Wordfest and Glenbow present Ross King – $20

[gdlr_button href="https://shop.artscommons.ca/single/selectSeating.aspx?p=11136&id=ACA7D46A-EC4C-4BF6-B820-72AD23B54C79" target="_self" size="medium" background="#f2674a" color="#ffffff" border_color="#999999"]Buy Tickets[/gdlr_button] Claude Monet is perhaps the world’s most beloved artist, and among all his creations, the paintings of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny are the most famous. Seeing them in museums around the world, viewers are transported by the power of Monet’s brush into a peaceful world of harmonious nature. Monet himself intended them to provide “an asylum of peaceful meditation.” Bestselling author Ross King presents his latest book, Mad Enchantment, offering a fascinating and revealing portrait of this iconic figure. This event includes an on-stage interview, audience Q&A and autographing after the event. Presented in partnership with the Glenbow Museum and hosted by Donna Livingstone. Mad Enchantment tells the full story behind the creation of the Water Lilies. The history of these remarkable canvases begins in early 1914, when French newspapers began reporting that Monet, by then 73 and one of the world’s wealthiest, most celebrated painters, had retired his brushes. He had lost his beloved wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean. His famously acute vision—what Paul Cezanne called “the most prodigious eye in the history of painting”—was threatened by cataracts. The legacy of Impressionism was also under threat. A new group of artists, the Cubists, were capturing the public eye, threatening to eclipse the work of the Impressionists. Monet was seized by terrible anxiety and depression. And yet, despite ill health, self-doubt, and advancing age, Monet began painting again, this time on a more ambitious scale than ever before. His most intense effort began as World War I approached and the horrors of the war came ever closer to Paris and Giverny—where Monet vowed to stay despite the German invasion. Ross King is the bestselling author of Brunelleschi's Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, The Judgment of Paris, Leonardo and the Last Supper, and Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power, along with two novels, Ex Libris and Domino. He has twice won Canada’s Governor General’s Award, and his work has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Charles Taylor Prize, and the National Award for Arts Writing. He has lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian, the Aspen Institute, and the Frick Collection, and in Florence, Milan, Paris, and Giverny. Born in Saskatchewan, he was educated at University of Regina and York University before moving to UK for post doc study at University College, London. He now lives near Oxford with his wife, Melanie. Monday, October 24, 2016, 7pm Glenbow Museum Theatre, 130 9th Ave SE $20 Regular / $17 Students and Seniors [gdlr_button href="https://shop.artscommons.ca/single/selectSeating.aspx?p=11136&id=ACA7D46A-EC4C-4BF6-B820-72AD23B54C79" target="_self" size="medium" background="#f2674a" color="#ffffff" border_color="#999999"]Buy Tickets[/gdlr_button] [gdlr_space height="20px"] [gdlr_divider type="solid" size="100%" ]