[ePub] Performance: A Critical Introduction by Marvin Carlson in Arts-Photography

Description

Georges Seurat was one of the most important Post-Impressionist painters to lead the way toward the modern era in art. He is best known for developing pointillism; an exacting and time-consuming technique whereby tiny dots of paint are combined to create a composition. His work is stylized and considered; in complete contrast to the impetuous spontaneity of his precursors and contemporaries; the Impressionists. Seurat had a life-long fascination with optical observations and experiments and taught himself to become a master of color theory and linear structures. On canvas this meant rather than just painting the apparent color or shade of an object; Seurat broke down the individual component colors and placed them in individual tiny dots or dashes so that the eye of the observer would see the overall color; but on closer inspection see each individual color component. His strangely stilted paintings have a quality of stillness about them and are almost photographic in their detail. By the time he died at the age of only 31; Seurat had produced several huge paintings; about 60 smaller ones; numerous studies for his larger paintings plus around 500 drawings. In later years the Surrealists hailed Seurat as an inspirational maverick and a spiritual father to them.