If we use the word impression to mean the unique
imprint the outside world makes on the mind of a given individual,
it can be said that the role of the artist is to communicate
his impression to the audience as clearly and with as little
coloration as possible. This is why good art cannot help but
be original and recognizable; the best artists can so clearly
articulate their perspective or emotion that the originality
of the art is as natural to the work as the way any particular
person talks. You can study and imitate a persons dialect for
a lifetime, but to duplicate it exactly is impossible. This
is why good art often takes the trend in a new direction, for
great artists rarely feel that they can most clearly communicate
in a set style developed decades or generations before them.
The art of French impressionist Claude
Monet and American jazz musician John
Coltrane perfectly illustrates this concept, for both
artists came out of a academic style to produce art that was
highly evolutionary, if not revolutionary. This paper will examine
the art of Monet and Coltrane in attempts to better understand
and appreciate their works through parallels in the artists
lives, historical climates surrounding the art, and the artistic
styles of the two men.
Oscar-Claude Monet was born in 1840 in Paris to Claude-Adolphe
and Louise-Justine Aubree Monet. Monets family
was relatively poor, and was forced to rent out any spare room
in their house to boarders to make ends meet. Little is known
about his adolescence, but it is known that his first art teacher
was a man by the name of Jacques-Francois
Ochard, a largely forgotten artist of modest talent.
Monets early sketch books reveal a young man learning
his trade in a traditional way; by copying landscapes and everyday
structures with as much realism as he could. His early works
are that of an artist imitating the popular style of his time
period, and doing so quite well. Although Monet would later
claim to have always been an independent, self-made artist,
one can see in this early period an artist learning his craft
through intense study and mimicry of his predecessors.
This intense study of previous masters is common to the artistic
education of John Coltrane also. Coltrane was born in 1926 to
a lower middle-class black family in Hamlet, North Carolina,
and was said to mimic not only the stylistic aspects of his
favorite musicians, but also the physical. He modeled his sound
on the saxophone off of Duke Ellington saxophonist Johnny
Hodges, and spent hours modeling his posture in the
mirror off pictures of Hodges. Coltrane said of his childhood
hero The confidence with which [Hodges] plays! I wish
I could play with the confidence he does (A Love Supreme,
Ashly Kahn, pg. 44). While this period of mimicry
in the early years of Coltrane and Monet may seem counterproductive
at creating new and original art, it influenced the art of both
men greatly in that while both would be accused by critics at
one point or another on their artistic style being based off
of a lack of skill, their dedication to and mastery of their
craft is evident in their works and separates them from the
sometimes soulless and cerebral art of some of their their predecessors.
Another parallel between Monet and Coltrane is in the artistic
climate surrounding their art, and the response it received
by the artistic community. In the case of Monet, the Impressionist
style he was at the forefront of creating was named by a critic
who used the term Impressionist as an insult
to the new style. Impressionism was not lauded by the art establishment
as the new wave, but was seen as an unrefined and coarse new
style defined by thick short brush strokes and unmixed colors.
The subject matter also differed from the popular paintings
of the 1870s. Impressionist works offered no narrative
content or mythological creatures. They appeared unfinished
by the standards of the time, and had the rawness and spontaneity
of a sketch. This shift away from the popular style proved too
much for the art establishment, and the Impressionist painters
were largely rejected by the Salon, a popular art show, in the
1860s and 70s.
John Coltranes work was also not understood by the majority
of the artistic establishment in its early years. When
Coltranes individual style began to mature in the 1950s
it was viewed as indulgent and unrefined. Critics often complained
that Coltrane sounded as though he was searching for something
in his music; causing a unsettled and frantic feeling in his
solos. This was a contrast to the popular Bebop
style, which displayed smoothly connected and well constructed
musical phrases at blistering tempos. Bebop was an acrobatic
style of music requiring dexterity and mental and physical endurance
to sound effortless. Coltrane was at the polar end of this style,
sounding strained and yearning. To many people this was incorrectly
interpreted as poor musicianship, and Coltrane's playing is
described by one critic as stuck, repeating figurations
time and time again, as if such repetition could somehow improve
what little they had to offer the first two or three times they
occur. It doesnt, obviously (Downbeat, Dec.
2003 pg. 87). This kind of criticism of Coltranes
art as rushed or abrasive is strikingly similar to the criticism
of the Impressionist who also had a more spontaneous style,
which emphasized quick composition in order to avoid the artist
intellectualizing or romanticizing the art.
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An interesting point of comparison for the two artists is in
Monets Impression, Sunrise, and Coltranes
Impressions. Beyond the obvious connection through
the names of the works, these pieces share a similar conceptual
basis. Firstly, Monets rather barren subject matter closely
resembles Coltranes simple song construction. The majority
of Monets work is a study of the sunrise in the atmosphere
and its reflection on the water. This broad subject allows Monet
to experiment stylistically more freely than if he had painted
a more intricate subject. Similarly, Coltranes Impressions
relies on a very simple 2 chord structure. The piece only changes
chords once throughout the form, forcing the musician to experiment
with improvising within a single chord for much longer than
a jazz musician would normally spend. Because of this, style
and artistic interpretation take a larger role in these works
than they would in a realistic sculpture like that of Michalangelo,
or a structurally complex musical work like that that of Beethoven.
Another similarity between these works is in the slightly agitated
and fragmented nature of the compositions. In Monets painting,
this is caused by short brush strokes to give the sense of ripples
on the surface of the lake.
Coltrane, on the other hand, achieves this agitation by using
short repeated phrases sometimes only several beats long to
give the piece a sense of yearning. Another stylistic similarity
in these works which separates them from earlier styles is the
spontaneous nature and quick composition. Monet is said to have
composed many of his paintings in just a few hours to try to
capture a singular impression. If he had worked on the piece
over a number of days or weeks his mood and perspective on the
piece would have changed, ruining his goal of capturing a singular
moment. Coltranes improvisations are equally spontaneous;
the simple chord structure requiring no advance preparation,
and the length of the piece, at over thirteen minutes, requiring
the soloist to stretch out and abandon pre-constructed musical
ideas and exist in the moment of the piece.
A Monet equivalent to the length of Coltranes solos which
forced him to reach further and take mores risks are the Water
Lilies paintings. These paintings are ambitious in their
size, approaching 4 feet tall in some cases, and were painted
outdoors at his house in Giverny, France. The study of
light from the atmosphere on the waters surface in these paintings
is similar to John Coltranes sheets
of sound, a term coined by music critics to describe
his spontaneous playing and technical prowess. Here we once
again see both artists striving to reach new levels of expression
with their art. Monet working quickly to catch the ephemeral
as the play of light on a ponds surface, Coltrane searching
for a higher level of expression so hard that he played faster
than the ear could absorb the sound.
In conclusion, although Post-Bop Jazz came about 100
years after Impressionism in visual art, it was the first time
musicians were working in a medium that allowed such unpremeditated
music as to work in a similar way to Claude Monet. While both
John Coltrane and Claude Monet never did reach a point of satisfaction
with their art, both working right up to their deaths, they
left behind some of the most interesting and uncontrived art
of the last 200 years.
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