More than 4 trillion pixels.
More than 50,000 square feet.
More than 1 million cubic feet of space.
Thousands of water lilies.
That’s right, after months of anticipation, “Beyond Monet” arrives at the Wisconsin Center this week, opening Thursday, Oct. 20.
Tickets are on sale now at monetmilwaukee.com, and, on average, range from $30 to $50.
Like its predecessor, “Beyond Van Gogh,” the "Beyond Monet" experience was created by Mathieu St-Arnaud and Félix Fradet-Faguy and the team at Normal Studio, with a score by Jean-Sébastien Coté.
More than 1.5 million tickets have already been sold to the show in other cities.
If you were one of the many who saw the Van Gogh show – which was extended twice, ultimately running for six months and drawing more than 200,000 visitors, resulting in the highest grossing event in the venue’s history – then you know what to expect.
But where you saw sunflowers, you’ll get water lilies, and where you saw Arles, you will spy Giverny, where influential Impressionist Claude Monet lived and worked for decades. Where you saw haystacks, you'll see ... well, more haystacks.
More than 400 works by Monet provide the inspiration and fodder for this 360-degree experience of swirling, parading, fading and blending images, all set to music.
Again, like “Beyond Van Gogh,” this show – which it bears reminding does NOT include original paintings or artworks – begins in an initial gallery, here called “The Garden,” where a series of panels contain biographical information and explanations of the major elements and themes in Monet’s oeuvre.
To get there you pass through a transparent wall of picture frames.
This section has a couple Giverny-style bridges, faux ponds and panels in English and Spanish explaining Monet's life and work.
Then, after passing though the glitzy "Prism" transitional space, you enter the main experience area – called, appropriately, the “Infinity Room” – where every vertical surface (and the floor) becomes a canvas for some of the world’s most recognizable paintings.
These spaces were inspired by the floor plan at the 1852 Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, which after serving as a greenhouse for citrus trees (hence the name), was renamed the Musee Claude Monet when it opened shortly after the artist’s death in 1927.
Five years earlier, Monet donated his monumental 91-meter-long, eight-panel “Water Lillies (Nymphéas)” to the institution. You can still see them there today.
In addition to a series of quotes by and about Monet, you'll see images of Venice and London and the Netherlands, plus flowers galore, including the water lillies.
For the only time at one of these immersive exhibits – I've experienced three – I had a disconcerting and oddly exhilarating sense of disequalibrium from the movement of the images.
If this happens to you, the Infinity Room has a central gazebo and some seating units scattered around the space.
If the images feel like dynamic, less visually explosive than at "Beyond Van Gogh," that's surely down to the differences in the artists' works. Where Van Gogh was bright, Monet was subdued. Where Van Gogh's work was vibrant, hard-edged and explosive, Monet's was subtle and soft.
Tickets for the show are timed and organizers say it takes about an hour to experience the entire show – which also has an Insta-ready selfie station and gift shop.
Unlike “Beyond Van Gogh,” however, “Beyond Monet,” we’re told, will not be extended beyond its Jan. 8 closing date, due not only to construction on the Wisconsin Center expansion project but because the venue is booked solid.
Here's more of what we saw...
Entry
The Garden
The Prism
Quotes
Mission Control, behind the scenes
Selfies
Shop
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
