“The Impressionists Were No Different from Street Artists Spray-Painting Graffiti on a Wall”: An Interview with Alex Face

It’s been 150 years since Impressionism transformed our world and how we perceive it. On April 15, 1874, a collective of upstarts including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot and Paul Cézanne converged on the Paris studio of photographer Félix Nadar for a group show that art critic Louis Leroy sardonically dubbed “The Exhibition of the Impressionists” — a jab at Monet’s “Impression: soleil levant,” the painter’s dreamlike depiction of the port city of Le Havre.