Palazzo Dario 4 1908

Monet painted Palazzo Dario 4 using oil on canvas, likely sometime in the early 1900s, and it’s like he’s building a world out of pure color. I'm really drawn to the way the paint seems to both construct and dissolve the architecture. Look at how he renders the water. It's this constant push and pull between the solidity of the building and the fluid, almost hallucinatory surface of the water. You can practically feel the humidity and the way the light bounces off the water, distorting the reflections. The brushstrokes, though small, are so full of intention, a real dance between observation and invention. It’s funny, the more I look at Monet, the more I see him in artists like Gerhard Richter. Both are obsessed with the way light and color can transform our perception of reality, even if they go about it in totally different ways. Art, you know, it’s just one big conversation across time.