By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2019
What this article is about
This article is about 'pointillism', a painfully meticulous technique using distinct dots of colour. It was developed by Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, partly in response to impressionism, so it belongs to the 'neo-impressionist' or 'post-impressionist' stable. The pair later evolved a similar technique called 'divisionism' (also known as 'chromoluminarism'), using larger, cube-like strokes.
These artists were looking at hues and tones more methodically, trying to create an optical effect, by placing colours side by side, that worked at a distance from the canvas. So pointillism and divisionism can be thought of as 'scientific impressionism', which seemed to its practitioners more desirable than the 'romantic impressionism' that came before.
Opinion on both was, and remains, divided. Not everybody could, er, see the point. But both generated interesting work and clearly influenced Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Dali, Gauguin, Cezanne, Derain and others, including Andy Warhol. So they were ultimately at the (square) root of cubism, futurism, fauvism (whose exponents were tagged 'wild beasts' for their non-naturalistic colour), surrealism and pop art. It's worth looking at the two together, partly because they're hard to separate and partly because of their illustrious successors.
Seurat and Signac developed the technique in the late 1880s, to a mixed reception. Critics gave it its name in mockery (in French a 'point' is a full stop, implying the movement was a dead end), and some notable artists refused to exhibit alongside pointillists. It was Félix Fénéon, an art critic and anarchist, who first referred to painting by dots. He was later immortalised by Signac (see above), though he personally preferred the terms 'divisionism' and 'chromoluminarism'.
A nod to science
What the pointillists were doing had a sound scientific basis, and they felt it mattered that art should be intellectually satisfying because it applied scientific principles.
Today's designers and printers would recognise the idea. Instead of blending pigments on a palette, Seurat and Signac were in effect dividing everything as the CMYK process does, into cyan, magenta, yellow and black (the 'K'). They placed primary colours close together to create the illusion of secondary colours. They normally used oil paints, occasionally crayons, because oil doesn't bleed or mix as watercolours do, and they left white between the dots. The effect is broadly comparable to a TV screen or computer monitor mixing red, green and blue. The technique relies on fooling the eye and brain into blending adjacent colours.
The artists were applying the research of Charles Blanc, a colour theorist who was also an experienced engraver, publisher, critic and professor of art history. Blanc identified colours that complemented each other harmoniously and colours that definitely didn't, which led Van Gogh to clash his colours deliberately to suggest conflict.
Blanc was not alone. The French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, author of 'De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs' (roughly, 'Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colours'), made further relevant discoveries in dyeing cloth. So this was joined-up thinking!
A jump-off point for cubism, fauvism, futurism and pop art
Pointillism indisputably had a lasting influence on other artists and movements, one still evident today. Some of the spin-offs were short-lived: Fauvism lasted only a couple of years at the start of the 20th century. Van Gogh would never have had the patience to sit applying oil in wee dots for days on end. But he certainly met Signac, and even painted at least one canvas in collaboration with Seurat. So he was hooked, for a time at least.
The influence is not just about pinpricks of paint and the illusion they create. It's about the adjacency of colours. That is the interest that passed to Matisse, Picasso, Dali, Warhol and others.
After Seurat's death in 1891, Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross continued the work of the movement. (Cross was born a Delacroix but doubtless wished to avoid confusion with the recently deceased romantic painter Eugène Delacroix.) Signac died only in 1935. By then artists such as Paul Klee and Maximilien Luce, another anarchist like Félix Fénéon, had taken up the baton.
Conclusion
Pointillism will stay popular, and even a print is likely to hold its value.
To see more pointillist work, go to the Tate's pages at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/n/neo-impressionism and http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/georges-seurat-1926. There is much more online, such as the Signac digital collection at https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15324coll10/id/161820. So there are plenty of sources for prints.
You'll need them framing, and help with picture mounts and more. EasyFrame is an obvious and affordable supplier, whether you want everything you'd need to do the job yourself or would rather they did it for you. Any good framer will show you a range of solutions and advise on what suits the work and where it will hang.
EasyFrame is on 01234 856 501 and sales@easyframe.co.uk, and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!