My friend Gregoire declared a moratorium on Impressionist and post-Impressionist block-buster shows that I have been respecting all year but today I relapsed. I have no excuse except that everyone has been, my wife is going and they're going to be open something crazy like all night at the end to accommodate all the troisieme agers who must see it.
I'll cut to the chase:
Is there anything here that anyone who stayed awake during the Monet lecture in Art 101, has gone to the Met, Orsay, Boston MFA, Marmottan, and West Palm Beach museums (OK, my parents lived there for a while) or has seen the prior block-buster shows of wheatstacks, etc., hasn't seen? No?
Is it nice to see 200 works all together, from his earlier more representational stuff to the glaucoma years, save of course - Impression, Soleil Levant - which the Marmottan is guarding, forcing the devoted to bifurcate their pilgrimage? Sure?
Is it crowded on a cold, dank, rainy afternoon when old folks should be home under blankets sipping tea? You bet.
I'm actually glad I went; I especially liked seeing the West Palm Beach painting.
Two added things: the Champs is alive with the smell of a thousand cuisines, all of them bad for the arteries and there's some new (to me anyway) sculpture in the gardens.
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