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TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)Seurat
Rejecting the formlessness of Impressionism, George Seurat
(1859–1891) introduced formal pictorial construction.
Trained academically, Seurat brought a degree of balance
and order to his compositions that rivaled the works of
Poussin and David. The figures in a Seurat painting seem
plotted along an invisible grid of vertical and horizontal
lines that run parallel to the picture plane. Every form
assumes a preordained place. A similar fervor for order may
have inspired Seurat’s novel use of tiny dots of paint (in
French, points). These he applied side by side (and some-
times one inside another) to build up dense clusters that
intensified color and gave the impression of solid form—a
style known as pointillism. He arrived at the technique of
dividing color into component parts after studying the
writings of Chevreul and other pioneers in color theory,
such as the American physicist Ogden N. Rood
(1831–1902), whose Modern Chromatics, with Applications
to Art and Industry (translated into French in 1880) showed
that optical mixtures of color were more intense than pre-
mixed colors. Leaving nothing to chance (Gauguin called
him “the little green chemist”), Seurat applied each colored
dot so that its juxtaposition with the next would produce
the desired degree of vibration to the eye of the beholder.Although Seurat shared the impressionists’ fascination with
light and color, he shunned spontaneity, for while he made
his sketches out-of-doors, he executed his paintings inside
his studio, usually at night and under artificial light.
Seurat’s monumental Sunday Afternoon on the Island of
La Grande Jatteshows a holiday crowd of Parisians relaxing
on a sunlit island in the River Seine (Figure 31.31).
Although typically impressionistic in its subject matter—
urban society at leisure—the painting (based on no less
than twenty drawings and 200 oil studies) harbors little of
the impressionist’s love for intimacy and fleeting sensation.
Every figure is isolated from the next as if it were frozen in
space and unaware of another’s existence. Seurat claimed
that he wished to invest his subjects with the gravity of the
figures in a Greek frieze. Nevertheless, one critic railed,
“Strip his figures of the colored fleas that cover them;
underneath you will find nothing, no thought, no soul.”
Seurat’s universe, with its atomized particles of color and its
self-contained figures, may seem devoid of human feeling,
but its exquisite regularity provides a comforting alternative
to the chaos of experience. Indeed, the lasting appeal of La
Grande Jattelies in its effectiveness as a symbolic retreat
from the tumult of everyday life and the accidents of nature.138 CHAPTER 31 The Move Toward Modernism138
Figure 31.31 GEORGES SEURAT, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884–1886. Oil on
canvas, 6 ft. 9^1 ⁄ 2 in. 10 ft.^3 ⁄ 8 in. Nothing is left to chance in this highly formalized vision of the good life.
Seurat died of diphtheria at the age of thirty-one, having completed barely a decade of mature work.