Post-Impressionism

==Post-Impressionism Characteristics:==

  • 1886-1905
  • Instead of art being a window onto the world, it became a window into the artist’s mind using memories/emotions
  • Symbolic & personal
  • Focused on abstract form and pattern
  • Combination of the colour and light of impressionism with the design and structure/composition of traditional painting.
  • Sought to make an emotional experience through the use of:   * Symbolism   * Vibrant colour   * Captivating forms
  • An exaggerated form of impressionism
  • Dabs of colour allow the viewer’s eye to blend them (diff people saw diff things)

\ ^^Differences with Impressionism:^^

  • Artists planned their canvases instead of going by an instantaneous glimpse
  • Combination of Impressionism’s colour and light with traditional structure and composition

\ ^^2 Directions of Impressionism:^^

  • Cézanne & Seurat: Looked for the permanence of form and concentrated on design
  • Van Gogh and Gaugin: Emphasized emotional and sensuous expression   * Considered “spiritual” post-impressionists due to their depcition of emotion and shying away from Realism

\ ^^Impact on 20th-Century Artists:^^

  • Freed artists from traditional painting techniques and Renaissance concepts of space and form
  • Produced a variety of styles
  • Gave an extreme range of individual expression that characterizes art in the 20th century

\ %%Seurat:%%

  • Created “marvellously light-filled pictures” based on impressionist techniques and scientific ones (photography + physics)
  • Master of pointillism/divisionism
  • Used vibrant colour + optical mixing + structured compositions
  • Ex. Bathers at Asnières, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (rich people pointillism)

\ %%Van Gogh%%

  • Used Impasto: thick globs of paint (vigorous strokes)
  • Early work: Used very dark tones (depressed, suicidal), traditional technique
  • After seeing Impressionism: Colour brightened, and brushstrokes became visible   * Brilliant colour to immortalize his subjects & textured surface   * He used CONTRAST to create a visual vibration that at first might seem shocking.
  • Eventually committed suicide
  • Ex. Café Terrace at Night, The Starry Night, Sunflowers

\ %%Toulouse-Lautrec:%%

  • Broke both legs at 14, then became a painter.   * Painted at elbow-height
  • A favourite subject for his caricatures: dancers & circus performers
  • Immerses his viewers into his art (ex. woman and table in At the Moulin Rouge draw the viewer into direct relationship with the scene).
  • First artist to produce modern posters for commercial purposes such as cabarets’ advertisements
  • Drew circus posters & oil pieces with the pretty woman
  • Ex. At the Moulin Rouge, The Glutton, Japanese Couch

\ %%Gauguin:%%

  • Very simplistic style (stark lines)
  • Rejected the formlessness of Impressionism and realistic portrayal
  • He wanted to return to a primitive form of art with simple forms and symbolism rendered in a decorative and stylized way
  • Gauguin outlined his shapes and used many Egyptian poses   * He flattened form into decorative shapes and combined brilliant colours to express his feelings
  • Combines his Christianity with tropical lifestyle/Tahiti (ex. depicts Tahitian woman and her son like Mary and Christ)
  • “Goofy art”   * Ex. The Yellow Christ, Self Portrait with the Yellow Christ, Tahitian Women on the Beach, Parau Api

\ %%Cézanne:%%

  • Liked:   * Balance, thick paint, objects reduced to simple forms
  • Did not want his paintings to imitate the realistic 3 dimensionalities of nature
  • He felt free to move objects and adjust relationships of colour/form even it meant distortion
  • He discarded the traditional aerial and linear perspective and painted foreground, middleground, background, and sky with the same intensity.
  • Uses flat abstract planes of colour to manipulate dimensions/space
  • Began painting still-life because nobody would sit for him (unless they are card-players that would sit for hours)
  • Painted still-life and card players
  • Ex. The Basket of Apples, The Card Players \n Mont Sainte-Victoire

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