Slide

Monet and London: Views of the Thames–Meditations and Impressions
《莫奈與倫敦:泰晤士河之景——冥想與印象》

In the 1950’s and 1960’s London in common speech was called ‘the smoke’.

Beginning in late 1899 Claude Monet set up his easel on his hotel balcony and then proceeded to paint views of the River Thames with all its fog-like effects. The views that are depicted show the objects of attention immersed with clouds of vapour, so that nothing is distinct other than a sense of dissolution. It is this which forms the prevailing abstract signature underlying these works. As such they do not speak directly of everyday bustle and hustle that invariably forms the backdrop to city views, instead a sense of muffled sound can be imagined, as if to imbue the visual with a relationship to an aesthetics of withdrawal. People, even as crowds, are thus reduced to mere traces within the visual scene, and this in turn generated a slow-motion effect within the presentation. Certainly, there is a lack both of intimacy and with it the close at hand in these mid-positional views of the urban encounter. It is of note that Monet did not complete these works in situ in London, but rather in his studio in France, which gives rise to the notion that observation and memory are linked together, and thus cohering to form a method beyond that of Impressionism. In this regard they are both attachments to place and time, but also then, detached in combination and it is this factor that renders each painting the feeling of textual density or even lyricism.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Waterloo Bridge, Grey Weather, 1900, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY/ Scala, Florence

There is also a technical shift in these paintings which make them quite distinct from other passages in his work, and that is to be found in the thin washes of paint and applied employment of glazes. Light then appears to seep out of these multiple over-lapping folds of pigment. In this respect, the surface might appear close to that of Song porcelain, despite the fact of there being no structural relationship to this connection. That such an analogy might be advanced is a product of Song aesthetic disposition with its engagement with the effects of mist, vapours, clouds, and drizzle, all forming a phenomenal in-between of matter and spirit. An exhibition can open out the possibility of such a relation that is outside of historical causality, with a poetics of becoming being a source of a drive that is beyond forms of secured modes of representation.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London, 1904, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, St Petersburg, Florida. Image: Museum of Fine Arts, St Petersburg, Florida

Although these paintings are tonally subdued, they possess a radiance, despite overwhelming presence of an atmosphere inclined towards a shadowy dissolution of focussed light. In this they are not spectral paintings neither are they inclined towards being psychologically melancholic. Instead of this, the orientation is towards a process of filtrating out of what is either solid or fixed in the direction of an ethereal irreality. Within this, there is a trace of uncanny emptiness related to a disavowal of putting things into sequential place, as in a topology. Rather, they present movement away from definition that instead instals an etheric relationship to the depiction, which creates a hovering like effect of less than and more than something else. These paintings are a stepping into an exact passage of time, but also occasion a mediation on light that is not solely historical or in place. Light is after all the simultaneous arrival of so many different temporal fluxes.

If a contrast to Turner’s relationship to Venice is considered, it is not just the difference between Mediterranean light and Northern European light, but also the difference between the mobility of Turner’s relationship to place and the confined, and somewhat static feeling of Monet’s relationship to the Thames. Turner is expansive, whereas within this passage, Monet is restrictive, but this difference is not so much based on a serialised optics, rather the way in which an attendant poetics surfaces within their respective practices. What Venice offered to Turner, was ecstatic cross-roads of a world before the advent of modernity (Mythic, Classical, Romantic), as opposed to possessing an anchorage within an industrial based modernism. The poetics of Monet is based on what lays both before and after visual presence, rather than any instrumental mode of critique which is witnessed in the works of Pissarro or Seurat. The Thames as a subject was simply a location of affording a specific absorption into the withdrawal of direct sunlight upon given scenes bereft of any hint of the formation of class and with this an alienated discomfort of place.

In contrast to the possibility of a grounding with urbanism, what Monet introduces within this extensive series, is indirectly a fusion of the Far Eastern notion of the ‘Art of the Floating World’ (with its roots in Buddhism) and an approach to an optical economy that anticipates colour field abstraction. In this it dispenses with the gravitational push and pull related to dualist encounter with reality. The rational for the repetition is also at the heart of this, with the pursuit of something that is closer to a pulsation, as opposed to a representation. It is an art that is in pursuit of a flavour of the world, rather than a programme that might render it understandable. It is a flavour that we find as an attribute that lingers as part of the lack of a naming process that these paintings generate within their becoming otherwise. They are in part a vague drifting or reverie, as if without a purpose, but this then is what affords pleasure as a mode of retreat from our hyper-invested relationship to the world. Surely it is a sense of wordlessness is what Monet had discovered within this encounter, and in this, they find their critical location within the present.

20世紀50至60年代,倫敦在日常對話裡被稱為「煙霧之城」。

1899年底,克勞德·莫奈將畫架置於旅館陽台,開始描繪泰晤士河的景色,試圖捕捉河面上瀰漫的霧氣效果。 霧氣如同輕紗將畫中的景物籠罩其中,物體的輪廓在蒸汽雲霧中逐漸模糊,彷彿融化於空氣之中,只留下朦朧而抽象的氛圍。這些畫作並未直接呈現城市的喧囂,而是將觀者引向一種隱約的靜謐之中,賦予畫面退隱與克制的美學質感。 畫面中的人群僅化作些許微弱的痕跡,整體景象帶著一種如同慢速運動般的輕柔感。這些中距離的都市風景,遠離親密細節,少有近距離的具體描繪,但卻因此拉開了與觀者之間的空間張力。 值得注意的是,莫奈並未在倫敦現場完成這些畫作,而是在他法國的工作室中完成。這一點暗示了畫作既是對倫敦景象的現場觀察,又融入了記憶的重構,超越了印象派的傳統方法。這些畫作既依附於特定的時空,又以微妙的方式抽離於其中。正是這種雙重性,使作品充滿詩意的張力與抒情性。

在技術層面上,這些作品展現出莫奈其他時期畫作中少見的特質,尤其體現在薄塗顏料與光滑釉層的運用上。光線仿佛自層層疊疊的色彩之間滲透而出,使畫面表面呈現出一種如宋代瓷器般溫潤的質感。這種質感雖在結構上與宋代美學毫無直接聯繫,卻因為對霧氣、雲層、細雨等自然現象的敏感處理而建立了微妙的精神共鳴。它將物質與精神融匯於一種模糊的中間狀態,賦予畫面既細膩又曖昧的特徵。這樣的中間狀態,既是繪畫的物理層面,也是情感與思想的介入方式。展覽由此打開了多重可能性,使我們超越了具體的歷史因果框架,去感受一種生成的詩意——這種詩意不再拘泥於既定的再現模式,而是由內在驅動力所推動,直指更深層的感知與想像。

儘管這些畫作的色調偏於低沉,它們卻仍然散發出微妙的光輝。畫面充滿了影影綽綽的霧氣,光線似乎被削弱、溶解,然而它們既不幽靈般虛幻,也未染上任何心理上的憂鬱。取而代之的是,這些畫作呈現出一種篩選與轉化的過程:將固態與固定形態逐漸淡化,轉向一種超然的、介於現實與非現實之間的質感。這些畫作中隱約透著一種詭異的空虛感,這種空虛與對地理拓撲的排斥密切相關。它們並未試圖定義事物的具體形態,而是在畫面中構築了一種模糊而輕盈的關係。這種關係不具體、不確定,但又在一種「不足」與「超越」之間懸浮,讓人感到既抽離現實又通往某種無法言喻的精神領域。

這些畫作既捕捉了一個精確的時間瞬間,又展開了一場關於光的深邃冥想。光,在這些畫作中並非單純的自然現象或歷史產物。它更像是一種多重時間的交匯,一場時間流動的同時抵達。每一道光線都不僅是當下的存在,還是記憶與未來之光的一部分,在畫面中閃爍著無聲的回響。

如果將莫奈對泰晤士河的描繪與透納對威尼斯的描繪作對比,二者的差異不僅限於地中海光線與北歐光線的分別,還涉及其藝術觀照方式的根本不同。
透納在威尼斯中展現的是一種流動性,宛如水面與天空交織的永恆運動;而莫奈的泰晤士河則顯得相對靜態,彷彿一幅冥想中的畫布。透納的視野是擴展的,充滿了神話般的恢宏;莫奈則表現出一種內斂的克制,將光與霧的層次壓縮為更純粹的視覺與情感經驗。這種差別不僅僅是光學序列化的問題,而是二者創作中詩意特質的根本不同。

威尼斯於透納而言,是一個神話、古典與浪漫主義交織的場域;在他筆下,光與影講述的是一個跨越時空的史詩故事。而對於莫奈,泰晤士河則並非一個寓言式的象徵物,而是一個實存的視覺空間,卻同時跳脫於工業化現代性的視角之外。他的詩意不在於批判或再現,而是一種視覺存在的「前後」——光影、霧氣與輪廓之間那種微妙的過渡與變化,形成了一種超越時間與社會語境的審美凝視。

泰晤士河在莫奈的畫作中僅僅是一個場所,承載著陽光退隱的景象。這些畫作刻意摒棄了任何社會階級的痕跡,抹除了由此而生的地方性異化。在莫奈筆下,泰晤士河並非工業革命的象徵,也不是資本主義繁忙生活的縮影,而是一種視覺冥想的中性場域。霧氣遮掩了城市的繁忙喧囂,光線不再附著於物質,而成為一種幾乎抽象的存在。這種抽離讓畫作不僅停留於一個時間片段之上,更展現了一種超越具體時空的靜謐詩意。

莫奈這一系列作品與都市主題的紮根性形成了一種顯著的對比。它們間接地融合了東方「浮世繪」的藝術觀(其根源深植於佛教思想)與一種預示著色域抽象的視覺經濟學。在這些畫作中,現實的二元對立被徹底消解。霧氣遮蓋的不僅是物體的輪廓,也消解了主體與客體、真實與虛幻之間的界線。莫奈的重複性創作,並非為了再現一個可以被捕捉的具體場景,而是一種更接近生命脈動的探索。這些畫作追尋的不是可被理解的計劃,而是世界的「滋味」。這種「滋味」既是一種視覺經驗,也是一種精神感知。它不是直白的訴說,而是通過光影、霧氣和色彩微妙的變化,在觀者心中生成的特質。它們標誌著畫作成為「另一種存在」的過程,如同無目的的漂浮或一場漫無邊際的遐想。正是在這種游離與不確定的狀態中,觀者獲得了一種微妙的逃逸之樂——從過度投入於世界關係的壓迫中暫時抽身,回到一種純粹的感官與精神體驗之中。

或許,這正是莫奈在這些作品中發現的「無言之境」。這種「無言之境」是一種不帶明確言說或意圖的存在,卻蘊含著深刻的批判性意義。它拒絕被定義、被框定,甚至拒絕直接參與於現代性或歷史敘事之中。然而,正是這種超然的態度,使得畫作的意義得以穿越時空,延展至當下。在一個充滿過度表達與解釋的世界裡,真正珍貴的,或許是那些無法被完全捕捉的曖昧時刻,那些讓我們駐足、沉思並感知「存在」本身的瞬間。

 

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of The Thames
27 September – 19 January 2024
Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, The Courtauld Gallery

 

Text by Jonathan Miles

Edited by Michelle Yu

                   

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