"The Enveloping Air" by John Berger

John Berger encourages the viewers of a Monet exhibit to "rethink" Monet: specifically what he was able to do through his art and the effect that it has had on us.  Monet and the other impressionists sought to record fleeting moments in time, focusing on color and light to create the unique feeling of a landscape at a certain time of day, during a specific time of year.  While this is the typical observation of most Impressionist works, Berger references Monet's painting of Madame Monet on her deathbed as one that is indicative of a different Monet.  This painting, he says, is "about the act of leaving, about going elsewhere" (47).  He goes on to say that Impressionist works are about flow, but he doesn't believe that Monet's are really about the flow of time, as other Impressionist paintings are assumed to be.  Monet's are about the flow of air, the "enveloping air," that as he approaches it, takes him elsewhere.  This elsewhere is somewhere anyone can recognize as "universal and eternal" (49).  

Monet, La Pie, 1869