The beaches of Normandy conjure images of the American landing on D-Day or a luxurious vacation in the French countryside.
Art aficionados may also recognize the coastal region as the place where Claude Monet transformed himself from a realist painter echoing the style of those who came before him into the father of impressionism and modern art.
And now, for the first time, a scholarly exhibit takes an in-depth look at Monet's depictions of the area over the course of his career. Monet In Normandy, featuring 50 of his paintings, is currently on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. At its free preview day Friday, over 6,000 people showed up at the museum and over 1,000 visitors came for the exhibit's official opening day Saturday. Triangle visitors and residents will have a chance to see the paintings (such as Monet's first successful submission to the Paris Salon, "The Point of la Héve") at their only East Coast venue through Jan. 14, 2007, when the exhibit will move on to its third and final location at the Cleveland Museum of Art, having made an appearance at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco before its current stint in Raleigh.
"Unlike a lot of shows, these paintings don't travel together normally," said Alesia DiCosola, marketing and communications coordinator for NCMA. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see 50 paintings from all different museums all over."
The process of gathering the 50 paintings began six years ago as the brainchild of David Steel, curator of European art for NCMA. DiCosola said Steel wanted at first to do a small, focused exhibit based on the two Monet paintings owned by NCMA-"The Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists" and "The Cliff, Etretat, Sunset." But when Director Lawrence Wheeler heard about it, he insisted on going bigger.
"People think that a show comes in a box, and you just add water," Steel said. "For us it was a lot of time, a lot of money and cashing in on IOUs."
Working with the San Francisco and Cleveland museums, NCMA managed to put together a collection with paintings on loan from all over the world, including "Garden at Sainte-Adresse" on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Other pieces have come from collections as far away as Japan.
"We're excited to have a range [of Monet's work]," DiCosola said. "It shows people a different side of him than most people know."
One of the lesser-known Monet works on display is "A Seascape, Shipping by Moonlight," painted in 1866, which depicts a darker scene than the typical Monet. Many of the familiar canvasses filled with comforting pastels and water lilies are also included in the exhibit.
Steel's curation allows each one of these works of art to be appreciated on its own and in the context of the exhibit, spacing them neatly around the room on walls painted in a Monet-esque light blue color.
"You want the pictures to talk to one another, you want pictures where the collective experience is greater than the sum of the individual parts," Steel said.
Steel accomplished this superior, aggregated feel of the design space by arranging the rooms in the exhibit so pictures depicting the same place or things-seascapes and boats, for example-are grouped together.
Subtly changing a typical curation transforms the entire exhibit-going experience and produces a "1+1=3 effect." Steel said he decided to place two paintings that normally fight for attention due to their depiction of the same geographical location on walls slightly angled from one another, rather than adjacent to one another, allowing them to complement each other. He also arranged one room so that the paintings on one wall show the beach from a perspective on top of cliffs while the paintings on the wall across the room are ones where the painter was below the cliffs.
"The pictures speak to each other across the gallery," Steel said.
One of the many highlights of the show is "The Hôtel des Roches Noires," which Monet painted while on his honeymoon with his second wife. The couple couldn't afford to stay at the high-end hotel in the painting, but Monet would go there hoping to sell the paintings to tourists and make money. "Hôtel" is accompanied by a picture of the boardwalk by the hotel, "The Beach at Trouville."
The most recognizable piece in the exhibit is "Water Lilies," which Monet painted at the end of his life and is arguably his most famous work. The painting serves an an exclamation point at the end of the exhibit, Steel said.
"You see these [famous images] on umbrellas, on notecards, whatever," DiCosola said, "But it's not the same when you get up close where you can see the blobs of paint and the brushstrokes."
Monet in Normandy runs through Jan. 14, 2007 at the North Carolina Museum of Art, 2110 Blue Ridge Rd. in Raleigh. In order to have the best experience possible, NCMA Marketing and Communications Coordinator Alesia DiCosola recommends coming at off-peak hours: during the week or early in the day. There will also be a college night Friday, Oct. 27 from 5 to 9 p.m.; college students with a valid ID can see the show for $5-student admission is typically $12.
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