The Yellow Irises 1917

Claude Monet made "The Yellow Irises" with oil on canvas. The all-over quality is really remarkable here, the way the brushstrokes build up a field that could keep going on forever. The texture's so rich, you can almost feel the density of the garden, where the brush marks are thick and loaded with pigment. Then, look how he lets the paint be itself – thin washes of blue and green underneath create depth and shadow and then dabs of pure yellow sit on top like sunlight. It's like he's not just painting flowers, but painting the sensation of being surrounded by them. Take the way he builds up the irises at the top of the painting, they have the quality of an optical after-image, as if the spots of yellow have danced in your vision after staring at something for too long. It makes you wonder how much of what we see is actually there and how much we bring to the experience. Kind of like how we look at art, right? Like a game of perception and process.