Post-Impressionism

POST-IMPRESSIONISM

Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) Toulouse-Lautrec was born into an aristocratic family. A series of accidents resulted in his growth being stunted and him having crippled legs. His appearance was considered ‘grotesque’.

In 1882 he began his art studies in the studios of academic painters and in 1885 he started to work in his own studio in Montmarte. He was influenced by Impressionism and cam increasingly under the spell of Degas. He was also friendly with Van Gogh and the Symbolist artist Bernard. He became involved with the popular music halls and low life of Montmarte, which provided him with his subject matter.

Subject Matter His subject matter was centred around his own life. He became closely involved with the dance halls and café life of Montmarte, notably the Moulin Rouge and Artiside Bruant’s cabaret ‘Le Mirliton’. He depicted dancers, actresses, singers and prostitutes. He hated painting posed studio models. He lived for some time in brothels and produced intimate studies of brothel life. There is no element of social criticism or sentimentality in his work but a definite element of caricature.

Style and Technique He had a wide technical range but was primarily a draughtsman. For painting he used spirit thinned oil paint often on unprimed cardboard, using the buff tone of the cardboard as an element in the design, to set off his strong colours.

His prints used the technical of Lithography (invented in 1798). Lithography is a printing process which involves no cutting into the block or plate. It is executed on a thick slab of limestone (zinc is now more common as it is lighter and less fragile). The technique is based on the fact that water runs off a greasy surface. The design is drawn onto the polished stone with a special chalk and then the stone is wetted. Next an oil based ink is rolled across the stone. The oil based ink sticks to the greasy chalk which has repelled the water but does not stick to the areas still covered in water. The image is then printed, using a mechanical or hand press onto dampened paper. Many impressions are easily made by repeating the inking and wetting stages. Toulouse-Lautrec was especially interested in exploiting the possibilities offered by colour lithography which was ideal for producing bold posters. For his large colour posters more than one stone was used (note also his ‘crachis’ (splattered ink) technique used on some of his posters).

Seurat (1859-1891) Seurat was a Post-Impressionist who was the main instigator of the Neo-Impressionist movement. He worked in a style called divisionism using the pointillist method of paintings. (It was not Seurat however but another Neo-Impressionist called Signac, who wrote down the theories of the movement in 1889 in his treatise “From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism”).

He studied the writings of Charles Blanc and scientific treatise of Chevreul, Sutter and Rood. He was fascinated by the idea that colour can be taught by fixed laws which “can be taught like music”. One of these laws was the ‘law of the simultaneous contrast of colours’ by Chevreul. According to the ‘laws of contrast’ a colour achieves maximum intensity when brought close to its complementary, but while two complementaries enhance each other through juxtaposition, they destroy each other when physically mixed together. Complementaries when physically mixed together in equal portions produce a greyish brown colour.

In 1880, Seurat devoted two years to the art of black and white and soon achieved a perfect mastery over the balance of light and dark masses. He was pre-occupied with gradation (the hardly perceptible passing from one tone to another), and contrast, rather than line.

Seurat constructed a colour disc on which he brought together all the hues of the rainbow, joined together by a number of intermediate colours. On his palette he also used white, which he mixed with the primary colours, thereby obtaining a host of tones from a colour with only a hint of white in it to almost pure white. The pure colours were concentrated in the middle of the palette slowly fading to a uniform ring of white on the outside. With the aid of this disc Seurat could easily locate the complementary of any colour or tone. Thus the ‘law of complementaries’ permits a colour to be toned down or intensified without becoming dirty; while not touching the colour itself, one can fortify or neutralise it by changing the adjacent colours. Two colours which do not go well together can be separated by white, which serves as an intermediary, and unites them. This dividing up of colours into their component parts was called divisionism.

Seurat’s method of work 1. First, he did a number of drawings in black and white in order to work out the tones. 2. Then, using Impressionist like loose brushstrokes, he did a number of studies for the finished painting. He did studies of a scene for the composition (he used the Golden Section as a basis for his composition), the local colours and the colours as affected by light. 3. Before starting on the final painting (which he painted in the studio, often late at night under artificial light, working on one section at a time, having previously determined each brushstroke and colour to be applied) he brushed in a broad layer of pigment to bind the dots together and to relieve himself of the need to assemble the dots too tightly. 4. Then he placed on the canvas pigments to represent the local colour. 5. Then he added the colours of the objects, landscape etc as affected by light, reflections from surrounding objects etc. He used tiny brushstrokes in the form of dots (pointillism) and it was left to the observer’s retina to mix them at a given distance (which varied according to the size of dots chosen for the specific painting). This produced a far greater intensity and luminosity of colour than any mixture of pigments.

After finishing “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte” in 1885, Seurat asked himself a question “If with the experience of art, I have been able to find scientifically, the law of pictorial colour, can I not discover an equally logical, scientific and pictorial system to compose harmoniously the lines of a picture just as I can compose its colours?”.

The answer was supplied by the scientist Charles Henry. Seurat began a closer study of the theories of expression in painting with concern for the proper correlation of colour and line for indicating mood.

Charles Henry’s theories Pleasure is associated with an upward direction and with movement from left to right. The opposite effect is achieved by moving downward from right to left (intermediary effects can be achieved by intermediary directions). Happy = Up, Sad = Down Certain colours e.g. red and yellow (warm colours) are more or less agreeable, whereas others e.g. violet and blue (cold colours) are relatively inhibiting. He devised a colour circle in which agreeable colours correspond to agreeable directions and inhibiting colours to inhibiting directions. The figures in Seurat’s paintings are dominated by monotony or joy, never sadness.

The Golden Section (or Golden Mean) The Golden Section is a name given to an irrational proportion, known at least since Euclid, which has often been thought to possess some aesthetic virtue in itself, some hidden harmonic proportion in tune with the universe. Ratio Approximately: 8:13 C

C 13 B 8 A

Impressionism was influenced by scientific theories about light; however, their use of colour was based on observation and experimentation not theory. Seurat used pure colours, spot by spot, to create colour effects on a purely rational basis. However, like the Impressionists, Seurat was a man of his time. He desired, like them, to control the physical properties of colour and space. He acknowledged that his ideas were a logical consequence of the Impressionist ideas).

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) Van Gogh was born in a small Dutch village and whose father was a protestant pastor. This is important as his life was spent alternately in the service of art and religion, until he discovered his own synthesis of their claims in 1880-81, when he declared to devote himself entirely to art as a way of getting closer to God.

He briefly worked for the French Art Dealers “Goupil and Co” until he was dismissed for being incompetent. He hated the way that the art dealers preferred ‘popular’ art to what he considered to be true art. Van Gogh’s conception of artistic value was mixed up with his Christian view in such a way that he believed that the best art expressed the suffering of the poor.

In 1876, Van Gogh worked in England as a teaching assistant and during this time he was influenced by the works of Rembrandt and Millet. He was increasingly more concerned with communicating his beliefs and state of mind at the time. The function of his work was intentionally less artistic than social, and less social than personal. It answered his need for communication between himself and others, in the course of which he hoped to find the love that was always withheld, and for lack of which, perhaps, he died.

His art is totally self-expressive and is one of the principle sources for the broader currents of European Expressionism.

He studied at theological college and an evangelical school during 1877-8 and then worked as a voluntary lay preacher in the Borinage mining district of S.Belgium. In 1880 he was dismissed from the church for over ‘enthusiastic’ conduct and decided to become an artists. He went to Brussels and took a few lessons in anatomy and perspective but he was virtually untaught and perhaps unteachable. He lived with his father for a year, however, had to leave because of regular heated arguments about religion. Van Gogh moved to the Hague in 1881 and lived in independent poverty and set up a home with Sien, a prostitute, who modelled for several of his drawings and prints. He returned to his parents for another two years and was financially dependent on his brother Theo.

His painting ‘The Potato Eaters’ 1885 illustrates Van Gogh’s early ‘dark’ period, a style which he renounced a couple of years later in Paris for a number of reasons.

 The influence of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists palette.  The intellectual atmosphere of Paris.  He was happier because of Theo’s presence, good food and relatively comfortable life style. He began to use the juxtaposed colour contrasts, complementary colour organisation, divisionism and even the pointillist methods of Seurat and Signac. Examples, ‘Portrait of Pere Tanguay’ 1887 and ‘Cornfield with a Lark’ 1887. He also came to know Japanese art better, of which you can see influence in ‘The Japanese Bridge’ 1887 and ‘Pere Tanguay’.

He left Paris and moved to Arles where he rented the ‘Yellow House’. He said “I had my little house painted yellow because I wanted it to be the house of light for everybody”. Why did he leave Paris? The artists in Paris were quarrelling and he felt guilty about his dependence on Theo who at the time was thinking about marrying. Van Gogh found Paris distracting and wanted a quieter life in the country; he believed colour ‘yellow’ had a spiritual value. It was symbolic of the life for as seen in the sun.

In impressionism Van Gogh detected the limitations of a style in which drawing form and construction were subordinated to the depiction of light, and individuality began to be lost in the exclusive devotion to nature. Gauguin said “We must leave Impressionism mainly as a corrective to his former errors”. Van Gogh seems to have looked to Impressionism mainly as a corrective to his former errors.

On his arrival to Arles the light and colour overwhelmed him. He developed further the Impressionist broken brushwork into a controlled system of coloured marks. At the same time he evolved an elaborate calligraphic drawing style using a range of Japanese reed pens.

In Oct 1888 Gauguin arrived to stay with Van Gogh (Theo promised to try to sell any of his paintings if he agreed to go and stay with his brother). Van Gogh regarded Gauguin as his leader and was eager to show him his work, whereas Gauguin was in many ways making use of Van Gogh as a means of cheap living. They disagreed about painting but for a while Van Gogh followed Gauguin’s advice to work from his imagination and memory. December that year they had an argument and Van Gogh threw a glass of Absinthe at Gauguin and then attacked him with an open razor. Later that night Van Gogh cut off his own ear lobe and having wrapped it in an envelope, presented it to the doorkeeper of the local brothel. Gauguin left.

 May 1889 – May 1890 Van Gogh was in the asylum at St. Remy.  May 1890 – July 1890 van Gogh lived under the care of Dr Gachet.  July 1890 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died 2 days later aged 37. Six months later his brother Theo died of a paralytic stroke. Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

A Post-Impressionist, who was largely responsible for the influence of Symbolist painting on 20th century art. As with Van Gogh, life and art were for him inseparable. As artists, they were ‘outsiders’ and both paid high price for their achievements.

Gauguin was born in Paris, but moved with his family to Peru at the age of one where his mother had relations. His father died on the journey but his mother remained in Peru with the children until 1855. This remained in his memory as an idyllic tropical environment which he tried to recapture later in his life.

The family moved back to France and in 1865 Gauguin served in the French navy and then went on to be a successful stockbroker. In 1871 he began to paint in the Impressionist style and married and Danish girl called Mette who bore his five children. He continued to work as a stockbroker, however, started to draw and paint in the evenings. In 1877 he met Pissarro and began to form a collection of Impressionist paintings and exhibited in many of the impressionist exhibitions.

Gauguin gave up his job in 1884, his wife moved back to Denmark with the children and Gauguin would visit from time to time. Gauguin was dissatisfied by Impressionism and wanted to achieve “The translation of thought into a medium other than literature”. His problem was to find themes that he could use to symbolise such sensations and a technique appropriate for their presentation. He loved the work of:

 15th Century Italians – E.g. Fra Angelico’s use of space and Botticelli’s rhythm  Japanese Prints for their strong contours and colour patterns  Medieval tapestries  Folk Art  Stone sculpture on Breton churches  Egyptian wall paintings and sculpture  Cambodian Sculpture and Prehistoric arts of Central and south America

In all of these he found what he needed, an attitude towards a design in which expressive need took precedence over natural fact. He concluded that the sources of art lie deep within human consciousness and that painting should return to its original purpose, the examination of “the interior life of human beings”.

The solution came in 1886 with his 1st visit to Pont Aven in Brittany, where he met and was influenced by Laval and Bernard and no longer painted ‘plein air’. In 1887 he told his wife that he was going to Panama with Laval to “live as a savage”. He lived in Martinique in a native hut where his paintings became more colourful and exotic. In 1888 he made a second visit to Pont Aven and was introduced by Bernard to ‘cloisonnisme’, (so called because the dark outlines between the colours resembled the metal divisions. In Symbolism Gauguin found a way of describing both inner and outward events. His symbols are not always easy to decipher as they are not intended to be precise.

In 1888 he joined Van Gogh for two months and then returned to Paris. He saw the ‘world fair’ and was influenced by the Javanese and Indonesian art and by the summer returned for a third visit to Brittany.

In 1893 he returned to France to exhibit his paintings and began to write a manuscript, but was already ill with syphilis. In 1895 however he left France for the last time for Tahiti, which was becoming increasingly Europeanised. He took a 14 year old girl as his ‘vahine’. In 1897 he received the news of the death of his favourite child Aline and poor, in debt and suffering from eye trouble he painted “Where do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” 1897. He claimed to have tried to commit suicide. He struggled with debt and was ill again for some time. His vahine bore him a son in 1899, he later bought some land and lived with another 14 year old who bore him a daughter. He died in 1903.

Cezanne (1839-1906)

Cezanne has been hailed as ‘The Father of Modernism’. Picasso said of Cezanne “He is the father of us all”.

He belonged to the same generation as the Impressionists but his work developed very slowly. Like Gauguin and Van Gogh, Cezanne is considered, in his own mature style, to be a Post Impressionist who transformed Impressionism for his own artistic purposes. Phoebe Pool says, in her book, “Impressionism”, “If we compare these three artists to the Impressionists, we see that the Impressionists were not always happy individuals, but their problems were generally external (i.e. critical hostility, poverty), whereas Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin were at odds with themselves and society. None of them were interested in being a mere passive eye before nature”. Compared to Gauguin, Cezanne’s life was rather uneventful, and he produced a large number of variations on a very limited range of themes.

Cezanne was born to a wealthy family and in 1858 he entered the drawing academy only to begin studying law at university in 1859 (which was more favourable to his father than pursuing art). However, he abandoned this in 1861 and visited Paris for the first time. He met Pissarro but became slightly discouraged and returned to work at his father’s bank. A year later he failed the entrance exam to the Ecole des Beaux Arts but worked at various other galleries.

Early work: Contained violent and imaginative subject matter, dark still lives and portraits and were not received enthusiastically. Between 1872-1874: Cezanne concentrated on objective painting from the motif and was very influenced by the Impressionists. Unlike the impressionists he took a long time to paint any one painting and worked on the same canvases again and again, adjusting, pondering and analysing his sensations.

Mature Style: By 1900 Cezanne had exhausted the uses of objective Impressionism.

Multi-directional view point

Cezanne’s paintings are cumulative records of successive instantaneities. After 1880 we still see the atmospheric glimmers of Impressionism, but we also see the multiplied contours of objects and shifting perspectives in his landscapes and still lives. Cezanne spent long hours in the actual painting of a subject and he viewed his subject from several slightly different positions. We see intricate inter-relationships of forms seen from shifting points in space. To understand this think of your eyes, not as a camera, which perceives from a fixed viewpoint to another. As you move your eyes and position of what you are looking at changes. Thus Cezanne was painting not only the motif seen but the process of seeing itself. This had a big effect on the work of the Cubists.