Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900

A fascinating exhibit is going on right now at the Victoria & Albert Museum (one of my favorite museums in the world) The concepts introduced are relevant to other artistic movements as well... the obsession with 'Red Hair' for example can be picked up in Degas' series of women at their toilette.

Edgar Degas, The Tub, 1886
(Musee d'Orsay)

Georges Seurat - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, continued

George Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886
(Art Institute of Chicago)

Is this monumental painting by Georges Seurat a commentary on artifice, about alienation of modern life or is it actually a utopian vision?

There are clues to support both arguments, the calm and peacefulness that permeates the whole canvas, and the harmony of people from different classes enjoying a sunny day on the Island of Grand Jatte could be considered a utopian ideal of how society should be, representing a peaceful time in France without any war or revolutions. Everything in the painting is calm and sedate almost as if Seurat has captured and immortalized the one perfect moment.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, The Sacred Grove, 1884
(Art Institute of Chicago)

Art historian Linda Nochlin puts forth another idea though - that this is actually a criticism of modern society, an anti-utopian image.  Since everyhting should be analyzed in the right context, she starts her argument by first explaining what was considered Utopian at the time this painting was painted. The Sacred Grove by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, was exhibited in the Salon of 1884, the year Seurat started working on A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and according to Lochlin Seurat's painting might never have come into existence or at least not in this way if it was not for his older contemporary's work. If the Impressionists were the painters of modern life, depicting everyday events, people dressed in contemporary fashions going about in places that were in vogue at the time, then Puvis and his timeless muses in classical settings without any specificity was the antithesis of this type of painting.  Seurat seems to be enforcing the contemporaneousness and exactitude of his work even in his title - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.  But Seurat's work was also in contrast to the  Impressionist's works like Renoir, who had created his own utopian vision in Dance at the Moulin de la Galette.  While Renoir's typical hazy brushwork, with fusing colors in this idyllic scene of merriment amongst the young working class women and middle class artists made the modern urban scene seem very natural, Seurat's stoic figures depicted in his highly technical brushwork made it seem strange.

Pierre-August Renoir, Dance at the Moulin de la Galette,1876
(Musee d'Orsay)

According to Nochlin, Seurat's painting can be interpreted as a criticism of the  banality and monotonousness of modern life with cookie-cutter figures standing around in what she calls his sardonic pageant of frozen recreation.1

Seurat achieved this almost mechanical impression due to his repetitive technique of divisionism, applying small dot-like strokes of similar size and shape on top of a uniform color.  The separate colors were supposed to be mixed by the viewers eye.  He used different patterns for different parts of the painting that was so elaborately done that at an ideal distance it was supposed to look like the real thing.  
Georges Seurat was familiar with Michel Eugene Chevreul's book, On the Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Color, which confirmed that harmony can be achieved by juxtaposing similar intensities of the same color or by balancing contrasting colors.  Chevreul proposed that combinations of complementary colors appear pleasing to the eye.  This is especially apparent in the frame of the painting that Seurat added later on to form a transitional zone to make the picture pop.  He also used what is known as the Chevreul illusion, when you put a slightly darker tone next to a slightly lighter tone the eye is tricked to see the outer edge darker. Seurat darkened the edges where they met the light areas to achieve a sharper contrast between the figure and the ground. 


Seurat made 27 preliminary sketches for this painting.  The landscape was en plein air study but for the figures he made drawings in his studio. The final sketch for the Grande Jatte was done in balaye, a criss-cross brush stroke. When looking at his separate sketches in becomes more apparent how he built up the final image for his painting. 

Georges Seurat, Study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The technique and the structure of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, seem to reinforce the alienating, banal  and dehumanizing aspects of modern life.  As Linda Nochlin points out, "Seurat, with the dot, resolutely and consciously removed himself as a unique being projected by a personal handwriting."2  Georges Seurat, by his mechanical, disembodied construction of his painting undermined the Western tradition of representation and in the process angered a big part of the art community.  Especially Monet and Renoir hated this loss the sense of spontaneity and didn't show their work in the last Impressionist exhibit of 1886.  But a movement beyond Impressionism for avant-garde painting had already started to evolve and as a response to Seurat, Monet painted his version of monumental figures in landscape in strictly impressionist terms. 

1  Linda Nochlin, Seurat's Grande Jatte: An Anti-Utopian Allegory, 255-258
2  Ibid., 255

From My Favorite Turkish Poet and Writer - Sunay Akin

Gustave Caillebotte, A Young Man at
his Window, 1876

There can be so many things that hurt me; but I still keep quiet, languish
I let it happen actually.  Because I am stupid?  No!
Because that person is indispensable? No.
I won't say "Go!" to anyone, I can't.
After all that happens, I still cherish them so much,
So they may be ashamed of the things they do everyday,
But one day, I leave in such a way,
I have nothing to lose.


                       Sunay Akin
                  (Turkish Poet, Writer)

Georges Seurat - Pointillism - A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 1884
(The Art Institute of Chicago)

Georges Seurat was a key post-impressionist painter who changed the course of modern art by his use of latest scientific theories on color and light and it's relationship to optical theories.  His monumental masterpiece A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, not only shook the foundations of the art world by its use of the divisionist technique of applying small points of unmodulated color to be mixed in the viewer's eye instead of the artist's palette but also the obvious mixing of people from different social classes out for a leisurely Sunday, by the Seine, each enjoying nature in their own way.

Seurat, who exhibited this painting in the last Impressionist exhibit in 1886 was only 26 years old at the time.  He came from a wealthy family who supported him throughout his life that ended at age 31.  Georges Seurat started his artistic career with a very classical training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but quit after a year and half.  Following a mandatory year of military service, he continued working on black and white drawings and small scale paintings.  Only four years after leaving art school, he started the project that would take two years to complete and end up to be this monumental canvas.

Georges Seurat was very interested in art from antiquity, in Greek and Roman sculptures. In his works there is a tension between the contemporary, popular culture and references to elite high art of Egyptian, Greek and Romans.  He also looked to the work of early 19th century artists like Gustave Courbet, Francois Millet as well as Impressionists like Camille Pissaro.

Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857
(Musee d'Orsay)

Georges Seurat, Farm Women at Work,
1882-1883
(Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY)

In his early work, Seurat was interested in the 19th century obsession of  peasant in the field imagery.  In the Farm Women at Work, it is easy to see him looking to Millet.  He has taken the two figures from The Gleaners and reversed their directions.  The yellow sunlight reflecting off of the green grass demonstrates his desire to represent light, like Monet.  The one fundamental difference in Seurat's work is the way he put down the reflected lights next to the local color of green in the grass by what is called balaye, a criss-cross brush stroke. In order to create a more vivid and luminous effect, he used juxtaposition of tones of similar colors next to each other for the viewer's eye to blend them on the canvas.

Seurat's interest in luminosity, the linear design element and the extremely important edges of objects can all be found in his black and white drawings in conte crayon on Michallet paper.  These drawings were not preliminary sketches but drawings done as finished works.  He would fill in his subject with conte crayon and then take out the light areas by erasing them, darkening the edges so the lighter area would separate the figure from the background.  The texture of the paper would not allow the crayon to absolutely soak into the paper, allowing the light of the background to shine through, enabling to create lightness.

Georges Seurat, Aman-Jean, 1882-1883

                         

Georges Seurat, The White Coat (The Woman with
 White Umbrella) 1883

Georges Seurat, Eden Concert, 1886-1887

In these drawings, Seurat achieved an aura-like effect around his figures which can be seen very clearly around the umbrella in The White Coat.  To make his subjects pop out, he began to darken the edges like the man's nose in Aman-Jean and the woman's skirts in The White Coat, this helped to separate the figure from the background.  He used the same technique in his paintings as well and the darkened edges caused not only the figures to pop from the background but also helped to reinforce each figure's own space. Even though there is an ambiguity surrounding the exact message Seurat was trying to convey in his art as to whether it was a critique or praise for the modern way of life, his technique seem to work to great effect in all his works.

This is My New Jersey - Spring

This is My New Jersey - Random

This is My New Jersey

This is My New Jersey - the Sublime

This is My New Jersey - Houses

This is My New Jersey

This is My New Jersey - Rutgers in the Fall