Monet Painting And Impressionism
The comments about Monet’s painting, Impression: Sunrise, gives an
insight to
the artistic vision in Waugh’s Vile Bodies and Greene’s Brighton
Rock.
Monet’s Impression: Sunrise is a famous and prime example of
Impressionism.
The impressionist style of painting is characterized by
"concentration on the
general impression produced by a scene as an object and
the use of unmixed
primary colors and small strokes to simulate actual
reflected light." (WebMuseum)
Impressionist paintings use light and color
to imitate a certain setting or
reality. In both novels, Vile Bodies and
Brighton Rock, there is an
impressionistic feel to them. There is a sense of
darkness and unclearness as
one reads along, but have an element of ‘light’
that is present throughout.
The ‘light’ in these novels are represented
through characters. In Vile
Bodies, the story is one of nothingness,
meaninglessness. None of the characters
have an objective reality, it’s all
subjective. The reality is different to
each character. There are concessions
to nothing outside the self. Their lives
are portrayed as wasted, as if there
is no other purpose to them than to be part
of a society that emphasizes the
importance of money and social gatherings, in
other words, a social satire.
One source of light in this novel is Mrs. Ape and
her angels. They serve as a
religious element in a world that is existentialism
at its’ best. Brighton
Rock is a detective story, a ‘who done it’.
Naturally, being that it is a
detective story, there is a dark quality to it.
Detective films fall into
the film noire genre, because of the dark element.
Rose is the ‘light’,
it is present with her. Throughout the novel, along
with the murders and
crime solving, Rose is the balance, the light. Her good
balances with her
husband’s , Pinkie’s, evil. Pinkie seems to be incomplete
without Rose.
Monet’s painting seems to be incomplete, or unfinished. And like
the
painting, Rose is the stroke of color, that reflects light in the
novel.
Being that they are married, which is a holy institution, makes
her different
from the unmarried characters, i.e. Ida, Charles, etc. Rose is
the bonding
element in her marriage to Pinkie. The comment made by
Castagnary, in the test
booklet, "They are impressionists in that they do not
render a landscape, but
the sensation produced by the landscape...There they
take leave of reality and
enter the realms of idealism", has a connection to
the life portrayed in Vile
Bodies. The landscape sensation, which is the
world and lives of the characters,
is produced by the meaningless
conversation, relationships, and subjective
mentality of the characters. In
the essay by Paul Tillich, "The Meaning of
Meaninglessness", it states
that, "He(man) has sacrificed himself to his own
productions... He who is in
the grip of doubt and meaninglessness cannot
liberate himself from this grip,
but he asks for an answer which is valid and
not outside the situation of his
despair." This is the case for Adam. He is
searching for something that is
not outside of the satirical world that he is
trapped in, created by Waugh,
constructed as an example of what the world has
become or what the world is
soon to become. The author’s, as like Monet and
other Impressionist painters,
have an artistic vision that is expressed through
strokes and color and a
reality, or lack thereof. In the novels, the strokes are
the characters, and
the color is the role that the character plays in the world
created by the
author. All the elements come together to form a world, created
by the
artist, either with paint or
words.