Original subtitles

You may have seen this painting before. Made by Paul Signac, it has one of the longest titles

of this era. Opus 217, Against the Enamel of a Background, Rhythmic with Beats and Angles,

Tones and Tints, Portrait of M. Felix Fenion in 1890. Phew. And yes, the words in 1890 are part

of the title. I will admit I have a soft spot for long titles, so I love this. In this painting,

we see Paul Signac go full-on abstract psychedelia, taking inspiration from Japanese kimonos, color

theory, and a slew of boundary-pushing graphics. Opus 217 is a great piece to kick off our discussion

of neo-impressionism, a fascinating post-impressionist movement that combined both the science and the

politics of the late 19th century. To look at this painting today, most people probably don't have

any idea just how revolutionary it was, both politically and artistically. Felix Fenion is

the subject of the painting, and he was a highly influential art critic and a dandy who liked to

wear a top hat, gloves, and cane around town. He was also an ardent anarchist. He's famous for saying

acts of terrorism have done a lot more for propaganda than 20 years of pamphlets.

Fenion would actually be imprisoned for several months in connection with anarchist bombings,

though he was eventually acquitted. I realize this may be a bit more violence and destruction than

you expected from such a lovely painting, but the two are intimately connected. Fenion was close

friends with the neo-impressionist painters, and he's the one who coined their name.

Anarchy was very much in vogue in some circles of late 19th century Europe, and as we mentioned,

anarchists had played a significant role in the Paris Commune. The anarchist philosophy of

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon had a strong following in French artistic circles, particularly Gustave

Courbet, who had been a radical member of the Commune and whose art had influenced many

post-impressionists. Anarchism is a broad school of thought, but sympathy for the working classes,

a desire for greater equality and freedom, and opposition to power and authority generally

united them. Artists would have seen firsthand how their wealthy and powerful patrons lived

compared to the poor and destitute they lived amongst. How far would they go to pursue their

views varied. Most artists weren't advocating terrorism like Fenion did, but those who saw

countless friends and family die in poverty felt complete justification in tearing down the

system. And the neo-impressionists felt that their art could help challenge the hegemonic order by

presenting alternative perspectives of the world. We can see that in Paul Signac's signature

anarchist anthem called In the Time of Harmony. That wasn't its original title, though. At first,

it was called In the Time of Anarchy. Artists were walking a tightrope. All their patrons, curators,

collectors, were all from the upper class and were not fans of anarchy, socialism, or any other new

political movements. Thus, Signac censors himself and renames it In the Time of Harmony.

Unlike the original impressionists, the neo-impressionists had no problems with signs,

symbols, and metaphors. While using the same principles of witnessing the colors of light and

exaggerating those bold contrasts, they were repurposing this painting language for a more directed

political message. Looking closely at this work, we see people picking fruit, playing games, dancing,

painting, and generally relaxing and having a good time. But these are not random activities. The

tree, for example, is not on private property. It's public property. Rather than benefiting the few,

the abundance of nature provides for everyone. Way back up on the horizon, a tiny little tractor sits,

unused, as the farmers dance in the shade of the large tree. Machinery allows you to work more

productively and thus much faster. But when you don't have a capitalist boss forcing you to work 12

hours a day to increase profits, greater productivity means you can stop working when the

work is done. You can work and have the time and energy to enjoy yourself. Signac said,

When rid of the exploiters who exhaust him, the worker will have time to think and to learn.

He will appreciate all the qualities of a work of art.

The rooster in the corner is also a symbol. It was said that the rooster will fight until it wins or

dies. This is the type of attitude they were projecting. They weren't going to give up until

this was a reality. With the free time that the ruling class enjoys, people would be free to read,

study, and better themselves. They could paint, recreate, and relax. The types of things that everyone

wants to do. Everyone wants to be in control of their time and limit the amount they are breaking their

backs for someone else's wealth. Okay, so we understand the message. But why use this painting

style? Lots of dots? What does this have to do with socialism or anarchy? I'm glad you asked. The big

push for anarchists is collective emancipation. The freeing of society from these horrible cycles of

poverty and abuse of laborers. This was only possible through individual emancipation. Each person was

valuable. Each person had dignity, and they deserved to live a free and happy life. Pointillism mirrors this

idea, where you can compare a painting with society. It's a metaphor. From afar, we see the whole scene

working together. But when we get closer, we can see each individual dot, each individual citizen. The

individual dot is emancipated in a way, free to be a different color or size or texture sometimes there,

solely to add contrast and beauty. The dots work together, locally, to form a shadow or a branch.

Each local area works together to create a beautiful society. But wait, you might be thinking,

we had a whole lecture on Seurat who invented this method. You didn't mention anything about him

being an anarchist. Were his works full of revolutionary meaning as well? Well, not really. There are subtle

commentaries on class in works like The Bathers at Aznières, but most of his paintings don't have an

obvious political message. People have scoured Seurat's works looking for that deeper political agenda.

But the reality is, there's no record of him having much to say or do with politics. It's only after

Seurat's death that Sinyak and friends transformed the Neo-Impressionist group into something much more

political. So let's dive a bit more into Sinyak, who becomes the ringleader of the Seurat devotees

after their founder's death. He was born in Paris to a middle-class family who pushed him towards a more

respectable creative field, in this case architecture. This was also taught at École des Beaux-Arts,

but before Sinyak even starts there, he knows it's not for him. So he soon drops his drafting tools,

picks up a paintbrush, and dives into Impressionism. And this was what Paul's early paintings looked

like. Lovely Impressionist landscapes with a believable sense of light and shadow, subtle contrasting

colors, enriching each other for a pleasing light and colorful atmosphere. But then, Sinyak meets Seurat in

1884 and everything changes. Paul sees bathers at Aznières and he's instantly drawn to Seurat's new ideas.

Before long, he's soaking up all the same theories Seurat is reading and beyond. Sinyak really gets

into a guy called Charles Henry, who's writing about the connections between color and emotion,

with new psychological theories. Sinyak himself would eventually write several treatises on art,

in a way he was the intellectual heart of the group. And compared to the somewhat withdrawn and

soft-spoken Seurat, Sinyak is the opposite, a big promoter of new ideas. Soon, he's recruiting other

artists like Pissarro to join them. Before long, there's a little group of artists who are working

in Seurat's style by day and debating theories and concepts in the cafés by night. Sinyak's own

works start out fairly conservative, without too many crazy colors, and a more naturalistic sense of

space. In this painting, you can see, it's quite a lovely effect, and it's nice to see this technique

applied in this traditional landscape motif. Sinyak loves boating, and Seurat was influential in many

ways, as he does a lot of harbor and coastal scenes in the summer, just like his friend did.

He's absolutely infatuated with the port, boats, docks, masts, sails. He uses views like this over

and over again throughout his career. But around 1888, Sinyak started to discover the works of

anarchists, and soon the Neo-Impressionists are talking political ideas as much as artistic ones.

Seurat likely had a moderating effect on the group's politics, because after he dies in 1891,

Sinyak steers the Neo-Impressionists into a much more radical turn. And that's when things get

really interesting. This painting, for example, from 1893, in many ways is a wild departure from

where Sinyak was. This painting is more like a dreamscape. It has glowing yellow grass, blue and

purple trees, reaching up to the sky like long fingers. A very small, lone individual sits on a

bench, surrounded by this highly surreal scene, almost as if Sinyak is illustrating this person's

psychedelic experience, predating a lot of 1960s counterculture art. His beloved paintings of

boats also start changing in interesting ways. It's no wonder he's drawn to these subjects,

though. When you look at reflections rippling in the water, this is practically an Impressionist

painting happening live in nature. The way the water catches the sunlight and breaks up the

reflections into smaller lines and specks, interrupted by small waves and ripples, make

water an ideal divisionist subject matter. He does scenes like this over and over in different

types of mood and light. I love these color experiments from the same point of view, inspired

by Monet's famous Rouen Cathedral, paintings that were done at different times of the day,

which he had painted just a few years earlier. Here's the thing, though, about pointillism,

it's difficult and tedious. Maybe you've already figured that out, but it takes a long time to make

a hundred dots in the space of a single brushstroke. Many artists like Pissarro flirted with the technique

and then gave it up, but not Sinyak. Remarkably, he sticks with it for the rest of his career,

and he will master the technique like no one else. This painting of the Port of San Tropez is quite

stunning. With his maturity and control over color and mark, he's able to combine a large number of

complicated elements, compositionally, spatially, and color-wise. There's a ton going on here,

but Sinyak makes it look effortless. His skies are particularly beautiful. The way the pinks and

yellows on the left fade up to a greenish-blue. Despite its beauty, this painting is still political

as well. Finished in 1901, across continents, anarchists were desperately and violently attempting

to bring down the global order. The American President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo

that year. Homemade bombs were exploding all over Europe. In less than a decade, the King of Italy,

the Prime Minister of Spain, the Empress of Austria-Hungary, and the President of France had

all been murdered by anarchists. It was an incredibly violent time. Sinyak and the Neo-Impressionists,

though, are not so violent. They're advocating a more peaceful and gentle revolution. By offering an

alternative vision of the future and hope through anarchist ideas, paintings like the Port of San

Tropez feature workers and fishermen toiling away in the dark shadows. But look beyond to the other

side, bathed in light, and hope there's a better place to be. So the anarchism of the Neo-Impressionists

is more subtle than the manifestos and declarations of the movement. Though they shared radical politics,

they focused on art as a force for social harmony and utopianism for the future. A few works,

like the Demolisher here, are more explicit in their sympathies. But to find their more radical work,

you usually have to dig a bit deeper. The anarchist newspaper called Les Thames Nouveaux featured more

directly political work such as the Demolisher, for example. Sinyak was by far the best-known Neo-Impressionists

after a Syrah, but there were many others. One of the lesser-known was Charles Angrand. Charles had a

unique path to his career. He was denied entrance to the École des Beaux-Arts, an art school reject.

So, he decides to teach math instead. It's pretty safe to say he was the only post-Impressionist math teacher.

Fortuitously, the school he taught at was near some of the hot spots for artists to hang out.

Then, like many of his peers were also doing, he subverts the traditional École des Beaux-Arts route.

He strikes up some new friendships at the café to start learning and painting with them,

falling in with Neo-Impressionists like Sinyak and Syrah. In my opinion, Charles Angrand's paintings

are okay. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with them. He was good. But it's his drawings that

really made people sit up and take notice. I think they're what made Angrand an amazing artist. Paul

Sinyak described his drawings as poems of light. Let's take a look at some. Wow! There is such an

extremely soft delicacy to the transitions from light to dark. And the transformation of the

white of the paper into the convincing light of a sunny sky is not an easy task. The way the light

subtly and gradually creeps around the edges of the trees. The way a backlit object will soften and

diffuse at the edges. A full range of values, we have a deep, dark, black contrast in the foreground,

making the light even more dramatic. Compare this one to the path in the country. It's quite small and

not very delicate or sophisticated. But there is something entirely convincing to the light on the

plants and the road that is nearly photographic when looking at it small. Up close, it's rather

clumsy looking with big random dots, not very much variation in tone, none at all in the sky. But it really

captures that bright, flat light that you see midday when the sun is high on clear days. It almost makes

you want to squint because it's too bright outside. Yet this drawing, called End of the Harvest, is just

incredible. So soft, so subtle, so surreal. It's very ethereal. I don't really know what's going on in this

scene, but I don't care. I've succumbed. And I'm just lost in the light, wrapped up in a very soft and fluffy

landscape, like being swallowed by a beautiful bright cloud. With the perspective leading us

to the light, there's an almost heavenly, spiritual feeling to it. Comparing it to the previous painting,

which couldn't be more different, is fascinating. He had quite a range. Again, you wouldn't know to

look at any of these that Angrand was a fairly committed anarchist as well, and he frequently

contributed illustrations to the anarchist newspapers. Perhaps the best clue we get from any of his art is

The Harvesters from 1892, which shows French peasants toiling in the fields. But if it's a class

commentary, it's pretty mild. I have to include Hippolyte Pettigene in this lecture, even if it's

just for his name. What a great name, Hippolyte Pettigene. If I'm being honest, Hippolyte's paintings

aren't my cup of tea. They don't have the sense of light the others have. The color is a bit less

sophisticated, but not in a way that is descriptive and economical. To me, Hippolyte's paintings look

more decorative than many of the others. They lack the complex emotions and undertones that

intrigue you and draw you in. But all of this underscores how hard divisionism can be to master

as a technique. He started out strong with paintings like this. I like the rainbow spectrum of colors he

has going on. The dots don't seem to be doing much for the painting, though, and the color choices and

light look rather arbitrary to me. Pettigene abandons the neo-impressionist for over a decade,

then returns around 1910, and when he did, he was making these almost retro Renoir-esque nudes.

But this was about 40 years too late for that. I can see their appeal and why they'd be popular with

many people around this time. But he's not breaking any new ground or saying anything new. He's mostly

recycling older techniques into an easy breezy, nice scene. I'd like to finish this lecture instead

talking about Theo van Roysselburg. As you might be guessing by the name, Theo van Roysselburg was not

a French painter. He was born in Belgium to a French-speaking family, though. After a firmly bourgeoisie

upbringing, he went to the Academy Royal de Beaux-Arts in Brussels. He did very well and began exhibiting

in the Belgian salons as a teenager. A bit of a prodigy. At the Academy, he was heavily influenced by

Jean-Francois Portales, who was famous for painting scenes from North Africa. Theo would subsequently travel

to Morocco several times. Theo was making paintings like this early on. As colonialism spread and cultural

depictions became exoticized and commercialized, these paintings became very popular. In this piece,

called Arabian Fantasia, Theo picks up a theme and title common to many artists like Eugene Delacroix.

Theo was very active in the art community and he co-founded an artist group in Brussels called

Les Vines. They were radical, anti-academy artists that functioned like the Salon des Independents in Paris.

Though, because Belgium had a much smaller art community, they often invited avant-garde artists

from America and around Europe to exhibit with them. Like many post-Impressionists, Van

Roysselburgh at first gets inspired by the Impressionists and tried his hand at some portraits and seascapes in

their style. But when he sees Seurat's La Grande Jatte on exhibit in Paris, Theo was immediately enamored,

and from then on he focused all his attention on painting this way. Along with several other

Belgian painters, they brought Neo-Impressionism to Belgium. He invites Seurat to show La Grande Jatte at

the next Les Vines. When the show opens, the painting is heavily criticized. As one critic notes,

it to be incomprehensible gibberish applied to the noble art of painting.

Roysselburgh, however, was able to use pointillism in a much more highly realistic way than Seurat or

the others did. Perhaps it was his classical training? Overall, I think it's because he had

the highest resolution. What do I mean? Well, if you think about dots per square inch, Theo probably had

the most. Like a phone or TV screen, higher resolution gave him the ability to show more precise detail and

clarity. He also had a way of using the trademark oversaturated contrast, but the result when he

used smaller dots created more natural colors. He would also abandon the dots for the smallest and

most sensitive details, like the subtleties in the eyes and nose and lips. You can see him using more

traditional blending to achieve some of those intricate details. In this painting of Maria Seth,

we can see his hyper-accurate attention to detail and nuance. Of course, the light on her face and

dress is the star of the show, but there are some other great details as well, such as the swirling

pattern on the walls and the impossibly rich red curtain in the corner. He's even able to maintain crisp,

sharp edges like we can see on the piano. The other neo-impressionists were never able to get that level

of clarity and detail. It must have been exhausting to paint with that level of detail using such a

repetitive stroke. It requires a dedication and perseverance that few could maintain. And,

understandably maybe, as the years roll on, we start to see some looser and less intricate paintings,

where he's simplifying a landscape and reducing it to one or two colors.

This painting, called Coastal Scene, is a nice example of his ability to work with a minimal composition

and a minimal color palette. Of course, that's how it looks from the right viewing distance. If we get

closer, we see all kinds of pinks and greens and purples and oranges and yellows. It's quite remarkable.

And as soft as this looks, some of the paint dabs are actually quite thick and rough in some places.

I love the irony of the thick, heavy, and messy strokes that create such a calm and ethereal light.

Here in big clouds, we see a much more quick and playful painting than we usually do from Van

Roiselberg, with larger dots and more exaggerated colors than he normally used.

Thankfully, he continued to paint more of the time-consuming, highly detailed and rendered scenes

as well. This painting of Sylvie de Camp's Monhomme is another excellent example.

She's looking very pristine and precise from afar, from the sheen of the wood on the chair

to the hyper-realistic hand and fingers. However, the closer you get, the more things start to get weird.

The contrasting purples and greens around her eyes make it difficult to focus as the colors

are vibrating. The same thing happens when you look close at her jacket. In the background,

he's using larger dots as the scene dissipates into blurs of color, as if you were looking through

a color separation of a screen print.

These are quite remarkable paintings, and I think, had Seurat lived to see them,

he would have been impressed with how far Theo was able to take this technique.

Roiselberg's grandest and most ambitious piece would probably have to be this major painting of

the glowing hour. As we saw with Cezanne, this was a popular subject of choice when reaching for that

epic status of the museum masterpiece. This painting was over 10 feet long and over 7 feet tall.

I think Van Roiselberg is firing on all cylinders here. He's pulling the best from pointless

techniques. The rich, vibrant, exaggerated sunset tones create a hyper-realistic sense of light and glow.

He's using bigger, looser dots and marks in the ground and the water, and then much smaller and finer

dots on the figures themselves, refining them even further until they are imperceptible from blending in

the most nuanced parts like the hair and the facial features. This painting is a remarkable accomplishment

and must be quite an experience to see in person. The women are nearly life-size, and with the sense

of space and light, it would envelop you as you stood in front of it. But these are the final years of

divisionism and neo-impressionism. Talented as Signac and Van Roiselberg and others are, nothing they

produce creates quite the sensation that Seurat did. And this was a style that was almost all who really

studied it eventually abandoned. Take, for example, this painting of dahlias in a vase done in 1907 by

Van Roiselberg. You can still see some remnants of pointillism, especially in the background on the

tapestry, but in each area you'll notice his marks are a different shape and size. The brush marks in

the flower mimic the petal shapes, and the strokes in the table and vase are long and narrow. The color

is also directly painted, rather than yellow and blue dots to create green. He just mixes up green and

paints green. Pointillism is a style that becomes almost a historical footnote, given his high school

art assignments sometimes, but not the revolution in painting the neo-impressionists had hoped.

And the ironic thing about divisionism is that it didn't actually do what it was meant to do.

Seurat was using science to achieve vivid, hyper-realistic color that smacked you in the face.

While the effect is innovative, interesting, and exciting, we don't see vivid, hyper-realistic color

often in these paintings. What we get is a somewhat hazy and fastidious-looking art. They didn't quite

succeed in unlocking that portal in our minds to a direct color experience.

Adding to the irony, the bigger legacy might be the political one. No, the neo-impressionist art

didn't directly inspire big political change, but the fusing of an artistic movement with a political

agenda becomes increasingly common in avant-garde movements over the coming decades. Some Italian

artists, for example, are very inspired by the neo-impressionists.

In 1901, Giuseppe Polizza di Volepto unveils the Fourth Estate, explicitly politicizing his subjects

and using pointillism to show a worker's strike. And they won't be the last. In the next few decades,

suprematism, futurism, socialist realism, and Dadaism will all have strong political ambitions.

Some will publish entire treatises on how their art and their politics are united.

Art has always been political to some degree, but the idea that political ideology could be the

inspiration and basis for an artistic style is where the neo-impressionists took a rare step,

and in so doing, inspired others to follow suit. For better or worse, it's another fascinating way

the post-impressionist generation expanded what art could be and how it was used.