POST-IMPRESSIONISM (c. 1880 - 1906)

by Jo Colley 08:54 0 comments

Post-Impressionism had a complicated relationship with it's predecessor art movement of Impressionism, both celebrating the continuation of it's style after the prominence of Japonisme and Art Nouveau and in a sense also rejecting it's very trivial themes. Key artists of the Post-Impressionist era include Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin,Toulouse Lautrec and the Pointilism artists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac and the invention of Chevreul's Colour Wheel in 1839.


The major characteristics of Post-Impressionist era art saw a return to painting rather than elements of the design industry. The elements of Impressionism that saw continuation through it's conclusive era included it's technical features such as the thick and sporadic application of paint, the use of vivid colours but with less emphasis on the light and tonal qualities and more on the use of arbitrary colours, moving towards more abstract forms, it attempted to steer away from soft realism towards fragmentation and geometrics.

However, the rejected qualities of Impressionism that were overturned by Post-Impressionism were the trivial subject matters which were swapped with more meaningful and conceptual ideas, as Post-Impressionism splintered or fractured into a number of different subjects as there was little consolidated agreement between the artists on the direction they would go, a reason for this was the spread of these artists in terms of geographical location, therefore, despite exhibiting together, they did not often work alongside one another.

Pointillism

On it's most basic level, pointilism is the brush stroke technique of creating dots on the canvas in such close proximity they create an impressionist style blending of tones to achieve a Post-Impressionist work of art, relying on the eye to do the most of the work in 'connecting the dots'. This technique is carried out in hopes that the optical mix of colours will induce the idea of a spectrum of mixed colours to the brain. Despite being a process commonly imitated again in the 21st Century as a classic skill, it was only practice of a couple of artists at the time, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.

"A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat,
painted in 1886 using pointillism.

In the painting above, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat, the image is unknowingly made up of a series of very fine dot marks made by a paintbrush. Only on closer inspection can it be noticed how these brush marks are made. This makes for a very soft and natural mixing of colours in the eye. particularly noticeable in the colours of nature, the grass, the trees and the water.

Paul Gauguin

A stockbroker turned artist, Gauguin allowed Post-Impressionist art become his entire life. After the breakdown of his family he began to paint full time, starting to travel to distant regions to paint. The Painter's Family in the Garden at Rue Carcel painted in 1881 is a bitter sweet image of the family of Gauguin from his early art style. His study under the impressionist painter Camille Pissarro is evident here, years before he moved onto more abstract forms and an early sense of primitivism.

"The Painter's Family in the Garden at Rue Carcel" by Paul Gauguin (1881).

The change in his works were defined by periods in his life at which he changed his lifestyle, his environment etc. For example, his work when living with Van Gogh changed dramatically from an Impressionist style to one that accentuates bold, vivid colours and a more abstract, avant-garde style as his style developed. By the time he living an entirely different life in Tahiti, his work had changed once again, featuring extreme cultural influences and changes in the colours and hues he worked with, painting Tahiti as if it was an entirely different world. As once stated, "In order to do something new, we must go back to the source, to human in it's infancy."

"Nevermore" by Paul Gauguin, painted in Tahiti, 1897.

The image above, Nevermore is a case study of how Gauguin's work steered towards abstraction and primitivism as it endured, as one of the artist who changed technique more than anybody else, he claimed "I shut my eyes in order to see". His use of colours became more dark and twisted with only a slight light, expressing more emotion and culture than his early work, this is the idea behind Post-Impressionism, the development of style and subject matter beyond the parameters of Impressionism.

Other Key Artists

Many of the most influential artists up to now are still considered to be from the period of Post-Impressionism, e.g. Paul Cezanne, a contributor to the ideas that became Cubism, looking at the cone and cylinder type shapes in a composition. Painters such as Vincent Van Gogh and his painting, "The Potato Eaters" from 1885 shows how the subject matter of Post Impressionist artwork had shifted from the trivial to more realist concerns.

Ultimately, Post Impressionist art was a suffix to the Impressionist era, after the rise and fall of Japonisme and Art Nouveau, Post Impressionism began to take shape as artists moved on from the more classic styles and embraced abstraction, moving to the conceptual. An art movement that branches off into a large number of geographical locations, with the directions of artists of the movement being very erratic and not moving in conjunction to one another. Artists such as Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Cezanne are artists accredited for their efforts in the art movement.