In the Eye of the Beholder

I heard yesterday that my favourite painting, Monet’s Water Lily Pond, was sold at auction for £41 million, which I think works out at around $80 million at the current exchange rate. Perhaps art really is recession-proof! There were certainly 11 people bidding who felt so…

Noteworthy from my perspective is the fact that Monet painted this work in 1919 when his sight was seriously impaired by cataracts. When he had them removed in 1921 and looked at the work again, he didn’t like it.

I am certainly grateful, as a fan of this soft-focussed piece of art, that he didn’t destroy it. Is it possible to say that Claude Monet’s Impressionism was a consequence of his visual disabilities? Am I, what I do, how I react, a consequence of my multiple disabilities too? That is a great philosophical conundrum, and I’d love to know what the answer is. It is more than likely that my life would have been different if I didn’t have a disability, but whether for good or ill, who can tell – maybe I’ll give it more thought and come back to it another time.