Title Image: Water Lilies, 1917/19, Honolulu Museum of Art.

You may have realised, if you’ve followed this blog for a while, or my Instagram account, that there are a couple of things that I really love and, not to put too fine a point on it, won’t shut up about. One is Jane Austen, another are the artists Titian and Manet. I am not quiet about my love for the city of Paris, or shoes that remind me of different historical costumes, or reading.

Another thing that crops up all the time is my complete and utter adoration for Monet’s water lily paintings.

I am OBSESSED. I first learned about them as an undergraduate studying French art in the nineteenth century, and have ever since been on the look out for them in every museum and art gallery I visit (luckily for me, there are a lot of them).

Best of all was when I was able to visit the Musée de l’Orangerie, and be completely surrounded by the dramatic brushstrokes and colours and almost feel like I was in Monet’s garden at Giverny with him. (It’s on my bucket list to visit!)

There’s something very immersive about Monet’s water lily paintings – I think it’s the angles, the colours and the textures. Obviously I do not condone touching art (or any object!) in museums, but Monet’s paintings, with their thickly laid oil paints and sweeping, sketchy strokes, always make me wonder what it would be like to be able to feel the surface.

Without sounding pretentious, I sometimes find looking at these works of art like an experience in themselves… so when we saw that there was an immersive Monet experience, specialising in his infamous garden and the masterpieces that came out of the inspiration it gave him, I was ridiculously excited.

I think this new – trend? I’m hesitant to call it a trend, as I hope it becomes part of how people experience art – move for immersive experiences of different art movements and artists is pretty brilliant.

It allows for accessibility to art, a new way of looking at it and understanding the process behind it. More than anything, it is a fun way to engage with the works we see on walls of museums.

I loved going to see the immersive Van Gogh experience in Atlanta last year, and I’ve seen adverts for a Renaissance Masters Experience, and one of the art of the Sistine Chapel (dreamy!). I definitely think some art would work better than others for this kind of format, but it’s an intriguing and exciting one.

Monet’s water lilies experienced in this way were pretty magical.

The first section of the exhibition was interactive: spots to stand in which you could put yourself in paintings like one from his Haystacks series, or Woman with a Parasol (1875). You could walk under flowered archways to look at digitised versions of various water lily paintings, and even have your picture taken on a mock-version of the Japanese bridge in his Giverny garden.

You could explore the life of Monet and what aspects of his painting evolved into Impressionism and his fascination with painting water lilies, as well as an exploration of his deteriorating eyesight and the effect that had on him.

I liked that these exhibition rooms, which ran in a timeline format, were alongside the different interactive parts of the show. A lot of these interactive parts focussed as well on light and colour, and the fleeting nature of much of what Monet chose to paint, which I think really hammered home some of what was at the crux of Monet’s art.

Particularly fun was being able to move around in front of a huge screen of colourful water lilies and watch the colours swirl around in response to the movement – you don’t normally get to do that in an art gallery!

Then, of course, the pièce de résistance was the presentation at the end, a forty-five minute film which literally surrounded you with the world of Monet’s water lilies and his garden at Giverny. You can take a perch anywhere in the room, and even sit or lie on the floor if you like, and watch the huge screens around you tell you the story of these paintings. The animation and design of this is very beautiful: incorporating photographs (I love seeing the photographs of Monet!), paintings and sweeping bits in which various water lilies faded into each other.

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Particularly poignant was, in the discussion of Monet’s failing eyesight and his cataract operation, the mimicking of Monet opening his eyes for the first time after his sight had improved and seeing the paintings he had created whilst struggling so much with seeing the paint colours on the canvas. He was not happy, though personally, I think they were beautiful.

I could have sat and watched the film on repeat, I enjoyed it so much. It is very different to seeing the real paintings in their gallery spaces, and thinking about the way they were originally displayed when they were first painted. But, in a different way, a show like this makes them come to life in a vibrant way that made me look at the paintings with fresh eyes. I like both the gallery and the immersive experience: and hope to be able to see something like this again.

Find more information on the exhibition in the US here.