Painting With Dots

POINTILLISM PROJECT

Georges- Pierre Seurat1859 -1891

French Neo-Impressionist Painter

Devised a technique of painting called pointillism

Impressionism vs. Neo-Impressionism•Neo-Impressionism was an art movement that came immediately after Impressionism

•Neo-Impressionists were less interested in evoking spontaneity and movement. They were more concerned with the preparatory and technical aspects of design and color forms.

“L’air Du Soir” by Neo-Impressionist Henri- Edmond Cross

“Claude Monet Painting at the Edge of a Wood” by Impressionist John Singer Sargent

•All impressionists valued color, but the neo-impressionists were the only artists to develop working methods where theories about color and how our eyes register it, were combined with theories of paint application.

•Seurat was inspired by the ideas of Charles Blanc who said “Color, which can be controlled by fixed laws, can be taught like music”.

Le Chahut By Georges Seurat 1889-90

•Seurat and fellow painters made detailed studies of theories of scientific writers such as Eugene Chevreul. Chevreul said that the appearance of any color can be radically altered by changing the colors placed immediately beside it.

•He also noted that colors appear to be at their most intense when placed directly next to their complementaries and called this theory the “law of simultaneous contrast”.

•From these ideas, Pointillism developed. Dots or points of color were placed next to one another on canvas and mixed in the eye of the observer.

The Law of Simultaneous

Contrast

The Law of Simultaneous

Contrast

The Law of Simultaneous

Contrast

The Law of Simultaneous

Contrast

Seurat was interested in geometry and talked about “organizing” the color on his canvas. Emphasis on design accounts for the static, unmoving quality of many neo-impressionist paintings.

Like the Impressionists, Seurat was interested in portraying subject matter such as city life and popular entertainment. However, he endowed them with qualities of mystery and mood.

Detail from Circus Sideshow (or Parade de Cirque) (1889)

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte -- 1884, 1884-86 (Art Institute of Chicago)

Seurat labored intensively on preparatory studies for up to a year before beginning a final painting.

The Eiffel Tower 1889

Le Cirque, 1890-91

Bathers at Asnières, Georges Seurat, 1884 (National Gallery, London)

Conte Crayon Study of boy on right

Studies for Une Baignade, Asnieres (The Bathers):1883: 4 of 14 panels produced as preliminaries for the final canvas.

The Seine at Courbevoiec. 1885

Process

• Choose a singular subject • Zoom and crop to make an

interesting composition• Make a contour line drawing of the

subject• Transfer line drawing to the canvas• Paint using optical mixing in the style

of pointillism