Welcome to Litsy!

Ch 39: René Magritte Listen to your subconscious. It‘s August and Mona has a birthday. She gets a puppy that Dadé refuses to bring on museum trips. So she will recount her visits to Cosmos like Marcel Broodthaers did with a cat ( lower left and middle). Surrealism is today‘s genre with RM‘s ‘The Red Model‘ ( upper left) the paining is classically painted with oils and technique but it‘s unsettling cont‘d

Ch 38 Georgia O‘Keeffe The world is one flesh. Summer holidays are here & Mona is missing her friends, she decides to write a journal including all she has learned with Dadé. They go to see Georgia O‘Keeffe‘s ‘ Red, Yellow and Black Steak‘ ( upper right) GK is an American artist who exemplifies the Bigger is Better ideal that the US is well known for because of its size and fountain drinks ?. GK‘s painting is of Lake George ( lower right) cont‘d

Ch 37 Kazimir Malevich Make yourself autonomous. Mona gets multiple eye tests done and passes all with flying colours. Her eye sight is exemplary. So Dadé takes them to see KM‘s ‘Black Cross‘ ( lower right) which is part of a new movement; Futurism. “..a movement that advocates constant change, the metamorphosis of everything, all the time, often with violence”. He wants to take painting back to elementary forms, pared down abstractions cont‘d

The idea of the book should have been perfect - each chapter was focused on a specific piece of art , but the execution wasn't so great. The story was boring and uncompelling, unemotional and with unbelievable characters.

Ch 36: Marcel Duchamp Stir everything Up. Paul causes a stir at the Sunday market with his prototypes of old dial phones converted to allow cell phones ( top left) & gets quite a few orders. Dadé and Mona head to Beaubourg walking by the Bazar de l‘Hôtel de Ville, BHV ( top right) which is where MD‘s ‘Bottle Rack‘ ( bottom right) originated from, he called it ‘ready-made‘. Later on MD would submit ‘Fountain‘ ( bottom left) to an exhibition cont‘d

Reading time after having cleaned a part of the house ;) Some French magazines for kids, and I'll go on with Mona's Eyes, which I really enjoy so far.
The weather here in San Antonio is very nice 🙂

This started off well, but ultimately didn't draw me in. I have a lot of questions about Mona's family. I realize I live in America, where rent is a nightmare and healthcare is impossible, so maybe I'm wrong to wonder, but how can they afford to live in Paris when Paul's shop is going under and Camille only works part time? Also, does Paul not have parents? Why is there zero mention of his family? #europacollective

Ch 35: Vassily ( Wassily) Kandinsky Find the spiritual in each thing. The school year is ending for Mona and so is elementary school too, a major milestone. A new museum for us, Centre Georges-Pompidou ( upper left photo) but called by most French “Beaubourg” the place, instead of the modern art loving French President. The art today, ‘Study for the cover of the Almanach Der Blue Reiter‘ is actually a journal cover for a group of artists cont‘d

Ch 34: Piet Mondrian Simplfy. Mona‘s last hypnosis session = the truth is out about her sight failing twice, Mona‘s last Wednesday at Musée d‘Orsay but art therapy will continue over summer vacation ? PM‘s ‘Haystacks III‘ c1908 (top right) what?! This can‘t be Mondrain! says everybody everywhere. And so we learn. ‘Mill of Heeswijk‘ c1904 is an early Mondrian when he was doing a Vermeer-ish realism style. Then he found Expressionism cont‘d

Ch 33: Vilhelm Hammershøi Make your inner self talk. Paul‘s tinkering = success and Mona is ashamed that her joy for him is tinged with worry about him backsliding into drinking ? Dadé and Mona walk thru‘ the Tuileries Garden ( bottom left) for ice cream on their way to Musée d‘Orsay. The sunlight thru‘ the trees has Dadé telling her about ‘phosphene‘ light spots on the retina & Brion Gysin‘s ‘Dreamachines‘ ( upper right) cont‘d

Ch 32: Gustav Klimt Let death wishes live. Mona is growing up, summer approaches and she worries about the time with her Dadé and art ending. They visit GK‘s ‘Rose Bushes Under the Trees‘ ( bottom left) which imo looks like magic painted onto a canvas which Dadé explains, with Mona‘s help, to be an explosion “an enthusiastic dynamism” this esthetic comes from Impressionism, mosaic based on tessellae ( bottom right) and decorative arts cont‘d

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Hi everyone! We hope you‘ve had time to read Mona‘s Eyes and are ready to discuss. We‘ve only tagged everyone once so scroll down to see all the discussion questions and feel free to ask your own. We hope you‘ll join the discussion even if you‘re only partially through the book. Stay tuned for info about the January read!

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Ch 31 Camille Claudel Love is a desire and desire is a lack of something. Mona is hypnotized again and is physically ill because of it ☹️ Mona & Dadé go to look at sculpture today, first they watch art students study Rodin‘s Thought ( top left) a portrait of Camille. ‘The Age of Maturity‘ ( top right) was a commissioned piece that CC used to show the fallout of her relationship with Rodin (bottom right) who returned to Rose, leaving CC cont‘d

Ch 30: Vincent Van Gogh Pin down your dizziness. Mona is quite melancholy about her grandmother, Collette, & how little information she knows about her. Mona & Dadé look at ‘The Church of Auvers‘ (top right) Van Gogh loves the church & people but he is over empathetic so this love leads to madness. His infamous ‘Starry Night‘ was painted while he was recovering in a mental hospital. My Lego set (bottom right) captures the movement in the night sky

I like how this goes through the art world journey, from early paintings to modern day but the things I loved about the novel were also the things that made it feel slightly monotonous, depending on my mood! Some days I was savouring the reflectiveness of it, the lessons, learning about art and artists. Other days not so much. It doesn‘t lack for plot or characterisation when I think about it but sometimes it FELT like it did when reading 🤷‍♀️

Ch 29 Edward Burne-Jones ( upper middle) Cherish melancholy. Mona teaches the class all about George Seurat and his painting and feels she is rubbish at it ☹️ she and Dadé look at ‘The Wheel of Fortune ( top left) and learn about the Pre-Raphaelites, a brotherhood of English painters “these artists sought to return to an ideal previous to Raphael” this is the Industrial Revolution era of Queen Victoria and immoral visions cont‘d

I'm over halfway through, but I'm losing momentum... Not sure I'll be done by Saturday. I'm still trying though! One critique I have that isn't about the story/writing is that there should be a list of the artworks somewhere inside the book in case it gets separated from its dust jacket. #europacollective

Ch 28: Paul Cézanne Come, fight, sign, and persist. Mona under goes hypnosis and is reliving being blind but keeps going back in time to being 18 mons and being with her grandmother. ‘Montagne Sainte-Victoire‘ was painted ‘on the spot‘ by Cézanne, he painted this sight over 90 times! Cézanne‘s style is more solid, he stacks paint like pieces on his canvas, than Monet, who dabs and dilutes his paint for an ethereal look. Cont‘d

Ch 27: Edgar Degas Life must be danced. Mona investigates her grandmother and finds a clue that is unsettling. Dadé and Mona look at The Star by Edgar Degas ( top right). I took ballet from age 5 to 16 and my studio had Degas prints hanging in it for inspiration like Dance Class ( top left I took at MOMA ) and The Star. The pose in The Star is ‘arabesque pencée‘ ( lower right) Dadé is comfortable talking about technique cont‘d

Ch 26: Claude Monet All flees, all fades. Saint-Lazare Station (top right) lower right is a photo of the station today. Hélène, the curator, takes Mona and Dadé behind the scenes of Orsay to see Monet‘s painting set up as it was painted ‘sur le motif‘ (on the spot) on a 3 legged easel. Impressionism was known for this method of painting, thanks to portable paint. Mona gets to see behind the painting for the first time cont‘d

Ch 25 : Édouard Manet Less is more. More hypnotherapy for Mona, she sees her grandmother. Then the father of Impressionism, Manet. The Absinthe Drinker ( left) caused a fallout with his teacher, Luncheon on the Grass ( right) is turned down by the Salon and shown at the Salon des refusés where the public tries to deface it. His Olympia ( bottom) is of a prostitute and further cements his reputation of painting obscenities. Cont‘d

On to the Beaubourg section. I love that Georgia O'Keeffe painting. #europacollective

Great news! Mona‘s eyes is shortlisted for the 2025 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year!!
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https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/2025-book-of-the-year-finalists/

Read for #europacollective —this was definitely not on my radar. I have mixed feelings about it because I found it to be long and repetitive, but that was part of the point. Mona, a young French girl, temporarily loses her sight. She spends time with her grandfather in the Louvre, instead of therapy appointments. They spend the whole book exploring works of art and finding meaning in their own lives. I must admit, I was rather bored off and on.

Ch 24: Julia Margaret Cameron Life flows into what is hazy. Mona and Dadé meet ‘friends‘ from the Louvre outside at Alfred Jacquemart‘s rhino stature ( centre) fun fact my city‘s museum has a rhino statue by Tom Benner outside too ? inside Dadé shows Mona JMC‘s photograph of Mrs Herbert Duckworth and launches into a long explanation of how photography worked then. Mona‘s takeaway; painting & photography were reversed then in effort, cont‘d

Hope everyone had time to read this book for #EuropaCollective! Just a reminder that we‘ll be discussing the book next Saturday, November 1st. We‘ll have lots of provocative questions to get things going and can‘t wait to hear all your thoughts. Special thanks to everyone who posted about this book during the month. Feel free to add your name or request to be dropped from the tagged list. See you Saturday!

Ch 23: James Whistler A mother is the holiest thing alive. Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 aka Portrait of the Artist‘s Mother. Who was 67 in the painting! Yikes, I‘m 61 and feel ancient all of a sudden. Whistler‘s signature is a butterfly because he underwent a metamorphosis after joining Chile to fight the Spanish colonists. He went from charming and whimsical to violent and vengeful.

Ch 22: Rosa Bonheur The animal is your equal. Plowing in the Nivernais. RB felt that animals had a beauty that equaled humans, giving them majesty in her painting. Similar to the bronze lion statue by Antoine-Louis Barye at the entrance of the Orsay. It is thought that George Sand‘s descriptions of animals in The Devil‘s Pool inspired RB‘s painting ( both the painter & the writer were unconventional women cont‘d

Ch 21: Henri Fantin-Latour The dead are among the living. Homage to Delacroix. A painting within a painting, about the artist Delacroix and the artists who were influenced by his scandalous ways. Delacroix was an instigator of Romanticism. 2 paintings of his-centre- The Death of Sardanapalus is in the Louvre and -right- Liberty Leading the People also in the Louvre mentioned in text as ones Dadé could have shown when they were there. cont‘d

Ch 20: Gustave Courbet. Shout loud and walk straight: the rallying cry for Realism. Mona and Dadé have gone to Orsay to switch things up. A Burial at Ornans. Mona notices that the painting is very dark and sad but there are amusing characters too, “the dramatic and the comic, is typical of all of Courbet‘s work”. “( this painting is) a veritable manifesto campaigning for anyone …. to have the right to be represented in paint” cont‘d

Ch 19: William Turner All is but dust. Landscape with a River and a Bay in the Background . Mona is ready to try hypnosis ( she is somewhat haunted by the phrase she overheard “50-50” spoken by the dr and the secret she keeps about her eyesight flashing out. Our last visit to the Louvre is to see Turner 💛💛💛💛 he wants us to experience nature, he loves yellow, his painting is incandescent and lighting us up. Cont‘d

Ch 18: Caspar David Friedrich Close your bodily eye. A Tree of Crows giving Gothic Romance vibes with a murder of crows in a dead oak tree by a the burial mound of a Hun warrior. The Huns came from an island off the coast of Germany called Rügen known for chalk cliffs like Dover. I feel like the Brontës and Poe fit well here. I also think Mona‘s bedazzlement of the headgehog is = to an art installation #europacollective

Ch 17: Francisco Goya Monsters are lurking everywhere. Hurting people hurt people. The girls have had enough of playground bullying & challenge the boys on the pitch. They win. Mona is gracious & consoles Guillaume. Off to look at Goya and a still life with Dadé “the canvas was modest in size …. appropriate for still lifes and the banality of their subject matter” Still Life‘s go at the bottom of art hierarchy says Dadé cont‘d

Ch 16:Marie-Guillemine Benoist Eliminate all segregation. Mona‘s eyesight is better than perfect but she doesn‘t tell the dr about the dots in her vision at her dad‘s shop. France abolished slavery in 1794 & Napoleon reinstated in ‘97 and it isn‘t fully abolished until 1905 😫 (Canada ended importing slaves in 1793 & slavery in 1833) So this painting hanging in the Salon in 1800 was groundbreaking, a woman of colour painted by a woman… cont‘d

Ch 15: Jacques-Louis David Use the ancient as your future. Mona wants to set up Vertunni displays in her father‘s store, almost loses her pendant and sees spots = a bit of a roller coaster ride. The artist, JLD, is putting the Rococo movement to bed with this massive royal commission that portrays male sacrifice in a polished and precise style. The completion of this painting kicks off the French Revolution. #europacollective cont‘d

I‘m really savouring this book. This chapter on Pierrot by Antoine Watteau just spoke to me 🤍 #europacollective

Ch 14: Marguerite Gérard There‘s no such thing as the weaker sex. Mona stands up to bullying and Dadé shows her a recent acquisition of an overlooked female painter, MG, who brings her A game! Sumptuous fabrics, furs, a painting within a painting, mirrored reflections of what happens out of the scene and a Vermeer inspired focus on women doing women‘s work aka whatever they want and doing it well #europacollective

Ch 13: Thomas Gainsborough Let feelings be expressed. Dadé debates sharing artists who overcame physical impairments with Mona but she controls the visit wanting to see lovers, who break the 4th wall inviting the viewer into their delight with each other. Who doesn‘t want to distract themselves with pretty things when the world is a shit show? #controlyourenvironment #controlthenarrative #europacollective

Chapter 12: Antonio Canaletto Make the world stand still. Painting that captures a moment frozen in time AND more than the human eye can see irl ❤️❤️❤️ humans become accessories not the main attraction ( can just imagine the tweets this would set off) and science evolves in art, the camera obscura Canaletto uses is portable going with him instead of subjects coming to him like Vermeer #europacollective I LOVE this book

Top two books are read alones; the rest are buddy reads.
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I wasn‘t that crazy about this book to begin with. Not much of a story, not that great on character development. But then I started to love this story about a 10 year old girl who might be going blind and her grandfather who takes her once a week to see one piece of art in a Paris museum. Each short chapter discusses a piece of art with grandpa describing its artist and history and Mona describing her feelings about it. ⬇️

Ch 11: Antoine Watteau There‘s a downside to every celebration. “..society kind of relaxed-a society that, strained and exhausted by the solar absolutism of the preceding reign, can suddenly breathe, feel free, have fun. And weep….” Is there hope for all that is wrong with the world now? I hope sooner than later 🥂#europacollective

Chapter 10: Philippe De Champaigne Always believe miracles are possible ( I don‘t know any more about PDC than Dadé tells us here but I do like this painting, I‘d like to see it irl life) Louis XIV and his absolutism giving current political landscape vibes, golden ballroom anyone? #europacollective we need a few miracles right now but at least Dolly Parton is alive and well

Chapter 9: Nicolas Poussin Let nothing make you tremble. Paul is liquidating his assets at rock bottom prices to keep himself in liquids ???? and Dadé states you can‘t have faith without doubt. NP paints perfectly without any disorder, the opposite of real life #europacollective

Chapter 8: Johannes Vermeer The infinitely small is infinitely big. JV painting astronomers ( and geographers) like the real people they are, just going about their work dispelling the ‘truths‘ the church was trying to sell that dismissed the work of scientists. Can we see any parallels in the modern world?! #europacollective

Chapter 7: know yourself with Rembrandt‘s self portrait with an easel. All of the characters in the story, thus far, are not being truthful about something, big and small lies are being told or truth is being withheld. Rembrandt lived and worked in Amsterdam where we saw one of his famous paintings, The Night Watch, in the Rijk‘s museum. Which is HUGE! #europacollective