Bonjour.  Spokeswoman travels the globe – Annie as inspiration continues…

After a little over a week in Paris, the art, the culture and the bicycling have captured and intoxicated me.

As a Teaching assistant for a course on Modernism and the Arts, it has been a whirlwind of lectures, museums, and cultural bliss.

Yesterday we left the city for the day and headed for Giverny, to see Monet’s home and more importantly his garden.  Bursting with color, Lily Pads and art history enthusiasts, Giverny was a gorgeous day out of the city, tasting the freshness of the non-urban air. 
The Crème de la Crème of the experience was Biking from the train station into town.

The long billowing grass, punches of cadmium red poppies, and haystacks still sprinkling the landscape make it easy to transport you into Monet’s. …And Annie’s World. (?!)
Annie and Impressionism?  Perhaps the link is an academic long-shot but each were represented a cultural transformation.  The world was modernizing; in the most literal sense, ways of seeing and doing were changing. Annie and Monet were two individuals who were seizing upon this modernization and living their lives amongst and celebrating this change.

 Impressionism was innovative and groundbreaking. These artists refused to accept notions of artistic hierarchy deeply wedded to cultural notions of propriety. They were attempting to capture this modern world in its fleeting moments of light and beauty. They captured their world through depictions of every day life.  There is warmth and joy in this experience of the world.  In this depiction one will also find allusions to industrialization, and the expansion of the mechanical world, most notably in Monet and Manet’s compositions of train stations.  Industrialization for them was a subject to be broached on the canvas.

Annie in her own way was responding to these same global transformations.  Annie was seizing the moment, not for light, tonal range, but for a similar sense of joy and adventure.  In both Annie’s words and the Impressionists canvases we can see an intenseness and beauty in the experience of the everyday.

Annie’s words were as bold as Monet’s brushstrokes.   Annie was not paining en plein air, she was riding in it. She was transformative in the ability of a traveler, a woman no less to globe trot, and become an international sensation.

So I would like to imagine that perhaps Annie’s acceptance and love of France had something to do with the artistic awakening that was occurring at the end of the 19^th century.  That France was exposed to new perceptions of reality. They were part of an awakening. Seen in this light it makes perfect sense that Annie would feel so welcomed and celebrated here. I think Annie and Monet would agree that the French  love of novelty, beauty and the sensational served them well in the end.

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