Monet-Mitchell Exhibition Opens At The Fondation Louis Vuitton In Paris

A single landscape in rural France, seen by two painters from different generations, both inspired by Nature and bound by a groundbreaking use of color. Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell lived on the banks of the Seine in rural France eighty-seven years apart, where they made increasingly large-scale paintings inspired by the gardens, winding river and rolling fields around them. In partnership with the Musée Marmottan Monet, a new exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris exposes the dialog between the two artists’ work, including rare opportunities to see Monet’s magnificent Agapanthus triptych, held at three different American museums, and paintings from Joan Mitchell’s arresting La Grande Vallée series, brought together for the first time in 40 years.

Both painters focused on abstract landscapes and natural themes at different points in their careers. Monet’s ‘late period’ abstract landscapes, 40 of which are on show, were all created in his studio in Giverny and are seen as a precursor to American Abstract Impressionism. Joan Mitchell, who is known to have admired Monet’s later works, was an important abstract painter, whose works are a glorious exploration of color, using her own language of richly layered paint, splatters, drips and free brushstrokes. Thirty-five of her paintings and pastels are on show in the exhibition.

In 1968, Mitchell moved to Vétheuil, to a house that overlooked Monet’s home from 1878 to 1881, immersing herself in the surrounding landscape of the Vexin region which borders Normandy. From the 1910s until his death in 1926, Monet’s garden with its now well-known pond and bridge, was almost his sole inspiration, as he worked to capture the light and color of his “most beautiful masterpiece.” “I do what I can to cover what I feel in front of Nature. I let my many faults appear to fix my sensations.”

Sensations and feelings were also important for Mitchell, who worked less figuratively, reproducing the landscapes in her mind’s eye: “I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me – and remembered feelings of them.” In their quest to reproduce these feelings evoked by nature, both artists explored color in an increasingly liberated and vibrant manner, often turning to a similar palette of aquatic blues, with greens, red and mauves. The surface and reflections of water – Monet’s pond and Mitchell’s nearby Seine river – are particularly ripe for exploration, depicted by both using short brushstrokes to evoke the movement of water and white space to lift the palette and create reflection.

The exhibition represents a continuation of the Fondation’s program of collaboration with major art museums. This time, the Musée Marmottan Monet, the custodian of the artist’s house in Giverny and the world’s leading collection of his works, has lent late-Monet masterpieces including Water Lilies paintings for the exhibition. They are hung without frames in a “deliberately open” display. In this way, the paintings take on a new dimension,” says Bernard Arnault, President of the Foundation Louis Vuitton and Chairman and CEO of LVMH Group. “The unique compositions, dizzying perspectives and vaporous reflections, where water and sky merge, all reveal the full extent of Monet’s avant-garde acuity.”

Alongside his private art collection, M. Arnault has worked to position LVMH as a major patron of the arts in France. Designed by architect Frank Gehry, work began on the Fondation Louis Vuitton building in 2006, and the museum eventually opened in 2014 as an art museum and gallery, with a comprehensive cultural program. It is run as a non-profit entity, supported by the LVMH Group.

The exhibition comes to a climax at the top of the building, with a major body of work from each artist. Monet’s 13-meter-long Agapanthus Triptych is displayed along the back wall, bringing together individual paintings held in the Cleveland Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, on show to the public for the first time in Paris since 1956. Representing a decade’s work and in parts eight layers thick, Monet considered it to be one of his best series. It is thought to have played a decisive role in his popularity in the US.

In the adjacent room, are ten paintings from Joan Mitchell’s La Grande Vallée series, representing a valley described to her by her friend, Gisèle Barreau, in a childhood memory. Shortly before Barreau’s cousin died, he had wanted to go back there, around the same time that Mitchell’s own sister died, triggering a reflection upon bereavement that produced 21 dreamlike visions of the valley. Ten of them are on show here, the largest assemblage of the cycle since it was first presented in 1984.

“The work goes far beyond imitating nature: it means blending sensations, feelings, emotions and reminiscences, through the proper placement and treatment of colors,” says Suzanne Pagé, artistic director of the Fondation Louis Vuitton and general curator of the exhibition. Through their representation of the natural world and impressions that can sometimes be hard to put into words, both artists address cycles of life and death and the complexity of human feelings. They are themes that will have resonance with the audience of 1,4 million visitors to the Fondation each year.

Monet-Mitchell and the Joan Mitchell Retrospective are open at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, October 5, 2022 – February 27, 2023.