The Siene at Lavacourt, Effect of Snow 1879

Curator: Looking at Monet's "The Seine at Lavacourt, Effect of Snow" from 1879, what strikes you first? Editor: Well, it's interesting. The fleeting, transient feeling you get from the brushstrokes, the plein-air style is a bit new to me. I'm wondering how a Materialist like you would view such a seemingly… atmospheric work. What stands out to you about it? Curator: Atmospheric, yes, but let's think about the "stuff" that makes this scene. Monet's labor, his active work and physical application of those individual strokes, built up this vision with ground pigments, linseed oil and a rough canvas. We often gloss over the sheer industrialization that supported impressionism: manufactured paints, the rise of train travel to quickly move about for this outdoor work. It is easy to assume it is all artistic intuition, and ignore its relationship to broader social and economic forces. Does thinking about it that way shift anything for you? Editor: Definitely. I guess I hadn’t really considered how industrialized paint production played a role. I was focused on, you know, the "artist's vision" and the subjective feeling. How does the materiality of snow affect your reading, and how does this piece subvert it through paint? Curator: It complicates our perception of value. Snow, ephemeral, becomes solidified, commodified in pigment, readily sold at galleries. Is this now something completely new, transformed, or has the "snow" simply become "paint," stripped of what it initially was, yet given a value never previously held? It even challenges the idea that only skilled workers in official ateliers could create “high” art, blurring boundaries by championing outdoor, immediate painting. Editor: That's a totally different way of looking at it, which puts the "stuff" that built paintings as vital in understanding paintings like this. Thanks. Curator: Glad to help - the economic perspective challenges old hierarchies and conventions around value, production, and authorship in the art world.