On Thursday, October 18, curators of the travelling Monet: Gardens of Giverny exhibit, featuring the artist’s oil paintings from his home in France, noticed that at least two pieces were missing – or, rather, replaced. Garden at Giverny (1901-1902) and The Japanese Bridge at Giverny (1896-1898) have both been reported missing, after both frames were found to have been either changed or vandalized in the so-called “realist” style. Both in their original frames, the paintings now feature what appear to be tourists walking through the gardens, or, in the case of the reworked Garden at Giverny, Segway-ing. A note was found near the works on the floor of the storage room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where the exhibit was housed, claiming in cut-out letters “THESE MAY OR MAY NOT BE THE REAL MONETS. THEY ARE, HOWEVER, THE REALIST MONETS, FOLLOWING OUR MOVEMENT WHICH SEEKS TO RECTIFY EGREGIOUS OVERSIGHTS IN MAJOR WORKS.”
Indeed, when one looks at the gardens at Giverny, there does appear to be a sizable population of tourists that Claude Monet’s works do not feature. The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s director, Pablo Nikolova III, was not alarmed by the potential vandalism, however. “It’s avant-garde, it’s modern. It’s just what we need! People get bored of just looking at brushstrokes of things they can’t comprehend anymore. Now, however, we have something exciting for people to identify with. Tourists won’t come to see flowers, but they will definitely come to see themselves.”
The city of Philadelphia plans to purchase these two, which the exhibit’s travelling curator called “completely and utterly distasteful,” from the exhibit for the price of $20 apiece. “It’s like modern art. Actually, it is modern art – art, made modern. It’s sheer genius.” Nikolova went on to explain how “[he is] in the second year of my ten-year contract with the Museum. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so bold two years ago, but now I can do anything and who’s going to stop me? This is off the record, by the way.” Choosing to put it on the record, The Banner has signed on to exclusively promote the exhibit in the Philadelphia suburbs, on display beginning November 1. “I don’t know when we’ll take it down,” said Nikolova. “It’s so unique, and it would also cost more to move them around than the paintings themselves cost, anyways.”
Copycat artists have attempted to follow up on the Monet-replacement case, potentially inspired by the restoration of the religious Ecce Homo in Santuario de la Misericordia, Spain, earlier this year. A fan site, wewantmorerealerart.tumblr.com, claims that the mural of Jesus Christ’s repainting, affectionately referred to by the New York Times as “probably the worst art restoration project of all time,” is an inspiration to the “realist” movement. ‘It’s Not Realism, It’s Realistism!’ shouts the site’s tagline, scrolling across the top of the home page in, inexplicably, Comic Sans MS. The site features imitation art like a version of Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait in Front of the Easel (1888) including a sobbing subject clasping his bleeding ear in one hand and dialing 911 with the other, among other favorites.