Monet Musings at MoMA

Eventually, I end up back here. I’ve never seen MoMA’s Monet room before, but the Impressionists feel like home. Most people are here for Frank Lloyd Wright, the Campbell’s soup cans, Starry Night, the stuff that’s unique to this space and this city. To me, though, it’s the dashes of color—pink on dark blue on light blue on purple on green—that feel right. Adjacent to a room of geometrically perfect paintings, it’s the chaos and simplicity of water lilies in rural France that makes me feel at ease.

The woman in black pants, sneakers, a green cardigan, and a ponytail does not look so sure. She blinks too much, twists her hands together. Maybe she’s sizing the place up for a heist. Maybe her ex-boyfriend is meeting her in the corner. But something about this room makes her nervous.

One of Monet’s last paintings of the Japanese Bridge, from 1922, does not look like a bridge at all. Dark red, brown, orange, pea green. More like wet clay than a sunset, and there’s no real shape to it. A sense of random selection lingers in the brushstrokes. I try to step away so the painting will come together, but it feels charged with anxiety and uncertainty even from across the room. Like a beating heart on display, catching my eye. Calming me.