2012-2018 GIVERNY COMMISSION AND PROJECT SUMMARY

Giverny: A Return to Women in Nature

The Richard J. Massey Foundation for Arts and Sciences is supporting an elaborate 7-year international conceptual art project “Giverny: A Return to Women in Nature," which addresses the topic of women in nature throughout contemporary art and art history. The complex Giverny project is entirely under the direction of its conceptual creator, visual artist Tarra Bandet, who is overseeing all details. This multi faceted endeavor focuses on Tarra’s art performances, drawings, paintings, mixed media series, writing, curating and collaborations with other world-renowned artists such as Yigal Ozeri.

This intensive collaboration will also include Tarra working with other international visual artists and art historians in New York and around the world. The entire "Revolution at Giverny: A Return to Women in Nature" project, connected lectures,  and symposium series will be beautifully documented in a book at the end of the project.  

As the director and conceptual creator of the project “Revolution at Giverny: A Return to Women in Nature," visual artist Tarra Bandet has been working on various interconnected facets in the following cities and visual art categories:

New York City, NY

Paris, France

Chicago, Illinois

Salzburg, Austria

Los Angeles, California

1. VISUAL ART DIRECTOR AND CONCEPTUAL CREATOR

2. VISUAL ART EXHIBITIONS

3. VISUAL ART PERFORMANCES

4. VISUAL ART WRITER AND CURATOR

5. VISUAL ART LECTURER

REVOLUTION AT GIVERNY: A RETURN TO WOMEN IN NATURE

Text By: Tarra Bandet

Yigal Ozeri has illuminated an extraordinary visual stage by uniting two of the most potent iconic symbols of revolutionary French culture. The revolutionary artist Monet and the last Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette have been seamlessly woven by new brushstrokes, into the most skilled and enchanting portrait in the landscape ever conceived in contemporary art.  Yigal Ozeri intertwines phenomenal mastery of painting techniques, complex mythology and richly layered iconography. 

“Revolution at Giverny: A Return to Women in Nature”, captivates with alluring zeal, the timeless scope of French history by connecting icons of its painful transformations and greatest visionary triumphs. A web united by Mother Nature, great empires and art sway in the balance of creative freedom and repressive destruction. 

The painted scene by Ozeri manifests a fleeting illusion of perfection, sublime nature and the elegant Queen in Utopia, thereby igniting in the viewer the epic cycle of life and death. The cycle of nature and the queen at her most glorious are bittersweet symbols representing the height of splendor and extravagance before the change in season and death of a decadent age. 

Monet and Marie Antoinette shared triumphant sanctuary in nature, overlapping spaces & tragic juxtapositions. Over compressed time periods, the sanctuary of the garden heightens the viewer’s awareness of a calming lullaby before the explosive storm of two revolutions. The tragic heroine reunites in freedom with living nature, which becomes the symbolic cradle of salvation for the soul. 

FREEDOM AND DESTRUCTION IN THE REVOLUTION

“Revolution at Giverny: A Return to Women in Nature” personifies a structural duality, freedom in sanctuary and revolution, the two different sides of the same coin. Yigal Ozeri has painted a symbolic moment when Monet has bitten off the apple of artistic knowledge, while the Queen of France is savoring her sanctuary before being expelled and banished out of Eden. 

Nature becomes the symbol of freedom itself in France, which will create or destroy and regenerate as necessary without mercy. Mother Nature synthesizes a balanced energy, but does not discriminate, not even for a queen. When the Royal Family and aristocracy in France lost their power, the common people of France opened the gates to their own freedom. The French Queen Marie Antoinette was once one of the most protected women in France, who later becomes the most vulnerable. In a juxtaposing shift, Monet is the paternal symbol of revolutionary, artistic freedom. The painting style by Monet and the Impressionists was revolutionary in subject and method, and in its essence, a reverent presentation of Mother Nature.

The composition of Yigal’s paintings is not just merely an echo of previous overlapping centuries, but a recognizable juxtaposition of fleeting beauty, which is eternally frozen by a tragic fate. A Queen Mother is swallowed whole by the motherland. The last Queen of France becomes a tragic heroine. Destruction of the monarchy expels Marie Antoinette from the Garden of Eden by taxing the monarchy in retaliation, and demanding the highest price. The cost? Life itself. The sacred position of queen, once revered by its people, is blemished by the profane and cruel massacre of destruction. 

The birth of a new Republic emerged from the roots of revolution in French soil. The anticipated gathering storm is already highly recognized in the paintings since the historical facts of the French Revolution are already commonly known by the audience. Marie Antoinette is the symbol of the revolution itself, for she is both the symbol of a decadent monarchy oblivious to its citizens and the scapegoat sacrifice into the starving volcano of revolution. 

Like Monet, Yigal Ozeri manifests in his brush strokes the intense energy and vision of a new art revolution. Traditional painting and new photo technology merge in a seamless process exuding a complex narrative, fresh and alive through a contemporary lens. Monet opened the floodgate to a rare freedom in painting, which has left its permanent imprint in the art world ever since.

In the 19th century, the Paris Salon and Ecole des Beaux Arts were the recognized art monarchy, controlling the core system of art and all influential art establishments. This rigid system eventually crumbled as more artists joined forces in the revolution for freedom in art amidst the Salon des Refuses. Eventually a shift of power in art occurred and would never be the same. Consequently, Monet crystallized a new way of painting and elevated a lower subject such as landscape, which now commands the same respect as scenes of the monarchy itself. Impressionism captured expression and power just as magnificent as other elite genres in painting such as classical mythology, religious, and even historical paintings.

REVOLUTIONARY PAINTING: A NEW WAY OF SEEING IN THE 21st CENTURY

Creating your own visual language is one of the most important and difficult realizations for an artist to procure in art. While paying homage to the art masters through the centuries, Yigal is harmonizing his own visual language with art movements of the past and present. This is magnified by Ozeri’s dynamic compositions and implied narrative of the female figure in the landscape. Yigal has flawlessly combined together the most complex traditional painting mediums with the highest technical facility, inspired by modern photo technology and video. The unique ensemble unites 21st century mediums with fresh mastery and brilliant complexity. 

“Revolution at Giverny: A Return to Women in Nature” magnifies a glorious panoramic view, which stretches to envelop the viewer into Monet’s gardens. Mirrored portraits fuse a ghostly, double golden ratio, which balances the figures and landscape onto a monumental 24 feet of canvas. Using exceptional ingenuity, a seemingly impossible vantage point expands the Giverny water gardens. 

Landscape fragments are synthesized together in a sublime, vibrating ensemble of water, sky, trees and plants. Reflections in the water personify and transcend dynamic reflections of space and time by honoring great masters in the history of art. Visual echoes of Monet appear but also Botticelli, Da Vinci, Vermeer, Velazquez, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Barbizon, Bastien-Lepage, and Ingres are all rippled in the content or brushstrokes by Yigal Ozeri.

Like a spell enchanting an audience, Yigal Ozeri showcases the gardens at Giverny as profoundly alive and real--a living experience for the viewer. The image creates a balanced harmony and juxtaposition between nature as the protagonist itself and Marie Antoinette as the protagonist. The audience is enticed to take action, immerse their full attention into disbelief and unable to take a passive glance. The viewer is then drawn into the space so they in fact feel like the protagonist entering into the center of the stage. 

The painted surface becomes magical, bursting with life and energy from the millions of brushstrokes, layered and diverse like perfect notes from the overlapping instruments of a favorite symphony.  The viewer does not simply experience an image, they become part and dive into a real world and connect with living characters created by Yigal Ozeri. 

Yigal has merged together a brilliant language of multiple viewpoints, and added his own version of modern visual thinking. The eye of the viewer is constantly meandering and scanning each section of the painting, moving from the figures to the foreground, middle ground and deep space.  Marie Antoinette is painted from different viewpoints in the same composition. In addition, the figure is not standing toward the middle of the composition like the majority of other traditional portraits. 

The extraordinary details of the figures and dresses draw the eye to the outer sections of the paintings. Furthermore, the illusion of spaces becomes even more enigmatic when the viewer realizes that from one painting into the next, there is a highly peculiar spatial shift. Reading the painting ensemble from left to right, the viewer eventually realizes that the central space connecting the two paintings is not fully connected at all. The viewer feels like they are instantly under the tree, then notice, the same tree appears from a different vantage point, now across the pond. Therefore, the viewer instantly travels across the pond. Is this Yigal’s innovative new language connected to the countless multiple series by Monet or Cezanne? 

Monet’s classic approach was to paint the Giverny gardens from every vantage point imaginable. Many of Monet’s most famous paintings are united with his ability to create an elaborate series of the same topic, but different times of the day and different times of the year. This notion of fragmentation and multiple view points was then reinforced by Cezanne, the grandfather of cubism. Yigal’s extremely innovative composition is a fresh presentation, accessible and clever as that of Monet over one hundred years ago. 

 Yigal Ozeri’s brush is energized with intense drama, capturing bursting life in the light and shadow of intense color. William Turner’s example of painting drama in nature was a monumental inspiration for Monet and the Pre-Raphaelites, all of which has now influenced Ozeri. Monet even painted the same Parliament scene as Turner while he stayed at the Savoy hotel in London. Early in his career, Turner was a prized artist at the Royal Academy and highest art circles. He used the genre of landscape to convey an intense emotional force expressing the energy of life. The drama of colors and light became increasingly complex and generated the perfect environment to exhibit raw human turmoil. Later in his life, Turner’s brushwork became more abstract expressionist, such as in his painting The Slave Ship (1840), and his subjects were suppressed by the wrath of human destruction and Mother Nature.

Around the same time as Monet, the magical world of the Pre-Raphaelites founded by Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt already created shock waves throughout the art world in England during the 19th century. Sir John Everett Millais was one of the few artists ever who painted most sections of his paintings in full focus with the most delicate details in every inch of the composition. Holding a similar passion as Monet, these artists wanted to be connected to a deeply feeling experience with nature and the human spirit. 

Millais created the most beloved and recognized painting of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Inspired by one of Shakespeare’s scenes, the tragic heroine Ophelia comes to life as never seen before. Ophelia’s floats like an angel in the water while being surrounded by the most stunning, botanically accurate and detailed riverside imaginable. Although Millais painted extensively from life, analyzing each detail with astounding accuracy, Yigal produces a similar subject and contemporary effect with photography and painting in the studio.

Some artists in the 19th century elevated the female figure as a spirit emanating an inner vision, often while finding compassionate refuge in nature as a direct connection to the divine. For example, Jules Bastien-Lepage painted Joan of Arc, one of the most recognized heroines in France.  She was persecuted then declared as a martyr by the Catholic Church and yet in this painting features a moment of hope. The young girl is surrounded by the vast landscape and simple structures. The viewer is completely convinced that the figure of Joan of Arc is completely real, her eyes shimmering as she hears the voice of God and saints guiding her resolve. 

The Lady of Shalott, painted several times by John Waterhouse is based on the romantic poem by Tennyson. It is an exquisite prime example of the romantic symbolists, tragedy of love and the curse of an isolated life. This stunning composition places the tragic heroine finally descending from the tower of her imprisonment into a boat floating in the freedom of nature, just moments before her tragic death. Yigal’s paintings express a highly sensitive and compassionate recognition of a similar illumination of the spirit, when a woman is reunited with nature.

Yigal Ozeri’s masterful and revolutionary paintings pay homage to the great artists before him.  He enchants the viewer into a sublime opera scene—truth and beauty, tragedy and hope, authenticity and observation, poetry and narrative.  Yigal Ozeri is the Shakespeare of 21st century contemporary art. He forges a luminous visual symphony of the human spirit and historical, poetic language.