On Friday morning, AFMO members arrived at Musée de l’Orangerie for an exclusive tour of the newest exhibition “Out of Focus”, led by its head researcher Juliette Degennes.

While Monet’s Water Lilies have long been regarded as a prime example of abstract painting, the artist‘s use of blurring in these aquatic scenes has not been fully explored. Whereas Monet’s contemporaries attributed the blurred aesthetic to the artist‘s visual impairment, many today consider it a deliberate artistic choice. The Musee de l’Orangerie‘s spring exhibition, Out of Focus, another vision of art from 1945 to the present day, focuses on blurring as a key to understanding not just Monet’s work, but a broader shift in modern and contemporary art.