Nov 30

Nov 30 Claude Monet: The Truth Of Nature

I just returned home from a weekend trip to Denver where I highlighted several aspects of the city’s art through matches with murals, the art collection at The Art, A Hotel, and with work in two museums, including the Clyfford Still Museum and the Denver Art Museum.

Thanks to the team at Visit Denver, I had the one in a lifetime experience of viewing their current exhibition, Claude Monet: The Truth Of Nature, before the museum opened. So, what I’m really trying to say is that I essentially had all 20,000 + square feet of exhibition space all to myself. No crowds. No lines. No jockeying with other visitors to snap a bad picture of my favorite piece in the exhibition! Just me and Monet… and Kachet who shot the matches a few other staff members from the museum making sure I didn’t run off with any of the paintings!

Needless to say there are moments in your life that you’ll never forget and for me, this was one of them. It was a priceless experience that I will absolutely cherish forever!

About The Exhibition

The Truth Of Nature certainly qualifies as a “blockbuster” exhibition as it features over 120 of Monet’s original paintings, some of which are from the Denver Art Museum’s collection but the majority being on loan from various private collectors and institutions. It’s the largest Monet exhibition the United States has seen in over twenty years and it certainly lives up to all of those impressive numbers I rattled off above.

While the exhibition includes several iconic paintings, it gives equal attention to many lesser known pieces which provide crucial context to to the work that both art aficionados and novices are familiar with. The exhibition is informative and interesting, taking visitors on a chronological journey through the major destinations that influenced his work. Paris, Normandy, Giverny, the Netherlands, London and the Mediterranean are all included, revealing just how incredibly vast the subjects of his oeuvre expand.

If you’re able to travel to Denver before the exhibition closes on February 2nd, 2020 I HIGHLY recommend doing so. There are no further stops in the US for the exhibition as it will travel to Potsdam, Germany to the Museum Barberini for its second and final stop!

About The Match

I have to be honest, I had a really difficult time planning my matches for this exhibition! I have a pretty good handle on what Monet’s work looks like in general so I felt like my best bet was to look for dresses that mimicked his style in general, and from there I hoped to pick a painting on display in the exhibition that would best match the specific dress I found. For some reason I assumed that there would be tons of dresses out there with “Impressionist” style patterns but I soon realized this was definitely NOT the case! I did find many dresses that literally printed Monet’s paintings on them and not to be a matching snob (ha!) I just felt like that would be the easy / lazy way to do it.

So, I continued the search and after bookmarking several looks, all of which were not that great, I went outside the bounds of the places I typically search and went to Poshmark. I don’t know how I found it, but I ended up scoring the perfect Saks Fifth Avenue Black dress for $35. I knew the dress would work with one of the many waterlily pieces in the exhibition, but I wasn’t sure which one!

As I guessed, the dress worked perfectly with one of Monet’s waterlily paintings, specifically one he painted in 1914-15. Shooting the match was a breeze and that was that! Match done, case closed!

Except it wasn’t. After I spent some time editing the match, it dawned on me that unlike all of the other dresses I’ve worn, this particular dress had a life before it got to me. I know that’s probably not a normal thought, but I first noticed this dress was more just a good match when I received it in the mail. The seller had wrapped it in teal tissue paper, wrote a thank you note, and even included a beaded bracelet, which I thought was so unexpected and generous. I guess as a seller myself, I’m just used to shoving my Lululemon into a USPS Priority Mailer and calling it a day!

Anyway, back to the fact that dress had a life before me. For some reason I felt compelled to reach out to the seller after editing my match because without THAT dress, there wouldn’t have been a match at all! So, I emailed her. I mentioned that I coordinate my outfits to match pieces of art in museums and had just visited the Denver Art Museum for their Monet exhibition and I wore her dress to match one of his pieces. I attached the picture and didn’t expect much.

Well, what I got in return was a very thoughtful email that has made this match even more special to me. The seller explained that she started traveling to Europe with her parents when she was six and that her mom loved Monet. She ended up studying Art and Economics in the South of France and had visited Giverny a few times too! She mentioned that her and her mom loved to travel and visit museums together in the US and Europe and always had a thing for Monet especially. She went on to tell me that years later, after her mom had passed from breast cancer, she started a vintage site called The Danish Dame and her Poshmark account called The Green Girl, where she donates a percentage of her sales to give back!

To make a long story short, her reply gave me chills. I’ve always felt that the dresses I choose for my matches are “meant to be with” the paintings they look similar to and that it’s my job to make that happen. Probably sounds nuts! But this experience really reinforced that for me and gave me even more purpose to doing what I so love to do - match!