Topic: Georges Seurats Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
Introduction
Seurats Grande Jatte is a wonderful work of art that has proven to stand alone, the transcendence of this art is recognized by everyone. What makes the transcendence so much mysterious is that the theme that this work portray has been proven not to be some profound emotions or some momentous events , but it portrays the most banal real scenes portrays in busy workdays. The Drawings portray Parisians enjoying an afternoon in a local park. The strange part of these drawings is that very few people are capable of interpreting it. (Herbert, 2001)
The Drawings was done by Seurats, a young man of 25 years, who had some scientific theories to prove. The scientific theory which he had to prove was the main recipe for his success and for the success of his work. The theory that Seurats proved was optical theory, this theory tries to communicate the conviction that painting in dots known as pointillism or divisionism, would produce a brighter color than painting in strokes. And he proved this on the Island of La Grande Jatte. (Rewald and Abel, 1943)
Herbert puts it that Georges-Pierre Seurat was born on Dec. 2, 1859, in Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1878 and 1879. His teacher was a disciple of Jean-Augusta Dominique Ingress. Being young talented and ambitious Seurat was strongly influenced by Reumbrandat and Francisco De Goya. These two people influenced his life and future careers as a painter. Georges spent his life practicing colors theories and the effects that different linear structures have on drawings. He used to stay love drawings and is recorded to have drawn over 500 pictures but the most sparkling and striking one was the drawing which featured Seurat
Seurat who was a French painter became a leader of the French school of Neo- impressionist whose techniques for portraying the play of life using tiny brushstrokes of contrasting colors became known as the pointillism. Using the pointillism technique he created huge compositions with tiny detached strokes pure color too small to be differentiated when looking at the entire work of paintings, but he ensured that he made his paintings shimmer with brilliance. Seurat was referred and portrayed the characteristics of an artistic science. (Marshal and Parker, 1978)
The painting of Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte was the centerpiece of all his drawings, this work he did after being in the army for one year where he realized his painting skills and exhibited it at the official saloon with one of his first works-Aman Jean. After realizing his drawing talent that would win him all these fame Seurat started spending most of his time in drawing and producing one large picture each year. Seurat spent his winters in Paris and his summers in France where He did much of his collections and drawings. (Herbert, 2001)
Seurats Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was a great success of his whole painting work, this picture alone took him two years to produce, on the picture, Seurat concentrated very keenly on the keenly on the landscape of the park is when he concentrated on the people, he always concentrated on the shape on the landscape and the people but not on their personality. In this picture it is realized that individuals did not interest him much but he was only interested in the individual’s formal stylishness. In the drawing of Seurats Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte, it is realized that there was no dirt and he try to beautifully balance this by the use of the principle called pointillism. (Marshal and Parker, 1978)
Seurat tries to feature the park as a quite noisy place with only one man bowing his bugle while children and a dog run around in real harmony, yet the communication and impression that the colors play is that the park is a very quite place, well controlled and nothing was in disorder. With this kind of drawing and communication using some contrasting but appealing situations in La Grande Jatte, it is more moving the current community who live in the disordered world. (Marshal and Parker, 1978)
The painting of this smaller park is done with some elements of astonishing poetry because of the intellectual clarity that sets him free in his work. This he does this in away that communicate and drill a sense into people that even if the people in a park are in pairs or groups they still appear to be alone in their consciousness but appear and feels lonely. The drawings in the park also communicates that there is no any being that encroaches and interferes with another ones space, peace and minds others business but all the creatures coexist in the same park.(Herbert, 2001)
In closer look the whole park just represents the world which is both real and unreal. It represents a world that is sacred. In the world sometimes we are often worried by life’s pressures and unexpected happenings. (Herbert, 2001)
That ma y forces many of us to try and stop the world so as to be laid by or to get off. Seurat while doing this world he had stopped the world and during their interaction with it, it revealed itself as beautiful, sunlight and silent. This is Seurat’s world that many of us would want to leave into and enjoy and never at any one time get off
What we see and how we analyses the pictures depends on the on the perspective in which we look at them, from a broad perspective we ca n see we could actually see how those seemingly random points of paint contribute to the entire painting and see a great power and part played by art in communicating the communal norms. The same pictures while observed from a limited perspective we can only see the art of work in communicating chaos and disharmony in the society. The interpretation of the whole work of heart therefore depend on the which perspective we take.(Marshal and Parker, 1978)
The magnitude and the visual experience that the classic work of art bring creates a variety of figures in which we can see and identify
More than any other work of art- paintings the picture delights on different levels that concerns mainly from the general public of all ages to the scholarly and scientific communities, this has made it to withstand the different changes and many new paintings of all ages. Although the work the work has taken years and people are familiar with it, it still remains enigmatic and communicates strong.(Herbert, 2001)
The exhibition “Seurat of La Grande Jatte” which has more than 130 paintings and more works on paper allows viewers to reassess the artists unique status as a draughtsman, colorist, theories and painter of a modern life” as well as his in relation to his forebears and contemporaries.(Herbert, 2001)
A complete understanding and clear interpretation of how Seurat arrived at the art that was later on named “Neo-Impressionism” has greatly been slowed down by the exclusive emphasis that scholars have put on his interest on the modern scientific color theories having been named a scientific artist. It has been assumed for many years that Seurat restricted himself to the use of three primary colors by pairing dots of blue and yellow colors to form green, yet this is not true. Seurat knew very well that the light that is reflected by pigments does not behave exactly like solar or prismatic illuminations. He took a lot of time to read the scientists books and came with the theories of light.
The art of Seurat was not like an impression, or about pure sensation, or self expression or even an improvisation. The art was instead an un-Romantic exercise in measurement, it was all about objectivity, it was logic and a control with formal decisions made and conceptually resolved before brush touched canvas. The work of Seurat was exemplified of all these qualities; it was a masterpiece of applied mechanics. The work was just perfect.( Marshal and Parker, 1978)
The painting ‘‘A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” has been in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It has had had a lot of great fame that to some tourists it is the Art Institute, just like ”Las Meninas” is the Prado. They are, of course, mistaken. The museum, one of this country’s best, has other attractions. But it is well aware of the unique and wonderful thing that its Seurat picture is, and has spun a show around it, a wonderful one.( Rewald and Abel, 1943)
The common word which was formulated after the public debut of “La Grande Jatte” and eighth Impressionist exhibition in 1886 was that Seurat was an artist scientist, a brain rather than an eye. He actually chose his colors by exacting formulas; he observed strict methods in the pointillist way he applied his paint. (Marshal and Parker, 1978)
After Georges Seurat drawings and inspiration massages which he communicated through his scientific work of art, several movements which were to be influential in the modern art are recorded to have started by the 19th century. These movements were to continue the work in impressionism, post-impressionism and symbolism. They had varied influences: from exposure to eastern decorative arts, the colorist innovation of Tuner and Delacroix, then to a search of more realism in the show of depicting a real common life. This was to be done to show the impressionists argument that people do not see objects but the colors, but only the light which the colors reflect and therefore painters should always paint using natural colors. Rather in studio or should capture the effects of light in their work (Marshal and Parker, 1978)
The practice of painting has been used in the modern society to communicate on surfaces as paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer or concrete. This has been used by artists to combine drawings, compositions and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and the conceptual intention of the community or of a person.
In the modern society painting has also been used as a means of representing, documenting and expressing varied intents and subjects. The art of painting can be naturalistic and representational just as in a still life or landscape painting, photographic, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism emotional or just to be political in nature and carries a political massage.( Herbbert,2001)
Painting has been considered by modern artists as a means of communicating emotions, ideas, lamentations, thoughts, theories and even solutions. Paintings have also been used by artists in entertainment. This is why some of the artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage, which began with Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, Straw, or wood to bring texture. All these have spiced the art of painting and some even consider it as a full profession. (Herbert, 2001)
As it is described by Herbert painting is a work of art that seeks to hold your attention and keep it fixed: a history of art urges it onwards, bulldozing a highway through the homes of the imagination. Painting is great and fun as inspired.
Works Cited
Herbert Robert (2001), Seurat Drawings and Paintings Yale University Press
Rewald John and Abel Lionel,(1943),Georges Seurat, University of Michigan Press
Luhan Mc Marshall and Parker Harley (1948), Thought the vanishing Point: Space in
Poetry and Paintings. Hasper and Row Publishers
