BUFFALO – Recently, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery opened a new exhibit of 40 gloriously beautiful paintings, mostly by French Impressionist painter Claude Monet.

Many of the paintings are from the gallery’s permanent collection, but masterpieces have been borrowed from six other galleries in other American cities such as Boston, Chicago, New York City, and elsewhere, in order to demonstrate, within the exhibit, the development of art from almost photograph-like images of Monet’s early career through 50 years of history, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to full abstraction, as demonstrated by works by Picasso, Kandinsky and other painters.

The exhibit will occupy four rooms in the gallery’s 1962 Building, through March 20, 2016. It has been given the title, ”Monet and the Impressionist Revolution, 1860-1910.” The exhibit was conceived by Albright-Knox Director, Janne Siren and was organized Holly E. Hughes, curator for the collection.

I recently drove to Buffalo for the press preview of the exhibit, which usually accompanies the opening of new shows at the giant gallery. This week, I’d like to tell you about the reception, then about Monet himself and finally, about the exhibit.

A RECEPTION

One of the greatest challenges of my job here at The Post-Journal is the natural inclination of people to believe that all the world is like the parts of the world which they see on a regular basis.

I have often quoted the line from a movie I once saw, ”All the Indians in South America walk in single file at least the one I saw, did.”

I don’t get to as many of the Albright-Knox’s receptions as I’d like to attend. Often I’m not free of responsibilities here in Chautauqua County. Also, the gallery tends to hold receptions at 10 a.m. To attend one of them, I need to leave home before 8 a.m. and drive in the rush hour traffic, in order to get there. If this happens to follow an evening on which I reviewed a play or a concert, it can make for very little sleep, and a great deal of traffic.

When I tell people locally that I attended a reception at the gallery, it is common to be asked, ”Were you the only one there?” or ”Was it just you and Colin Dabkowski, from the Buffalo News?” In fact, I estimate there were about two dozen journalists from across Western New York there, including cameras from two different Buffalo television stations.

The reception began with an introduction by Siren of the people on his staff who had assembled and displayed the exhibit, and a description of what was included in the display. He introduced an officer of M & T Bank, whom he thanked for ”vital support,” citing what he described as a ”decades-long” relationship between the bank and the gallery.

The bank officer expressed her employers’ belief that institutions such as the Albright-Knox Gallery uphold the city of Buffalo’s cultural profile. They make Buffalo a good place to live for the kind of creative and innovative employees whom the bank wishes to employ, and with whom they want to do business.

”It’s not unusual for top quality job candidates to be a bit reluctant about coming to an interview in Buffalo,” she said. ”But, if we can get them here, and can show them places such as the A-K Gallery, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the thriving theater scene, many of them quickly revise their mistaken impression of our city.”

Siren then returned to the podium to explain that his gallery had a budget of about $8 million per year, and that they must compete for purchasing artworks and obtaining available travelling exhibits, with galleries in other cities, who typically have twice or three times as large a budget.

The gallery is aided by many different individuals, businesses, and foundations, none of whom seem to think the gallery should reduce what it displays to pay light and heating bills.

He explained that one of the ways the gallery competes is in the creativity with which they display art, and the way they strive to make visitors to the gallery feel comfortable in entering the building. ”We don’t want people to feel that if they don’t have a long history of art classes, that they can’t enjoy or can’t learn from a visit here,” he said.

The director pointed out that he spent much of the past summer, writing a catalog of the exhibit, which will be available for purchase in the gallery’s store and on their website, beginning in February of 2016. He said it will be the first printed catalog which will deal with these particular paintings, from the gallery’s giant permanent collection.

When the formal remarks ended, the journalists were welcome to tour the paintings on display, to read the descriptions of each individual work, which were painted on the walls, near each described painting, and eventually to wander beyond the four rooms of the exhibit, to see what touring exhibits were on display at the moment, and which of their permanently owned paintings had been hung on the walls of one of their many galleries.

I noticed two different tour groups of young students whose ages were estimated at eight or nine years old. To my eyes, the children didn’t seem to be feeling tortured by the presence of the art. They didn’t seem to feel that it was their duty to misbehave, nor to do damage, nor to harass the teachers and the volunteer guides who were showing them around and telling them about the art.

In fact, I heard a number of the young visitors ask what I considered very intelligent questions. It occurred to me that if we want to make a trip to Cleveland, it might be wise to plan and schedule a trip to Cleveland. All too often, our education system plans the cultural equivalent of a trip to Erie, then hopes that the students will move on to Cleveland on their own, and criticizes both the students and their teachers if they don’t do so.

MONET

Claude Monet was born in France in the year 1840, and lived until December of 1926. He is considered the founder and the most frequent utilizer of the style of art which is called Impressionism.

Impressionists such as Monet believed that it wasn’t necessary to paint a scientifically exact image of his subjects. Perhaps early morning light creates an optical illusion, or wisps of fog obscure elements of a structure, for example. Monet began the Impressionists’ practice of painting image after image of the same subject, seeking to capture how the subject appears different at different times of the day, or different seasons of the year, or in different weather conditions.

His frequent subjects include images of the Cathedral of Rouen, for example, or of a Japanese bridge which he had constructed over a small canal in the yard of his home, in the small French village of Giverny. One of his favorite subjects was the growth of water lilies which he had planted on the water surface in his canals and streams.

In 1872, Monet created a painting of the port city of LeHavre in early morning light. He called his painting ”Impression: Sunrise.” Critics began using the term ”Impressionism” to refer to his style of painting, intending it as negative criticism, but Monet and his contemporaries liked the term and adopted it for themselves.

It was common in that era for people wishing to become trained as painters to go to art museums and try to paint copies of the works of great artists, learning the structure of the paintings by re-creating it. Monet would erect his easel next to a window, and try to paint whatever he happened to see from the window.

In the 19th Century, artists often banded together into a sort of trade union, called a salon. Upcoming artists usually were eager to have their paintings displayed in the official exhibits of the salons, especially the prestigious Salon de Paris.

The juries at these salons were supposed to select the best of the works which were submitted, but sometimes jury members were envious of the submitted works, or considered their own style of painting the only one which amounted to anything. Monet pressed for a salon which would display whatever works were submitted, and allow the visitor to decide for himself whether the paintings had merit or not.

From these jury-free salons have come many of the works by Monet and by other painters of his era, which are today valued at many millions of dollars, and are viewed as the greatest masterpieces of the era.

Monet married one of his most frequent models, Camille Doncieux, and they had two sons. In 1876, at age 32, his wife gave birth to their second son, while suffering from tuberculosis and having been diagnosed with cancer. She died soon after. Monet famously described that even when attending his wife’s funeral, he found himself observing the difference between light playing on her dead skin and on the living skin of those around her, and it made him angry with himself.

Eventually, he developed cataracts on both eyes. Paintings which he created during the period of limited eyesight display shades of red which were not naturally present in the scenes which he painted, which inspired eye doctors to understand better the effects of cataracts on vision. His and Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings have been among those studied by students of vision, creating lenses which, when they are used to observe the paintings, create a very different image than is seen with the naked eye.

Eventually, he underwent corrective surgery on his eyes, after which he seems to have been able to see images in the ultraviolet range of light, which are not visible to the normal eye.

Monet died at the age of 86. He had lived in France all of his life, except for a short period of time during the Franco Prussian War, when German troops overran northern France, and he and his family fled to the safety of England. During that period, he painted a number of examinations of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.

Although I’ve always believed that people who value art, based on what can be charged for it, seem to have a cash register for a soul, the sale of his paintings have been one way by which his gift can be appreciated. In 2013, one of his paintings of the water lilies on his property was sold for a bit less than $72 million. With fees to the auction house and other expenses, the buyer paid out more than $80 million. Apparently the fact that Monet was a European didn’t cause them to ask for a discount on their purchase price.

Monet’s gift for seeing more than physical qualities in the scenes and people he painted led later painters to experiment more and more with putting interpretations of their own into the image which they created and not just attempt to copy what the scene or person would have looked like. This separation from the measurable qualities of the subject gradually developed, over a period of 50 years, to the vision of painters such as Picasso and Kandinsky, and the school of abstractionism.

THE EXHIBIT

To see the Monet exhibit at the Albright-Knox Gallery, enter at the main entrance of the gallery, on Elmwood Ave., and turn right. You will almost immediately come first to a smaller room on your left, which houses the seven borrowed paintings, which have come from six different museums. Start on your left and walk clockwise around the room. The seven images have been chosen so that you can compare how he was painting in his 30s, and how he had changed by his 60s, for example. There is also a borrowed work by Manet, by whom the A-K owns very little.

Don’t hesitate to go back to one of the earlier paintings, if you want to see if he had used the same technique back when it was on his easel, or if this is a new quality to his work. When you’ve seen all the paintings in the room, go back out the door by which you entered, and turn left into the largest of the rooms, number two.

The only Monet painting, and the many sketches and partial images which the A-K Gallery owns are in that room, along with other impressionist works of art by Monet’s circle of friends, including Degas, and even a life-sized statue of Eve, by Pierre-Auguste Rodin, who created the famed ”Thinker,” and many other full statues of human subjects. Many of the paintings in this room are studies, which the artist created to actually see on paper, or canvas, what part of a larger painting would look like, before he incorporated that partial image into a larger painting.

At $80 million per pop, the number of full originals which the gallery owns is necessarily limited.

When you have gone completely around the second room, go to the opposite end of the room from where you entered and turn left through the archway at that end.

The third room is hung with work by painters who came just later than the Impressionists. These painters are called Post Impressionists, and their schools of painting include Synthetism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism and more. When you’ve evaluated the works in the third room, move to the remaining room, which would have been on your left when you entered the third room.

In the fourth room are original works by Picasso, Kandinsky, and other full abstract painters, and probably you will have some understanding of the progression of styles, from Monet to the abstractionists. No one will slap your wrist, if you decide to go back to see an earlier version of something.

When you finish with the Monet exhibit, you could leave, and sometimes it’s good to just enjoy one aspect of art, rather than condemn yourself to a death march which leaves you tired and confused. But, there are dozens upon dozens of other exhibits all through the various inter-connected buildings of the gallery. Once you’ve paid to enter the building, you’re free to see any or all of them.

If you take them all in, and you’re still not ”arted out,” you can cross Elmwood Ave., which is directly in front of the building, and there you’ll find the Burchfield-Penney Gallery, which displays many rooms full of art. The art at that gallery is mostly American and rather recent, but their curators sometimes get an inspiration to show something different.

The Albright-Knox Gallery is located at 1285 Elmwood Ave., in Buffalo. Phone if you have questions, to 882-8700. You can visit their website at albrightknox.org.

The gallery is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., except major holidays. On the first Friday of each month, the closing time is extended until 10 p.m.

The admission charge to the gallery is $12 for the general public, $8 for senior citizens and students, and $5 for those between the ages of 6 and 12. There is a slight additional charge to view the Monet exhibit.

Both galleries also have a large gift and book shop, where you can buy everything from art books to art-inspired clothing and jewelry, to stationery and more. If you want to give a Christmas gift which isn’t a duplicate of what someone else has given your friend or relative, it’s a great place to shop.

Once in a while, it’s wonderful to spend some time in communion with the great minds which produced our culture. Here’s one way to do it.

WINKS

Today, at 12:30 p.m., the 1891 Fredonia Opera House will show a live telecast of the Metropolitan Opera House’s production of Alben Berg’s opera, ”Lulu.” Hear every note in high definition and see, not only the performances, but also interviews with singers, conductor, director, and others, during intermissions and sometimes before or after the performance.

Tickets are $20 for the general public, with discounts available for senior citizens and students. They may be purchased at the door.