Post-impressionism - 1910

Post-Impressionism is a catch-all term for the many and disparate reactions against the naturalism, and issues of light and color, which had inspired the Impressionists. Emerging around 1886, at the time of the Impressionist's eighth and last exhibition, and declining along with Fauvism in 1905, the movement embraces various trends, including the Neo-Impressionism of Seurat, and the Symbolism of Gauguin. The term 'Post-Impressionism' was devised by English critic Roger Fry, in 1910, for an exhibition in London which also included works by Manet, Cézanne, van Gogh, and many others.
    Despite the myriad approaches and ideologies associated with Post-Impressionists, they were united by their desire to overturn the superficiality of Impressionism. They felt that the Impressionists had allowed their preoccupations with technique, and the effects of natural light, to overshadow the importance of subject matter. But their impulses led them to solve this problem in different ways. Some, like Cézanne, sought greater pictorial structure, and they placed great emphasis on the specific context of a particular landscape or still life. Others, like Gauguin, sought a deeper engagement with expressive and symbolic content: they created paintings "de tete" (from memory or imagination), and they expressed a strong connection with the subject matter that inspired the work, whether it derived from religion, literature or mythology. These artists - Symbolists, or Synthetists - also placed greater emphasis on harmonious surface design: Gauguin was one of the first artists to refer to his work as "abstract."

Representatives: Edvard Munch, Arnold Bocklin, James Ensor, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell

Georges Seurat

My favourite painter is Georges Seurat. I've learnt much about him and some of his works while doing my homework on Art Movements.

   Georges Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising the technique of painting known as pointillism. His large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–1886) altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism. It is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting.

   French painter Georges Seurat founded Neo-Impressionism and the technique of tiny strokes of contrasting color, pointillism. Seurat was not just interested in the way that the colors were put onto the painting or the painting itself. He was mostly concentrating on the science in the picture and the optical mixing of the colors. Before actually painting the picture, he would sketch out parts of his artwork so that the models would not have to wait forever while he found the exact color.

   Seurat had many people who really didn't like the new work that he was introducing. They may have thought it as "fuzzy" or "messy". In their opinion it really wasn't very good at all. But there were some artists who really felt that what he was doing was very artistic and complicated.

   Some of his most famous paintings include:

-A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

-Bathing at Asnieres

-Le Chahut

  
 A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte Story was eventually exhibited in the eighth Impressionist exhibition of May 1886.

   Where exactly Seurat painted Grande Jatte is a subject of much discussion since its completion. The picturesque content of the piece has also been brought into the question because it is painted at a spot on the island which doesn't incorporate any of the increasingly apparent industry that had begun appearing on the island.

   Despite the island of La Grande Jatte looking a great deal different to how it once did, Seurat's effort is perhaps the most similar to how it looks today. The banks of the river Seine are considerably steeper than in Seurat's day but one spot is convincingly similar to his Grande Jatte.

   Bathing at Asnieres

   This was the first of Seurat's large-scale compositions. He drew conté crayon studies for individual figures using live models, and made small oil sketcheson site which he used to help design the composition and record effects of light and atmosphere. Some 14 oil sketches and 10 drawings survive. The final composition, painted in the studio, combines information from both. The simplicity of the forms and the use of regular shapes clearly defined by light recalls paintings by the Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. In his use of figures seen in profile, Seurat may also have been influenced by ancient Egyptian art.

Le Chahut

   A frenzied gesticulation suddenly invades Seurat's art in the final two years of his life. Seurat studied and collected Jules Cheret's posters, and their compositional form is felt in Le Chahut. The curled mustache repeated in the dancer's turned-up lips, the decorations and ribbons on the dancers' shoulders and shoes, the strange similarity of male and female legs, everything here expresses the taste for peculiar detail.

   This exuberance, however, does not conceal the extreme rigor of the composition. Seurat inscribes his network of diagonals on a regular geometrical background. A figure in the foreground stabilizes the composition, as one does in The Circus. Between background and foreground breaks occur. Seurat arranges in the intermediary space of Le Chahut a series of arc-shaped curves created by the dancers legs. ``Monsieur Seurat'' wrote Felix Feneon in 1889, ``knows very well that a line, independent of its representational role, has an appraisable abstract value.''

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Georges Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – 1884 is one of Georges Seurat's most famous works, and is an example of pointillism. The picture depicts an afternoon landscape on an Island with numerous representatives of high class community. The painting is relatively large in size; it is approximately 2 by 3 meters. Speaking about the shape the picture created, and this technique is called pointillism, which means separation of color into small touches placed side-by-side. Seurat used this particular style to blend in the eye of the viewer because light can be measured in particles as well as wavelengths. Such a technique, which nowadays is called divisionism, also allows the viewer’s eyes to perceive the light colors on the painting, thus mixing them in different colors. I think that the author wants to show us the example of how Parisians may enjoy spending the afternoon time. However, the main focus is landscape, especially technique of its painting for producing brighter colors, so I think that the main aim of the artist was to show the advantage of his new style. The title tells us about the island which is located on the Seine in the Neuilly-sur-Seine department of Paris and how a high class gets away for the Parisian community. I also notice that Seurat tries to show members of all classes who may coexisting peacefully. As for composition, my eyes flow across the whole painting, paying heightened attention to the technique but not to this or that particular object. Speaking about colors, it must be mention that the artist finished the work by adding a painted border of red, orange, and blue dots that provides a visual transition between the interior of the painting and his specially designed white frame. As for skills, they are, undoubtedly, on the highest level and as the evidence of it, I should mention the fact that Seurat re-works it several times and even painted a small version of the finished piece. All in all, the painting has significant meaning – as its author is the father of the Neo-impressionist art movement, this masterpiece is considered to be the symbol of the beginning of such art movement. 

Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, in 1848, in Paris. He was a leading Post-Impressionist French painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He spent his childhood in Lima (his mother was a Peruvian Creole). From 1872 to 1883 he was a successful stockbroker in Paris. He met Camille Pissarro about 1875, and he exhibited several times with the Impressionists. Disillusioned with bourgeois materialism, in 1886 he moved to Pont-Aven, Brittany, where he became the central figure of a group of artists known as the Pont-Aven school. Gauguin coined the term Synthetism to describe his style during this period, referring to the synthesis of his paintings' formal elements with the idea or emotion they conveyed. Late in October 1888 Gauguin traveled to Arles, in the south of France, to stay with Vincent van Gogh. The style of the two men's work from this period has been classified as Post-Impressionist because it shows an individual, personal development of Impressionism's use of colour, brushstroke, and nontraditional subject matter. Increasingly focused on rejecting the materialism of contemporary culture in favour of a more spiritual, unfettered lifestyle, in 1891 he moved to Tahiti. His works became open protests against materialism. He was an influential innovator; Fauvism owed much to his use of colour, and he inspired Pablo Picasso and the development of Cubism. Gauguin died on May 8, 1903, in Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

Paul Gauguin-Presentation1

Paule Gauguin-Presentation2

Paule Gauguin - Film on You Tube

Paul Cézanne (1)

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

House of Pére Lacroix (1873)

In 1852 Cézanne entered the Collège Bourbon where he met his good friends Émile Zola and Baptistin Baille. The three were famously close for a long period of time. Later Paul Cézanne enrolled at the local art school and attempted to work as a banker but was also unsuccessful in this venture. By this time he was good friends with Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and had met his future wife.

Three Skulls (1906)

In 1873 Cézanne met Vincent van Gogh and in 1874 he exhibited at the Impressionist's first showcase. In 1877 Cézanne showcased 16 of his paintings. Although still influenced by Pissarro's Impressionist style Cézanne continued to work inside his studio and didn't believe in always painting from nature. In the early 1880s Cezanne started to move even further away from the Impressionist's style of painting. In 1886 Cezanne married his mistress and inherited a large estate from his father, meaning he never had to worry about making money from his art. In November 1895 Paul Cézanne held his first solo exhibition in Paris and Ambroise Vollard bought every artwork. He then moved to Aix-en-Provence permanently. In the early 1900s his work was shown all around Europe to wide critical acclaim but throughout his life Cézanne was shy and hostile towards other painters and he maintained this attitude. He died in October 1906 of pneumonia and is buried in the cemetery in Aix-en-Provence. 

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Paul Cézanne (2)

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) was born on 19 January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, in Provence in south of France. His father was a successful banker and his father wished him to pursue a 'respectable' career. To please his father, between 1859 and 1861 Paul Cezanne attended the law school of the University of Aix. However, in 1861, he became disillusioned with this career path and dropped out to pursue his life's passion - art.

With the encouragement of his great friend Emil Zola, Paul left for Paris and sought to further his artistic career. Initially his father was upset at his son's choice of career. But, on evidence of his talent, his father later became reconciled to his choice and on the death of his father, Paul inherited a substantial sum which enabled him to pursue art without any financial worries.

In Paris, he met the Impressionist artist, Camille Pissaro. Pissaro acted as Master to the young Paul. However, over time, the student became as respected as the Master.

In 1870, the Franco-Prussian war broke out and Paul Cezanne fled with his mistress to Marseille. He was caught as a draft dodger, but, soon after, the war fortunately ended. In this period in the south of France, Paul drew an increasing number of landscapes and abandoned the dark colours which had dominated his rather somber paintings. In this period Paul Cezanne became one of the leading impressionists though his difficult personality made it hard for him to mix with many of the leading artists of the time.

His final years of his life from 1878-1905 were spent in Provence. It was here that he increasingly developed the style of his paintings and moved beyond a classic impressionist style. He used planes and blocks of colour to give a more abstracted observation of nature. It was this abstract innovation that was said to be a key element in the link between the 19th Century impressionist art and the modern art of Matisse and Picasso of the Twentieth Century.

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Victor Borisov-Musatov

Victor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov, (April 14, 1870 - November 8,1905) was a Russian painter, prominent for his uniquePost-Impressionisticstyle that mixed Symbolism, pure decorative style and realism. Together with Mikhail Vrubel he is often referred as the creator of Russian Symbolism style. Borisov-Musatov had a very successful solo exhibition in a number of cities in Germany, and in the spring of 1905 he exhibited with Salon de la Société des Artistes Français and became a member of this society.

  

Technique:

Musatov's response was creating a half-illusory world of the 19th century nobility, their parks and country-seats. This world was partially based on the estate of princes Prozorvky-Galitzines Zubrilovka and partially just on Musatov's imagination. Borisov-Musatov also abandoned oil-paintings for the mixed tempera and watercolor and pastel techniques that he found more suitable for the subtle visual effects he was trying to create.

Musatov's best works:

Requiem (1905)

The Pool (1902)

Phantoms (1903)

LINKS:

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Film about this painter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjwhw3Bvas