between then and now, and I feel there are more changes to come.  My hope is that the world will be a kinder and more peaceful place.   While I do not like the circumstances and the hardships that many are facing in this wild time, I do believe that sometimes there are good things that come from the bad, and I try to remind myself this to be more at peace.  I’m trying to take more time to do things I enjoy, gardening, cooking, and enjoying nature. This time I’ve had at home during the COVID-19 quarantine  has made me reflect how I may go forward in the future, and I am more grateful for each day I am alive and well.

In My Solitude, 20” x 20,” Watercolor on Arches 300 lb. Cold Press

One positive change is having so much dedicated time in the studio!  I have been wanting to do a water lily series on a larger scale. Previously I have only painted them 12” x 12.”   I felt it would be the perfect subject matter to paint during this quarantine time. I find them to be a calming influence. I finally started on them and I am currently working on the fourth in the series.   I have at least five planned. Their titles reflect how I have been feeling during the lock down and how I felt painting them. 

A Moment of Pause, 22” x 12,” Watercolor on Arches 300 lb. Cold Press

As I mentioned before, painting this subject matter larger is a change.   I spend a  lot of time designing each of my paintings, and love doing it. I make a lot of changes from my original photo references, mixing more than one photo together for the right composition. I  re-work the positions of elements within the photo. I add elements that are needed for the composition, even if they didn’t exist in real life. I also change colors from my photo references, and recently I have enjoyed designing and incorporating borders as part of my body of work.

For this series, I ventured out into new paper territory.  Most of my work is on Arches or Twin Rocker paper. ( Never heard of Twinrocker?  You can read it about it here on a previous post. ) The first two in the series were painted on Arches 300 lb. cold press.  On the third painting I decided to try Fabriano 300 lb. cold press.

Nocturne, 12” x 12,” Watercolor Mounted on Cradled Archival Board and Sealed

When you have a lot of time invested in designing and drawing it can be a  risk to try something out of the norm.  But if we don’t, how will we learn and grow?  I bit the bullet and committed to completing the painting on the Fabriano paper.  With my particular painting style it took me a while to get used to it until I realized what I normally do had to be done somewhat differently.  As I got into the rhythm of it, I really enjoyed it.  It was like going on a little vacation, which is as good as it’s going to get right now! 

Interlude, 12” x 12,” Watercolor Mounted on Archival Cradled Board and Sealed

What was different, you might ask?  First the paper is softer,  you can tell just by how it feels.  I was worried if I had to scrub out an area or lift, would it mutilate the paper too much, but I didn’t find it to be an issue.  All paper companies have their “secret sauce” for sizing their paper. For example, some use animal byproducts in their sizing, I do know that Fabriano does not.  That is why Arches can sometimes have that wet dog smell.  (No, Arches does not use dog in their sizing, but I think there might be something from an animal in there.)   I feel Fabriano might have less sizing then Arches.  It could have been the weather that day, but I did feel washes tend to dry a bit quicker.  However, working wet into wet, it was fine. Everything stayed wet long enough for me to get done what I needed to in a wash.  I also use masking tape to mask areas I want to preserve the white of the paper and paint later. I was concerned with a softer paper the top surface of the paper would lift off with the tape, but it didn’t, and masking fluid came right off too. 

Trio, 12” x 12,” Watercolor Mounted on Cradled Archival Board and Sealed

I also felt the color seemed to be more vivid on the Fabriano paper.  The paper could be whiter or the sizing may have an effect on the appearance of the paint on top.  Another factor could be how much paint soaks into the paper versus sitting on top of it.  Whatever it is, I like the results. However, one thing that did take some getting used to was if I  painted over an area twice after the first wash had dried, the paint underneath seemed to lift easier than on Arches.  It took a natural hair brush and a light touch for the first wash not to mix with the second.  That was probably my biggest work around for the way I paint. 

If I were to say anything negative about Fabriano vs. Arches, it would be that their water mark goes all they way across the top of the short side of the paper.  That doesn’t bother some people but if I were to do a painting on a full sheet you would see it as part of my painting.  I’m not so keen on that. One work around is to use the opposite side.  However, there is a different texture on each side of the paper.  If you liked the texture on the water marked side and you wanted to do a painting on a full sheet, you are stuck with it.  Arches’ watermark is more subtle.  It is small and in a corner. 

Meditation II, 12” x 12,” Watercolor Mounted on Archival Cradled Board and Sealed

Overall, I felt like the change was good! Would I use Fabriano again?  Absolutely!  Would I stop using Arches, not necessarily.  I tend to use the paper I need for what I want to achieve in the painting because they all behave differently, just like our dear children or pets.  That is why I also use Twinrocker paper and occasionally, when I have the opportunity, I buy other brands I would like to try too.  I have tried some that will never make it into my repertoire, and like Fabriano some brands will have a place in my studio and potentially be used en plein air paintings as well!  

Don’t be afraid of change.  We certainly can’t have that attitude in this unprecedented time in human history.  Take a risk, what are you going to do different today?  Feel free to leave a comment.  If you subscribe to my blog and are getting this via email, click on it to go to my web site and leave your comment there.  :-)

Wishing you continued safety and good health!

Kim

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Musée de L'Orangerie in Paris: A Peculiar Visit

While living in Paris, I felt very fortunate to visit the L’Orangerie many times.  I never got tired of going.  On one occasion, as I entered the first oval room beyond the entrance, I noticed something a bit peculiar.  The room was almost completely empty aside from four gentleman strategically standing at each entrance and exit,  and two in the middle along the perimeter of the oval.  They were all dressed in black suits and neatly coiffed with tight short hair cuts, sporting ear pieces.  I felt like I was walking onto a movie set, however, there were no cameras or lights.  In the center of the room was a very tall African America man with a women who appeared to be one of the curators of the museum. 

Claude Monet's "Water Lilies, Reflecions of Weeping Willows," ca. 1918, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A study for the the grand paintings in the L'Orangerie in Paris

 The men in dark suits watched my every move.  Wherever I want their eyes followed me.  It felt rather creepy.  The tall African American gentleman looked familiar but I couldn’t place who he was.  I knew I had seen him before.  As he proceeded to the next room all the "suits"  surrounded him and staged themselves as before, in the second room.  I followed.  I sat on a bench in front of one the water lily paintings where I could also get a good look at the tall gentleman all the “suits"   seemed to be  protecting.  It finally dawned on me!  It was the former Attorney General of the Untied States Eric Holder, obviously being surrounded by US Secret Service Agents. However at the time he was “the” Attorney General under the Obama Administration.   This was almost ten years ago.  I’m not so sure they would even let other patrons in the same room with the Attorney General now.  The crowd was very light that day.  Myself and a handful of others aside from these very special guests were the only ones there.  They kept a very watchful eye on where we were all pointing our cameras!

Here is a short video to give you the idea of the space.  Forgive the quality this was taken on a small Sony camera pre cell phone!  It will sill still give you an idea of the scale of the paintings in this one room.  This video was shot on a different day than the one described above.  I wasn't taking the chance of getting my camera confiscated by the Secret Service!   

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet & the Paintings of the Water Lilies, Part II

Today I’m posting the second part to a previous blog post about Claude Monet and the book Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet & the Paintings of the Water Lilies, continuing my blog series on Monet, Giverny, and Other French Musings.

As  mentioned in my previous post,  the Museé Claude Monet a L’Orangerie des Tuileries had opened to little fan fare, which was perplexing since Monet had become one of the most well known, and collected artists of his time.  His long time friend, Georges Clemenceau, noted bitterly that a sign announcing a dog show in another part of the building was much more prominent than the one announcing the inauguration of the Museé Claude Monet in May of 1927,  just five months after Monet’s death. 

It was as if France had turned on Monet.  France’s most important daily art newspaper claimed his water lily masterpieces, what he called his "Grand Decoration," “The work of an old man.”  An assistant curator at the Museé Luxembourg, exclaimed, “For me this period is no long Impressionism, but it’s decline.” 

Detail of a panel of Les Nymphéas

 Art lovers and critiques at the turn of the century where ready to move on.  Tastes were changing.  But instead of praising the Impressionism movement, they scorned it and the artists that were part of it.  In a special issue of L’Art Vivant, which devoted six articles to Monet in 1927, one critique claimed Monet’s paintings were, “postcard niceties of a certain American taste purchased by the vulgar nouveaux riches."  They had nothing nice to say about the museum itself claiming the space was sterile, uninviting and viewing the paintings in the two oval rooms was a “disagreeable experience.” 

Monet’s donation and the newly opened museum continued to plummet in popularity.   The museum was poorly maintained the light quality was dismal and the oval rooms housing these great masterpieces were used for other functions.  At one point, an exhibition of Flemish tapestries was hung in front of Monet’s paintings. Water was known to leak down through the skylight and drip on the canvases, and one of the two rooms was used as a storage area.  Monet’s godson, and son of artist Camille Pissarro, claimed Monet had been twice buried, once after his death and the second time with the opening of the museum. A retrospective of Monet’s work in 1931, supplemented by canvases that were in his studio when he died, brought even more scathing comments of his work and those of the Impressionists.  

Detail of a panel of Les Nymphéas

During World War II, the L’Orangerie was bombed and one of the panels was damaged.  The lack of concern was so great, the shrapnel wouldn’t be removed for another 20 years.  The building itself was renovated in the 1960’s with another story added to the top eliminating the skylights that illuminated Monet’s work. This after the French Ministry acquired the Jean Walter-Paul Guillaume collections consisting of works by Picasso, Cézanne and Renoir.   Essentially the magnificent water lily panels were relegated to the basement in a gloomy dark space. 

Detail of a panel of Les Nymphéas

It wasn’t until after World War II that things started to change.  The L’Orangerie became a place of pilgrimage for Americans, especially the American art students on the GI bill in the late  40’s and 50’s, who rushed to admire the Nymphéas by Monet.  Ellsworth Kelly, an ex-soldier studying in Paris reached out to Michel Monet and Jean Pierre Hoschedé, Monet’s son and step-son to ask if he could visit Giverny which had been abandoned and was in disrepair.  Monet’s studio still housed a number of canvases sharing the space with birds and other creatures.  He produced Tableaux Vert now housed at the  Chicago Art Institute as an homage to Monet and Giverny.  

In the 1950’s and 60’s American and Canadian painters kept Monet’s spirit alive living and working in the area around Giverny.  American artist Joan Mitchell purchased and lived on a property in Vétheuil. The gardener’s cottage there had once been Monet’s home.  Mitchell and the painters of the Abstract Expressionists movement were greatly influenced by Monet’s later work seeming to fit  right in with the works of the time by Pollack, Rothko, and Mitchell.  

It is ironic that the renewed interest in Monet’s work would have been brought on by Abstract Expressionists, especially American ones.  Monet disliked work of the Americans and “avant garde” contemporaries of the 1920’s.  He did not want to see or have anything to do with Cubism and it probably would have gotten his goat that his works were being compared to the “Abstract Expressionists” of the 1950’s and 60’s.  It was the renewed interest of this group that brought attention to his later water lily paintings and once again American collectors came to snap them up.  Walter Chrysler purchased a large scale water lily canvas for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Unfortunately it was destroyed in a fire and was replaced by another work purchased from a dealer in Paris who had bought  most of the remaining work of Monet from his son Michel. Word spread to American collectors as it had when Monet was alive. Joseph Pulitzer III, a passionate collector of modern art purchased a six foot wide water lily canvas in which he decorated his pool house at his mansion in St. Louis.

Fast forward to 1996, the French Minister of culture at the time realized the curation of the placement of the Jean Guillaume collection to the Monet Nymphéas were completely backwards.  The doors to the Musée de L’Orangerie closed in 2000 and a major renovation to the museum began in 2003. During the demolition the paintings were hermetically sealed in reinforced boxes and temperature and humidity controlled.  The second story added in the 1960’s was removed with the water lily paintings often being in distress, setting off alarms during the jack hammering of  the demolition.  The project would take six years and $36 million dollars.  Now Monet’s  Grande Decoration, takes the place of prominence lit with natural light from skylights above, just as Monet would have wanted it.  The Guillaume collection is exhibited in the annex below along with a space for special exhibitions.  

I have visited the L’Orangerie before and after the 2003 renovation.  Today, it is hard not to find a line stretching out the door into the the Tuileries Gardens.  Avoiding weekend crowds, on cold gloomy winter days it became a place of meditation for me when I lived in Paris.  Monet had come full circle, his grande vision of the space to house his last momentous project of his life, is appreciated and visited by thousands.  

Come back for the next post which will tell the story of a very peculiar visit to the L'Orangerie! 

Links:

Musée de L'orangerie, Paris France

Part I: Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet & the Paintings of the Water Lilies