![WINTER SUN](https://cdn.magzter.com/1422886351/1703478067/articles/4JjxJJQLC1703496965303/WINTER-SUN.jpg)
It’s one of the stranger anomalies of French intellectual life that Impressionist painting—by far the most influential of French cultural enterprises— has received so little attention from the most ambitious French critics and philosophers. One can page through André Gide’s journal entries, a lot of them on art, or through Albert Camus’s, and find very little on Claude Monet or Edgar Degas (and much more on the Symbolists, a group that was far easier for a literary man to “get”). Marcel Proust cared passionately for painting, and his heropainter Elstir has touches of Monet, but in order to make him interesting Proust had to model him on the more histrionic James McNeill Whistler, with samplings from a forgotten American painter added in.
The absence isn’t that hard to explain. Impressionism, though profound, isn’t philosophical. Symbolism and Surrealism have an agreeably articulate aesthetic, a body of poems, a point of view. Impressionism is mostly silent. Its implicit credo is empirical and material: there is a stubborn physicality to it— bodies and babies and wheat fields and boulevards. It does not make an argument, except in the way art does, by being art. And yet museums provide the one test that matters most, the test of the crowded room, and the most crowded remain the Impressionists’, marking, as Cyril Connolly once suggested, one of the last instances of a valid myth in Western art: the Impressionist myth of bourgeois pleasure.
This story is from the January 01 - 08, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the January 01 - 08, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
![ANTIHERO](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/iZ_mJrjwf1719836837212/ANTIHERO.jpg)
ANTIHERO
“The Boys,” on Prime Video.
![HOW THE WEST WAS LONG](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/Vh1HXqPe-1719836720878/HOW-THE-WEST-WAS-LONG.jpg)
HOW THE WEST WAS LONG
“Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1.”
![WHEEL OF FORTUNE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/Tj0upTIEh1719836581848/WHEEL-OF-FORTUNE.jpg)
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Taffy Brodesser-Akner weighs the cost of generational wealth.
![TWICE-TOLD TALES](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/FSnHEVQ2G1719836202950/TWICETOLD-TALES.jpg)
TWICE-TOLD TALES
The seditious writers who unravel their own stories.
![CASTING A LINE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/zYjGjav-D1719835755852/CASTING-A-LINE.jpg)
CASTING A LINE
The hard-bitten genius of Norman Maclean.
![TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/F4QZ49jIU1719835464335/TEARDROPS-ON-MY-GUITAR.jpg)
TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR
Four years ago, when Ivan Cornejo was a junior in high school, he had a meeting with his family to announce that he was dropping out. His parents were alarmed, of course, but his older sister, Pamela, had a more sympathetic reaction, because she also happened to be his manager, and she knew that he wasn’t bluffing when he said that he had to focus on his career.
![THE HADAL ZONE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/KiyGvpfRQ1719834860480/THE-HADAL-ZONE.jpg)
THE HADAL ZONE
Arwen Rasmont waits hours at Keflavík International for his flight; they call it as he leaves the men’s room. He walks past the mirrored wall and is assaulted, as usual, by his dead father’s handsome image: high-arched nose, yellow hair.
![OPENING THEORY](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/9TQXbGoRi1719833635129/OPENING-THEORY.jpg)
OPENING THEORY
Ivan is standing on his own in the corner while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around.
![THE LAST RAVE](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/nxcRM0EjJ1719831949168/THE-LAST-RAVE.jpg)
THE LAST RAVE
Remembering a summer of estrangement.
![КАНО](https://reseuro.magzter.com/100x125/articles/8859/1751212/ImfnMwa-x1719830891222/.jpg)
КАНО
I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life,” the man said, “but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”