It is as if the art was improvised, much like Monet's portrait of flowers gives the impression that the artist simply happened upon a cluster of flowers one day, and was moved to paint by the beauty he saw before him.

Of course, it must be argued that neither composition, although they create such an extemporaneous impression, was truly spontaneous. Both works were carefully and consciously planned by the artist and composer respectively, they did not simply bubble forth from Monet or Debussy's emotions. But the fact that the artists strove to create this impression is telling, and suggests a willingness to let pure emotion enter the realm of art in a way that it was not allowed to before, when standards of painting were rigorously governed by the French Academy, and when all musical compositions had to have a conventional structure.

Ironically, in creating such spontaneity, Monet and Debussy...
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