s", for the land is reduced to a rim or is entirely absent. (289) The horizon has disappeared and if there is sky below the land, inverting the normal relationship, often the water fills the whole in the foreground. Monet's occasional use of circular canvases, in this series, serves further to distort the perceptions of the spectator. The pictures are oddly disorienting in their refusal to provide the usual firm viewpoint of the Western painting. (Rachman, 289) However, there are some critics who look deeper into these paintings, past the artistic devices used, in search of a greater meaning. Paul Hayes Tucker is one such critic who finds the subject matter to be Monet's way of relating nature to human. (190) "By focusing almost exclusively on his gardens for the last two decades of his life, Monet was not emptying his art of significance, just the opposite. Monet asserts the primacy of an individual vision and everyone's ability to find meaning in the fundamental relation of the human to the natural. Through his works he insists that once people come to know themselves better, they could recognize their place in the larger whole." (Tucker, 190) These ideas are evident in the extended group of paintings that Monet produced of his gardens in the series Water Lilies. (Tucker, 190)In Tucker's view what is most important in the Water Lily series, however, is the endless array of relationships that Monet has presented for the viewer to discover. (193) The interaction between the various clusters of water lilies, for example, or between the horizontal distribution and the reflections around them which are predominately vertical. Equally engaging are the reflections of the foliage in relation to the water's evident depth. Even the undergrowth along the edges of the pond play a role as they rise up to greet the bridge on either side, often twisting to imitate the arched form. It is these kinds of relationships that abound in the pictu...
