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The French Impressionists: Modern Art & Modern Manners [VHS]

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Rosamond Bernier gives annual lectures at The Metropolitan museum of Art that are sold out six months in advance. "Modern Art and Modern Manners" is the second in a series of four lectures on the French Impressionists collectively called "A School for Happiness." Bernier lectures dressed in a blue gown while clicking away at slides showing dozens of paintings by the masters of French Impressionism. This volume is primarily about Edouard Manet as the leader in spirit if not in name of the movement and Claude Monet from "La Grenouiliere" (1869) to the apotheosis of "Waterlillies" (1900's). Of course, if Bernier wanted to devote all four lectures in this series to Monet that would be just fine with me because he defines Impressionism for me. Bernier provides insights into the artists and their works to a level of such detail that she knows that Madame Manet is wearing Madam Monet's hat in a painting by Renoir. The most fascinating detail was the belief, expressed to Bernier by Manet's daughter, that Monet's famous shade of blue was the artist's attempt to recreate the vivid shade of the color he saw when his eyes were bandaged after an operation.

Bernier spent a couple of decades in high school after World War II, initially as the European features editor for "Vogue" magazine, where she became friends with the masters of the School of Paris: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, George Braque, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Max Ernst and Alberto Giacometti. When she founded the art magazine "L'OEIL" in 1955 they helped her out. Each lecture approximately an hour although it seems unfair to call what Bernier does a "lecture" because a lecture is something you have to force yourself to sit through once, while watching this program more than once is worth the repetition. "Modern Art and Modern Manners 1860-74" comes after the overview lecture on "The Cast of Characters" for the Impressionist movement, and is followed by "Paris by Day and Night" and "An Accesible Paradise." Watching these lectures is like a mini-art appreciation course, although I never remember any of my college professors dressed by like Rosamond Bernier.