Move over, Monet-maniacs

On 30 January 1999, not long after the Royal Academy had mounted its second Monet exhibition, The Spectator published my first exhibition review. It was about a renewal of Cubism in the sculpture of Ivor Abrahams and began as follows: ‘The end of a century, like a wedding, notoriously calls for something new. A millennium apparently calls for New Impressionism, although in a recent speech at the Royal Academy Gordon Brown made a special point of not claiming Monet for New Labour, despite his admiration for the great man’s credentials, such as his stance on the Dreyfus case.’

We had yet to experience Monet 3 and various subsequent shows, at the RA and the National Gallery, for example, in which the magic turnstile word Impressionism featured, but my glancing reference to Monet 2 provoked a response from Frank Johnson, The Spectator’s editor. The queues of apparent Monet-maniacs forming like sheep outside Burlington House had puzzled and irritated him a little.