France comes to Florida with this Monet-inspired pop-art garden exhibition

A new exhibition at a botanical garden in Florida focuses on Claude Monet’s paintings of his garden and surroundings at Giverny - with a pop art spin. Roy Lichtenstein: Monet’s Garden Goes Pop! is currently on view at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens’ in downtown Sarasota.

The 15-acre campus has been transformed into large-scale artworks of Monet’s garden, as imagined through the aesthetic of legendary pop artist Lichtenstein, who died in 1997. The American pop artist became a leading figure in the new art movement in the 1960s.

Familiar components of Monet’s garden at Giverny appear at Selby Gardens. The iconic Japanese Bridge spans the koi pond, but it is designed to look as if Lichtenstein painted it. These intersections between Impressionism and pop art are designed to engage visitors as they move through the gardens en route to the Museum of Botany & the Arts.

There viewers can admire Lichtenstein’s Water Lilies with Reflections series, a limited edition of large-screen prints created in the latter years of his career that reinterprets the extreme painterly sensibilities of Monet’s famous Water Lilies.

"We’re basically saying that if Lichtenstein had created Monet’s garden, this might be what he would have dreamed up,” says Jennifer Rominiecki, president and CEO of Selby Gardens. “By giving our gardens the Monet treatment with an innovative and playful pop art twist, our guests will be able to explore Lichtenstein’s interpretation of Monet in a variety of ways.”

The exhibition is the latest instalment in Selby Gardens’ immersive Jean & Alfred Goldstein exhibition series, which explores the connection of nature and flowers to major artists. Roy Lichtenstein: Monet’s Garden Goes Pop! can be viewed until 27 June, and further information is available from the website here.

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