5 ms·

Claude Monet at Work in His Garden, 1915

74 points by gruseom 14y ago

sethbannon 14y ago
It's fascinating how much he looks at the subject (the water lilies). One would have thought an impressionist such as Monet would be freed from this.
- Gring 14y ago
  It's possible that this is not his normal work style, but that the director asked him to move the head a lot to add some action or to conform to some preconception of "what painters normally do".
  - joystick 14y ago
    really? half of the effort in painting is the actual 'seeing', not putting the paint to the canvas. In fact in art school we would do exercises where we drew from life without ever looking at the paper at all
    - lnanek2 14y ago
      Yes, but normally he might have pointed his easel at the subject and just leaned or looked over the side to see the subject, for example. Although some of his pieces are very large. The point, though, is that you can make looking more dramatic without increasing or decreasing the amount of looking.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- bluekeybox 14y ago
  That would be expressionism you have in mind, or perhaps surrealism aka Dali. Impressionism is about one's "first" or "direct" impression of things as you look at them, not about how you imagine/idealize them later on. Impressionists took this "first impression" business pretty seriously. Your painting most likely would not be called impressionistic if you painted it your studio, from a photograph, or from memory -- you had to do it en plein air (out in the open, from real life). The idea prevailing at the time (which partly came from the physiology of vision actually) was that, on one's first impression of something, the brain only perceives patches of color (a 2D image), that are only processed after a split second into something more resembling a 3D representation. Impressionists tried to capture that supposedly "pure" first image. Everyone tried to do it in his/her own way. Seurat, for example developed pointillism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seurat-La_Parade_detail.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seurat-La_Parade_detail.jp...).
- dhughes 14y ago
  I wonder how many frames per second the film is running at it always seems old films don't quite get motion quite right. Look at him walking and the dog too they're walking way too fast very unnatural but really it's not much of a difference I guess.
  - abruzzi 14y ago
    Most silent films from the era were supposed to run at 18fps (that's why we have a preconception of everything moving fast in silent films--years later they were threaded into sound projectors which sped them up to 24 fps.) BUT many cameras of the day were not motor or spring driven, but run by a hand crank. The cameraman would hum a popular tune at the right tempo and try to turn the crank in time with the beats of the music. This meant that there are subtle faster and slower moments. Also, I noticed a couple of tiny jump cuts where a frame or two may have been lost in the original, also munching with the motion. Finally, not motion related, but the old cameras were not great at exposing every frame exactly, causing a flickering that is very noticeable, and may impact your sense of motion.
    - corysama 14y ago
      If you open the Youtube URL in VLC ("Open network stream") and slow the playback down to 18/24=0.75x, the motion is much more natural throughout the video.
- sp332 14y ago
  Impressionist doesn't mean abstract. Have you ever stood ~30 feet away from a Monet? It looks just like looking at a regular painting, or better because he really tried to paint to the way your eyes and brain see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism#Impressionist_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism#Impressionist_te...
- lclaude01 14y ago
  As an impressionist myself, one has to see the subject as often as possible to grasp it spirit and feel. It is all about momentum. The goal is to "capture the moment". So it is more about the "concept of the moment" than the subject
ondrae 14y ago
He had style and swagger. All white suit, pocket kerchief, and a cocked hat.
pgrote 14y ago
How is the film under copyright still?
- sp332 14y ago
  It seems this video has music added, that EMI claims copyright over.
lclaude01 14y ago
As an impressionist myself, one has to see the subject as often as possible to grasp it spirit and feel. It is all about momentum. The goal is to "capture the moment". So it is more about the "concept of the moment" than the subject

74 points by gruseom 14y ago

It's fascinating how much he looks at the subject (the water lilies). One would have thought an impressionist such as Monet would be freed from this.

Gring 14y ago
It's possible that this is not his normal work style, but that the director asked him to move the head a lot to add some action or to conform to some preconception of "what painters normally do".
- joystick 14y ago
  really? half of the effort in painting is the actual 'seeing', not putting the paint to the canvas. In fact in art school we would do exercises where we drew from life without ever looking at the paper at all
  - lnanek2 14y ago
    Yes, but normally he might have pointed his easel at the subject and just leaned or looked over the side to see the subject, for example. Although some of his pieces are very large. The point, though, is that you can make looking more dramatic without increasing or decreasing the amount of looking.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
bluekeybox 14y ago
That would be expressionism you have in mind, or perhaps surrealism aka Dali. Impressionism is about one's "first" or "direct" impression of things as you look at them, not about how you imagine/idealize them later on. Impressionists took this "first impression" business pretty seriously. Your painting most likely would not be called impressionistic if you painted it your studio, from a photograph, or from memory -- you had to do it en plein air (out in the open, from real life). The idea prevailing at the time (which partly came from the physiology of vision actually) was that, on one's first impression of something, the brain only perceives patches of color (a 2D image), that are only processed after a split second into something more resembling a 3D representation. Impressionists tried to capture that supposedly "pure" first image. Everyone tried to do it in his/her own way. Seurat, for example developed pointillism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seurat-La_Parade_detail.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seurat-La_Parade_detail.jp...).
dhughes 14y ago
I wonder how many frames per second the film is running at it always seems old films don't quite get motion quite right. Look at him walking and the dog too they're walking way too fast very unnatural but really it's not much of a difference I guess.
- abruzzi 14y ago
  Most silent films from the era were supposed to run at 18fps (that's why we have a preconception of everything moving fast in silent films--years later they were threaded into sound projectors which sped them up to 24 fps.) BUT many cameras of the day were not motor or spring driven, but run by a hand crank. The cameraman would hum a popular tune at the right tempo and try to turn the crank in time with the beats of the music. This meant that there are subtle faster and slower moments. Also, I noticed a couple of tiny jump cuts where a frame or two may have been lost in the original, also munching with the motion. Finally, not motion related, but the old cameras were not great at exposing every frame exactly, causing a flickering that is very noticeable, and may impact your sense of motion.
  - corysama 14y ago
    If you open the Youtube URL in VLC ("Open network stream") and slow the playback down to 18/24=0.75x, the motion is much more natural throughout the video.
sp332 14y ago
Impressionist doesn't mean abstract. Have you ever stood ~30 feet away from a Monet? It looks just like looking at a regular painting, or better because he really tried to paint to the way your eyes and brain see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism#Impressionist_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism#Impressionist_te...
lclaude01 14y ago
As an impressionist myself, one has to see the subject as often as possible to grasp it spirit and feel. It is all about momentum. The goal is to "capture the moment". So it is more about the "concept of the moment" than the subject

ondrae 14y ago

He had style and swagger. All white suit, pocket kerchief, and a cocked hat.

pgrote 14y ago

How is the film under copyright still?

sp332 14y ago
It seems this video has music added, that EMI claims copyright over.

lclaude01 14y ago

As an impressionist myself, one has to see the subject as often as possible to grasp it spirit and feel. It is all about momentum. The goal is to "capture the moment". So it is more about the "concept of the moment" than the subject