Analysis 2: The Word Picture

In this painting, The Houses of Parliament by Claude Monet, we see the silhouettes of the houses of Parliament with almost entirely blurred lines and no sharp images. The setting is sunset and the two things that stand out the most is the tallest tower of Parliament and the sun. There are no color blocks, all colors blend in with each other and it is not easy to pick out any particular detail. The colors involve mostly blues, some oranges with some red and variations on those colors due to them blending out into one of the other colors. It simply shows us a blurred image of the houses of Parliament at sunset.

I believe it would be interesting to analyze this painting from a Formalist perspective, considering we could look at the minimum of what Monet offers to us here. The way he paints, you often want to look beyond what is simply painted to what the image symbolizes, but in using Formalism we'd have to think simply about what is there not what we think is intended in inspiration. So the focus here is the silhouette of Parliament and the sun along with a bluish background. I suppose we can focus on the choice of lighting, since art all tends to have lighting coming from somewhere, even if the source is not easily identifiable. The source of light is the sun here, and it is the only source of light almost directly above the center of the image. Monet has chosen to contrast his colors and he has chosen to blend them and make them complimentary. Artists often choose one or the other. He chose landscape rather than portrait, since that allows him to focus less on detail and more on the broader picture. Because of this and because he chose to blur the entire thing I think we're allowed to focus the three points I mentioned earlier only: the sun, Parliament, and the blue background. To me this says that this is all Monet wanted you to see, rather than for you to see the tiny details of the windows of the lines of the ground and so on.


Works Cited
McCrory, Jeremiah. "Claude Monet Prints on Demand"Art of Europe Web. 2 March 2011 http://www.artofeurope.com/