achieve new effects by the bright light illuminating its subjects. The dark,
impure colours of the Middle Ages were replaced by pure. glowing colours.
The object painted appeared "in a new light," changed and transformed.
The partly new intentions of painters at this time should not deceive us into
thinking that the contents of painting had by then been radically altered.
for such was not the case: nor did it happen with the Impressionists•
(Cezanne). who gave to light an entirely new strength and power. Their
chief preoccupation was with the changes in colour of an object in light
and the open air. The object lost its literary significance almost entirely, it
became an excuse· for painterly creation. Colour became more and more
important.
Pointillism•• (Seurat, Signac) went further: it broke up the object into sin
gle dots of colour. and captured the flickering effect of sunlight. The pho
tographic representation of an object, which more or less clearly distin
guishes the romantic painter and the painter of naturalism. is abandoned in
favour of a purer colour effect.
Perspective too -the apparent space behind the surface of a painting
disappears more and more. This could be noticed in the paintings of the
Impressionists and the Pointillists. but became complete for the first time
in the work of the Cubists. Here "background" and picture surface are
- Impression (French)= impression
•• pomt (French) = po1nt
PABLO PICASSO:
Still life
with red wallpaper
(Verlag der Photograph.
Gesellschaft.
Berlin-Charlottenburg 9)