For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of atmosphere in perceiving and appreciating landscapes, suggesting that context shapes our experience of beauty.
Claude Monet's quote reflects his belief that landscapes are not static entities; rather, they are dynamic and constantly changing based on various external factors like light and air. The surrounding atmosphere plays a critical role in how landscapes are perceived, imparting life and true value to them. By focusing on the interplay between the landscape and its atmosphere, Monet highlights the subjective nature of beauty and how perception can change over time.
In practice
In an art class, to illustrate how light affects perception of paintings.
When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.
Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.
The effect of sincerity is to give one's work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.
The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
I can't read novels while I'm writing a novel, because somebody's voice creeps in.
A painting is nothing more than light reflected from the surface of a pigment-covered canvas. But a great painter can make you see the depth, make you feel the underlying emotion, make you sense the larger world. That, too, is the power of science: to sense and convey the depth and dimensionality of nature, to glance at the surface and to divine the shape of the universe around us.
Black storytelling can be about anything, absolutely anything, and within that it can be as enriching, as complex, beautiful, ugly as anything else. We are not seeing enough of those complexities on our stages.
My life is, in a sense, trash. My life is only that of which the residue is my writing.
You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part.
A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.