Seurat: A Great Unknown Painter

Yuko Otomo
October 2015

Part I

People’s attention spans, as propelled by art journalism in general, have a very short duration. That’s part of the scheme of the capitalistic art establishment. Make a big splash & cause a hot sensation to get the most attention possible at the moment to cash in. Nobody’s talking about Jeff Koons so much now as I write this at the summer’s end. His mass media high time has been gone for quite a while & his name rarely shows up in any journalistic publications. Of course, his art is being dealt with on a bigger than ever mega scale in the art money world, but it is as if nobody cares about him or his art for now (* read the Post-Script).  Although I am still planning to write on him out of my own sense of moral responsibility, I’ve not actually started it yet.

Right after seeing his retrospective in the old Whitney Museum uptown, I looked for a writing I was sure I had done on him in the 90s when he was pushing his way into the high-end art scene. As I found the entry on Made in Heaven @ Sonnabend Gallery (Nov. 23, Sat.) in my late 1991- early 1992 journal, I also ran into writings in the same book on the 2 other shows I had seen around the same time that affected me in a very special way.   One was Brice Marden’s Cold Mountain Series @ DIA in Chelsea that I’d seen on the same day as Koons’ in Soho. According to what I had written, I’d taken a long walk by myself to see his new series in order to clear the ill effects I’d gotten from the Koons show. I said that the Cold Mountain Series had successfully cleansed out of me all that (forced) toxicity of Koons’ work to help me regain my sanity. Another was the exhibition of Seurat, 1859-1891 (with a related show, Neo-Impressionism: The Friends & Followers of Georges Seurat) that I had seen almost 2 months later at the Metropolitan Museum. I had written that the show had given me a rare meditative moment to contemplate the world of a great-unknown painter who’d died extremely young.

The broadening of the meaning of “what art is” has brought out many types of art that pre-Modern era artists could never have imagined. It could be an interesting idea to go back to when people could never have even dreamt of anyone like Koons to reexamine the context of the psychic flow of our art history, I thought. So, before I start a writing on Koons that will be big & heavy, I’ve decided to translate what I wrote on Seurat, who is totally opposite Koons in many respects: the type of art he dedicated himself to; his personality; his position in the art world; his historical significance in art history… He was not even 32 when he died suddenly, as Schubert had at the same age. Interestingly, his art & name survive among us, although he’d never know they would. His spirit is sensitive, fragile, deep & light. On the other hand, Koons’ is dense with a vulgarity and a deadly weight of shallow materialism & commerce=money that his art is associated with. You really can’t compare the two in the same breath, but it was a fascinating coincidence that I found my writings written less than 2 months apart from each other in the same journal on these 2 contrasting artists .

Post-Script:

How naïve I was even to think that Koons was taking a break from his strategic, militaristic advancement! No, he’s been working very hard not to lag in the intensification of his visibility that the hype of the art world depends upon to survive. Visibility is the proof of greatness on his own terms. Right after I’d finished Part I, I accidentally ran into an article on his new move. Now he is in Florence, standing next to David by Michelangelo outside the Palazzo Vecchio as part of an international Biennial of Antique Art Fair. Koons’ Pluto and Prosenina (“inspired” by Bennini’s Rape of Prosenina) stands face to face with one of the most “famous” & most “beloved” standing sculptures in the history of art. What an easy “conceptual” twist! It’s part of his “historical (r)e-valuation” strategies again, following what he did at Versailles. Interestingly, it’s said that David itself was a replica of the original. How cheap can this combination be! But, the general public will be wowwwed & ahhhhed in being fooled happily as expected. This way, Koons will get continual visibility & the antique art fair will get some desired attention. It’s a win-win situation for both sides. It’s another match made in Heaven. This way, everybody who is involved will cash in through this perfectly “arranged marriage.”

The Nurse. 1882-1883, Georges Seurat
Conté crayon – 32 x 24.5 cm, Andrea Woodner Collection

Part II

Seurat, 1859 – 1891

 @ The Metropolitan Museum, NYC

seen & written on Jan. 8  (Wed)  & later concluded on Feb. 9  (Sun)  1992

I don’t know why I didn’t put the notes I’d randomly taken on the Seurat exhibition into an order to write something on him right away. Again, I ended up seeing the show on the last day, being nervous & worrying about not missing it. Thinking of his extremely short life from 1859 to 1891, I could not stop feeling conscious of some heart-wrenching pain & oppression that I’d feel for anyone who’d died so young. Living (on this earth) less than 32 years is much too short, no matter what…

3 things had spurred my deep curiosity toward this artist. One was Ad Reinhardt’s cartoon of a tree, How to Look at Modern Art in America in which he’d pointed out Seurat as one of its 4 major roots along with Cezanne, Gauguin & V.V.G. Another was the fact that Duchamp had called him his favorite artist when he was interviewed on the subject. The last one was the fact that I knew virtually nothing about him except for having seen some of his famed seascape works & the most well known La Grand Jatte, where he studied “Light” via so-called “Pointillism.” Or, I should say that these 3 things told me not to miss the show, not just to have curiosity about it. I felt an unusually strong need to understand him and his work.

An opening panel of the show gave us general information about the artist, describing him as a “Technician,” a “Risk-Taker” & an “Inventor.” I thought it funny that he had the nickname “Notary” (which happened to be Duchamp’s father’s occupation). Some images of his military period sketchbooks reminded me of the ones by my maternal grandfather, a navel officer/painter, Yagi Kyugo, who painted during WWII. “Here is a Genius!” I muttered to myself. After 1880, he walks on his path straightforwardly without derailing. Nurse and Child (1881-1882) is an important work that shows his essential qualities powerfully. It’s interesting to see the same theme, “Nurse and Child” reoccur in his oeuvres again & again. Although I don’t know if he did it intentionally or not, a diptych “pairing” of works such as Woman Leaning on a Parapet & Man Leaning on a Parapet, done between 1879 & 1881, brings forth a marvelous “parallel quality.” Each of these images of a human figure seen from behind sings its sense of “existence” & “poem” beautifully. It naturally makes me think of C.D. Friedrich’s motif. Most of the B&W drawings were done with conte-crayons. The mysterious depth of both dark & light challenges us, showing some fundamental elements of existence abstracted through bold contrasts.

The series of work done between 1882 & 1884, Concierge, Nurse and Carriage, The Veil, shows strong examples of such abstraction. In 1883-1884, he enters the realm of naturalism as far as his subjects are concerned. House Painter projects something impressively strong & deep. Here, he overlaps himself as an artist painter with a house painter, showing a certain religious sensitivity similar to V.V.G.’s devotion to working people.  I clearly feel his sincerity. Unlike a typical chiaroscuro, Irradiation Chiaroscuro expresses the light & dark that “existence’ itself has emanated through its own brilliance, clarity, emission & dispersing heat. His Irradiation Chiaroscuro is an event that takes place in the territory of abstraction in a philosophical sense: to abstract. In 1883-84, wood panel paintings surface alongside his conte-drawings on paper.  He adds colors on white coated or varnished processed wooden panels. Perhaps it must have been the result of this technical aspect; every wooden panel brings about “the mood of dusk.” As I see them in the middle of the afternoon, these “dusk” paintings keep dispersing their metaphysical strength. It is as if the fast tempo of maturity of those who die young is intensifying the impression of “dusk.” There you see a tranquility that brings about a certain sense of unrest. Here, I start becoming conscious of the posthumously added signature that says Seurat. It is said that L. Molin, his dealer, signed works himself after the artist’s passing. The worldly world where art & life & money overlap. Commodification. Trade. Profit. Red signatures scattered on quite a few works of the artist push me to have some sense of heart-wrenching unreasonableness, or, I should say that my own voice of naïve idealism, in protest against the unreasonableness of this reality, squeaks. A mood of dusk appears again in his Poplars, done in 1883-1884. & then the remote darkness of Rain (1882-83). 2 young women next to me made strange laughing voices together in front of this work. & again, they echoed each other, lightly pronouncing the title, The Mower, in front of it in a chorus. A similarity shared by both V.V.G. & Seurat. Sentiments. Emotions. Stonebreaker. Gardener. Drawbridges. Steamboats. Locomotives in this period show us an indication of the approaching modernity of his era, & it is like seeing the historical position where humanity stood a century ago. Horse Cart. Carriage. Tip Cart. Echoes from the old era. & railroad tracks. In Bathing Place, Asnieres, brush strokes broken into pieces create an optical mixture.

Now, A Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte. I still don’t quite understand why this famed piece of work that has encouraged the titles for endlessly available parodies that say “A Sunday on so & so…” has gained such a special popularity among us. One thing I can say is that Seurat was clearly awakened to the direction of color tones & lines by the time he’d reached this work. Well analyzed brush strokes make the world of mastery & maturity he’d established through the period of the B&W conte-drawings come alive on these totally different materials: oil on canvas. (Actualization.) We witness 27 small wood panels, 27 drawings and 3 canvases showing the appearing & disappearing of various objects & subjects till we reach the final “work.” A cadet. A woman in a rose-colored skirt with a child. A man with a top hat on. A woman fishing. A nurse. A monkey. A chair. A young woman. 3 young women sitting. A woman with a parasol. A couple. A woman with a monkey. Various figures that ended up appearing in the final work come & go in the amazing numbers of these study works. Although we are allowed to wonder if he really needed to have this many studies to reach a conclusion, no one will ever know the answer but Seurat himself. Or I could say, it must have been beyond his conscious decision making impulse. The seascapes, Grand Campe, Port-en-Bessin (1888), & Le Croty, that he painted in his summer places, follow. Through these seascape paintings, he continued to depict “eternally scattering emitting light.” He tried to captivate ever-dispersing light in the painted frame of another dimensional eternity as an artificial twist to reality. Yet, since the painted frame itself keeps dispersing & emitting light, we the viewers are pulled into a double illumination. I have no way of knowing if Seurat intentionally tried to invite viewers into the effects of light that he himself experienced. But it is sure that he was obsessed in his efforts in recreating on canvas the light that he experienced. It’s no wonder that he was challenging himself to find out about the ever dispersing, the outward motioned & scattering world of light that exists in opposition to the inward motioned & condensing world of the B&W conte drawings. Facing the 2 conflicting muses of Life: Dark & Light, a young Seurat could not stop being obsessed with capturing them both. His attitude in using his own terminology “Chromo-Luminarism” instead of the commonly used “Pointilism” to explain his methods of painting is filled with sincerity. What he aimed at is “Lumination=Light,” not “Points.”

To call his last days “the late years” sounds almost strange, bringing us unnatural pains. Seurat, just passing 30, searched for romanticism in The Circus as he’d already in the past burnt through his passion for naturalism. Side Show. Band Leader. Two Clowns. Pierrot. Colombino. Here, avoiding the terminology “model,” he uses “Poseuses.” Seeing The Eiffel Tower still under construction in the works he did right before he passed away, I think of the time when the 19^th Century closed its curtain. Humanity was walking into the 20^th century with a new excitement & hope. He left the unfinished Circus behind as his last painting.

The Plowing, 1882-1883, Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
Conté crayon – 24.5 x 32 cm, Paris, Musée d’Orsay

Image on Current from
Study for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
(known as The White Child), 1884, Georges Seurat
Conté crayon – 30.5 x 23.5 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum