It’s nice to appreciate paintings and other forms of art as they are, displayed in a museum on their own. However, learning an anecdote behind its creation, or the context of the time they were created adds another layer to our appreciation and understanding of them. Take, for example, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series. While these paintings look quiet, beautiful, and serene– Monet’s efforts to actually paint them made him curse out an entire town. The inspiration and source of his paintings were his gardens in Giverny. But, locals objected to the creation of those gardens, worrying about the environmental impact of introducing non-native plant species to the area, because the artist wanted an Asian-influenced water garden.
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