THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMPRESSIONISM. Grovier says that Mondrian was interested in “universal laws that are in eternal opposition to the mutability of the world around us”. Mondrian’s philosophy of art is directly opposed to Alain de Botton’s characterization of the philosophy of the Impressionists.
I have read a number of books by de Botton and the search feature of this blog turns up a dozen posts which cite him. His new project is The School of Life, which sponsors a blog, The Philosopher’s Mail. That blog had a post (written in De Botton’s style) which discusses possible explanations for “How we end up marrying the wrong people”. Point Seven (“We want to freeze happiness”) discusses an Impressionist painting by Sisley and observes:
“Impressionism is interested in the fact that the things we love most change, are only around a very short time and then disappear. It celebrates the sort of happiness that lasts a few minutes, rather than years. In this painting, the snow looks lovely; but it will melt. The sky is beautiful at this moment, but it is about to go dark.”