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Note: Here's the next installment of Monet, Mitchell, & Me: A Painters Pilgrimage. I missed posting last week—I've been painting, not writing—but am getting back on track. Question for my "early readers": I'm writing in the first person, present tense—how does this strike you? Looking forward, we leave Paris but not before a funny thing happens on the way back from the Monet-Mitchell exhibit. Again, your comments are most welcome!  (In case you've missed the other posts related to this one, check out the blogs earlier in November, 2022. Thanks! Ellie

While we'd stumbled blindly before locating the Orangerie, I trust Roo to navigate the Metro to get us to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, somewhere in the 16^th arondissement, on this drizzly Sunday morning. We’ve been there before. Seven years ago, on a trip to Paris with Brent and Susan, my brother and his wife, we'd made a point of going to see the mammoth structure designed by Frank Gehry. Opting to skip the tour, however, I’d improvised an outdoor studio in the woods across the street in the Bois de Bologne and painted. I explained to my companions, I’d rather be making art that looking at it.

Now, however, I’m keen to enter the boat-like building to see the paintings I’d traveled so far to see. I needed to use the facilities, so once we cleared security, I asked at the reception desk for directions to la toilette. Following them, however, proved no less difficult than finding anything else in Paris—especially a bathroom—and, as is so often the case in this city, an unintended route reveals its own treasures, in this case this vast space.

When I find my way back to the main lobby, I look up and see the visages of Joan Mitchell and Claude Monet towering above me. They are gigantic, not unlike gods, looming over the tiny people below. Clearly, these two artists are larger than life—much larger, apparently. I, the mere mortal, prepare to engage these creators.

I am ready, eager, in fact: I’ve come with a great longing for something to happen with Monet, Mitchell and me. I remember visitors to my BIRDS FLY IN installation coming to see me in tears after they’d experienced it. I want that—a transcendental experience. I want to be blown away; literally I want “me” to be subsumed in beauty, energy, aliveness—not a small order especially given that I’ve never been moved in that way by looking at art.

I’ve been to major exhibits in London, Paris, New York City, and Chicago but find I usually leave feeling unchanged. Now, I’ve traveled once again many miles at great expense with some hope that the art might break open my consciousness to—what?—insight? a sense of purpose? meaning? love?—anything sweeter than my bitter frustration with BIRDS FLY IN. I’ve traveled to Paris with the hope that if anyone’s art can do the trick, it’s Joan Mitchell’s. And, perhaps Monet’s. (I once had a nearly transcendent experience meditating on a water lily painting in the Cleveland Art Museum.) I know it can happen. Maybe this time, in this secular cathedral, with these godlike art giants, it will happen to me.

This Sunday morning, a time I chose to avoid crowds, finds the Fondation Louis Vuitton full, not so much with tourists as at the Orangerie, but, still, a lot of folks have not gone to church, or have decided this is church. The Joan Mitchell Retrospective and the Monet-Mitchell: Dialogue have drawn a sophisticated crowd—at least not everyone here is clutching their device in full view—and I make my way into the white and bright galleries containing the Retrospective. Mitchell’s paintings, many of them comprising multiple panels, are monumental and they dwarf any person or clump of persons who might get in front of them. So, while there’s more room to look at the paintings, because of the numbers, I’m conscious of people more than the art and, yes, this crowd is also snapping pics of the paintings and themselves.

Slow looking clearly is not happening here, yet while thwarted in snatching a contemplative moment, I do enjoy seeing firsthand the striking paintings I’ve previously seen only in books. The colors are vibrant, the Mitchell’s gestural marks are original, unpredictable and bold. I find myself in front of “Hemlock,” one my favorite Mitchell paintings.  I reach for my cell phone and hand it to Roo—if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em—I get next to and slightly in front of “Hemlock,” one of my favorite paintings.  At my direction, Roo tries to get a good shot. After 4 or 5 tries, I approve of one and post it on Instagram tout de suite. Shameless, I know.

Yet, however exciting it might have been for Joan Mitchell to make those marks, I find looking at them (around so many people) boring. To entertain myself, I start making my own art out of Joan’s. Zooming in on details—I enjoy doing this with my own large paintings—is fun! I also like stepping back to frame silhouetted people-shapes against a painting as seen from across the room. I soon realize I’m far more interested in what I’m doing with it—capturing the scene, making small images from the larger ones—than in simply looking at the art.

Having interacted with the Retrospective as much I as I can under the circumstances, I move from the Mitchell retrospective to the other large galleries where the Monet-Mitchell; Dialogue has been installed. Given Monet’s status as French cultural icon, it makes sense there are even more visitors here in these immense upper rooms. Looking over their heads, I see the curators have done a good job selecting paintings of his that relate to Mitchell’s and they do seem related.

Mitchell denied having been influenced by Monet, but this exhibit makes a case for some kind of relationship. (Because of some striking thematic and stylistic similarities, Joan was asked what she thought of Monet’s paintings. “I like the later ones, but not the early ones.” In other words, they’re okay?) In one particular grouping, however,  the viewer looks (around the people crowding to see) through a doorway flanked by two large Monet pieces to four larger ones of Mitchell’s. Each feature the same dominant colors—blues, lavenders, greens—and the design motifs evoke landscape. Yet, whether intended or not, Mitchell has taken Monet’s themes to another level. The Monet paintings in this exhibit are some of his most fluid paintings and tilt toward abstraction. Side by side with Mitchell’s work, however, Monet’s seem constrained and safe, while hers are fearless: design, colors, and application are freer, bolder and brighter, more energized. Mitchell’s work appears to me to evolve what his began, offering possibilities for expression greater than Monet had been able to attain.

Seeing the work of the two artists juxtaposed reassures me in some way I cannot yet articulate. I have history with and can relate to each of them: When I was painting landscape, I was inspired by Monet’s practice of plein air Impressionism and, more recently, a lotus/waterlily motif spontaneously emerged in my work that, while I hadn’t used them as references, naturally made me think of his Nympheas.

As for Joan Mitchell, I’ve admired, envied, and count her as a primary influence on my work. Her gestural marks and my own are so similar that others have compared us. One person comments to my post of “Hemlock” that the painting looks like one of mine. Still, even though I’m not Monet and, certainly, I’m not another Joan Mitchell, I take comfort in the notion that these “art giants” were perhaps not “larger than life” as depicted in those intimidating photos, but were simply themselves, living an authentic art life, and not so much unlike me and other mere mortal who like me make art their life. Perhaps we have in common that we serve an impulse to create art that is constantly evolving in expression--the best way to make that art? Be one’s most authentic self.

I love that Mitchell and Monet each made art in a committed fashion with an approach and style that was unmistakably their own. They each, perhaps unwittingly, served a purpose—art history or, perhaps, conscious evolution—an impulse so powerful it used (or bypassed) the individuals’ personality flaws to inspire in both artists a prodigious amount of work. Perhaps their output alone inspires a desire to install them as art superheroes, but I also wonder, would either Joan or Clause have been thrilled with those gigantic images in the museum lobby? Or might they have transcended the egoic desire to please critics and collectors? I can only imagine and project.

After purchasing some postcards in the gift shop, Roo and I depart the art world and retrace our steps to the Metro. I’m feeling satisfied that I’ve witnessed the best efforts of artists whose lives were dedicated in full measure to a creative impulse, but now I’m hungry. I spy a café advertising Potage potiron—butternut squash soup—which I enjoy along with the crusty bread that comes with it. Roo’s account of his experience of Mitchell and Monet: “It was impressive,” he says. Listening to him, I realize it’s easier for him to simply appreciate the art and what he’s learned about the artists. Unlike me, he wasn’t seeking anything more than that and he was impressed.  We agree that we’d like to visit the show again, to see how it looks once we’ve spent time in the villages and landscape along the Seine where both Monet and Mitchell lived and worked. Having decided to book tickets for the day before we leave France, we’re soon on a train speeding along to our tiny digs in the Marais.