YANG BENAR

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I Won't Pretend to Know Anything About Art

But this photo I took while walking over the bridge in the Public Gardens makes me think of Impressionism, the only movement I care for, and the paintings of the great Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet. For no other reason than the fact that Pissarro painted a lot of trees, and Monet always had water in his works, plus that Japanese bridge.

It's funny, but predictable when it comes to human behavior, that a group of painters with original, progressive styles were largely shunned by the art institutions and critics of French high society at the time for attempting to break from convention and opting to paint the ordinary, depicting life in the moment, and with intensity of color. Simply painting what they saw right in front of them made the Impressionists a revolutionary movement that would go on to influence artists such as Pablo Picasso and the rest of modern art.

I had to stop and appreciate the view on that cold afternoon, as such moments can be fleeting.