사진 확대 Pierre Auguste Renoir “the lady in the garden wearing sheep products”
I, a novice gardener who keeps a small flower bed at home but still often fails, went on a trip to Hokkaido or 街. It was a blessed time for a person who mainly went to art galleries to enjoy nature full of flowers and trees. After traveling, I looked it up, and recently, “Green Tourism,” which relaxes in green spaces, communicates with local residents, and consumes local specialties, is emerging as a new form of travel. I envied the establishment of Hokkaido Garden Road as a tourism program to expand the image of Hokkaido, known only as Snow Country, by combining gardens created in rural areas into a single journey.
Just as we had a “借景” tradition of renting a view, the culture of enjoying nature close to each other has been around in the West for a long time, and in the modern era, individual garden activities have become active and have become an important part of many people’s daily lives, including artists. Monet’s Giverny Garden is so famous, and Cayubot was also well versed in gardening, so he used to brag to Monet about the rare plants he grew himself. At the end of the 19th century, artists were inspired by the theory of ‘wild gardens’ that began in England, trimming flowers and grass that grew freely without being bound by form. Klimt and Matisse of the 20th century also set up their own gardens, and Kandinsky was an avid farmer who carefully recorded the lettuce and strawberries of the garden.
The first work that came to mind when my friend said, “It’s as pretty as a picture” after looking at the commemorative photo from the trip was Renoir’s “Woman in the Garden wearing a mountain.” It is a pretty painting in which Renoir expressed the flowers and bushes of the field with rough brush strokes and placed the two figures faintly in it during the period of experimenting with impressionist techniques.
In a flower field where the horizon is not revealed, it is difficult to measure its scale, the woman is standing wearing a lace mass production as if she is trying to avoid the strong sunlight. Another figure appears to be a gardener who bends down and trims the grass, perhaps the moment he tries to pick the flowers and hand them to the woman. Looking like a beautiful wilderness in the wild at first glance, this was actually Renoir’s new studio backyard in Montmartre. It is said that he was fascinated by the lush grass outside the window and decided to use it as his studio.
Watching this work for a long time, it felt somewhat anachronistic that he drew such a leisurely scene in a turbulent period of the Industrial Revolution. There was a time when I thought I was forced to choose such a scene to use impressionist techniques. However, although the costumes were different. – I also could understand this scene only after walking for a long time in a flower field wearing a parasol to hide the scorching sun. The woman in the work was not doing nothing, but quietly facing the world and herself in nature. Even if it is incomparable to now, the end of the 19th century would have been a period of enormous transformation at the time, and the moment you catch your breath for a moment and gain the strength to move back in a fast-changing world, that was the meaning of standing in the garden.
The garden is not just a place to appreciate flowers, but a place to pause daily life and face nature and yourself. For us, who mainly live in the city, the small garden in the city center can mean more in that it not only provides such healing and relaxation, but also considers a sustainable way of life. Small parks in the city center also play a practical role in contributing to carbon reduction and environmental restoration while giving citizens psychological recovery. Even small pots of apartments and green plants on the veranda are insignificant, but I hope you appreciate them as the first step in individual efforts to alleviate the heat island phenomenon in the city, reduce fine dust, and contribute to energy conservation.
The act of growing plants itself can be a time to take care of me for individuals, and an investment to increase sustainability in society as a whole. Another lesson this trip has taught me is that the garden is not necessarily a special destination far away. I would like to share the belief that the world can be different from the small practice of growing a flower bouquet in a vase and a flowerpot in our daily lives.
사진 확대
[Lee Jihyun, Director of OCI Art Museum (Art History)]
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