The Pyramids, Cliffs at Belle-Ile 1881

Curator: It hits you like a squall, doesn’t it? That impasto, the sheer physicality. It's all elemental force in 'The Pyramids, Cliffs at Belle-Ile' painted in 1886 by Monet. It makes me want to shout. Editor: I'm picking up on an almost violent energy. Look at the roiling blues, how the rocks stubbornly jut out from the chaotic sea. Rocks as permanence, the sea as constant flux. The age-old battle played out again. Curator: Exactly! Monet wasn’t just painting a seascape, he was grappling with the soul of the place. He planted himself there on Belle-Île and just wrestled those cliffs onto the canvas, trying to understand. Editor: Notice how he's using the rock formations, those 'pyramids' he calls them, to root us. They give us a focal point in the swirling water and light. Anchors of geological time in a transient moment. And water usually is associated with consciousness and the abyss. It is intense. Curator: I know. Imagine the grit! He’s outside, en plein air, fighting the wind and the spray, and trying to capture it all with those wild brushstrokes. There's this desperate energy to bottle lightning, you know? The raw hugeness, like trying to take on nature. Editor: The colours too— the dominating blue, it evokes distance, melancholia. But even in its fury, it remains profoundly beautiful. The painting reminds me that the ocean, the landscape and those rocks were always here before us and they will still be long after us. These pyramids will always stand as a testament to endurance. Curator: It's all pretty cyclical. It's funny how something so wild can actually calm the soul, huh? Knowing that everything moves along at its own pace, you feel insignificant but, strangely, also reassured, by nature's vastness and strength. Editor: True. A small drop into the greatness of an existence, but also a meaningful echo through art.