POST-VISIT REFLECTION (CONT.) QUESTIONS •
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It is said that Seurat tried to convey a more permanent image of a landscape rather than its momentary appearance. Do you agree that he achieved this? If so, how? If not, how did he fail in this attempt? Seurat transcribed what he considered the lasting essence of reality. What aspects of A Sunday on La Grande Jatte – 1884 are real and unreal? Give examples of contemporary artists who search for purity of light and colour in their practice as Seurat did. How has technology enhanced our understanding and use of colour? The foundation of Seurat’s theoretical framework was the difference between coloured light and coloured pigment. Does this search for purity of light and colour exist in today’s artistic practice? Has technology enhanced our understanding and use of colour or has it impaired a sense of true colour? What are the ways that we seek to explore colour and light in contemporary art?
Discuss whether you agree or disagree with this statement
‘At the time of exhibiting, many viewers of paintings by Seurat and Signac complained that their pictures were indistinguishable one from another. This was an understandable reaction given the deliberate impersonality of the pointillist technique’.” 3 •
Consider and discuss how science can contribute to the creative process.
‘Seurat was actually seeking a way to make the physical substance of oil paint generate the luminosity and radiance of real light. Simply stated, Seurat’s entry into the realm of science focussed on the way the eye sees and way coloured light, as well as coloured pigment, behaves’.” 4 •
Discuss the way harmony is used effectively in both painting and music (with examples).
Georges Seurat in his letter to Maurice Beaubourg, 1890 states that, ‘Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrary elements and the analogy of similar elements of tone, color and line, considered according to their dominants and under the influence of light, in gay, calm, or sad combinations’.” 5
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B. Thompson. The Post-Impressionists, Phaidon, New York, 1990, p23 E. Lee. The Aura of Neo-Impressionism: The WJ Holliday Collection. Indianna University Press, 1983, p15. 5 J. Taylor (editor). Nineteenth-century Theory of Art. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, p541. 4
Sunday in the Park with George Education Resource – Visual Arts © Victorian Opera