Post-impressionism

•Systematic exploration of elements of design

•Furthering the fragmentation

•Increasing the expression

•injecting meaning into this exploration

Salon of 1910 dubs the term

Georges Seurat (1859-91)

PointillismSunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte, 1884-85

Seurat

Bathing at Ausnieres, 1883

Boats, Low Tide 1885

light can be measured in particles as well as wavelengths

The eye mixes the colors

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90)

• Sold just one painting in his lifetime

• Was tortured throughout life with mental illness

• When moves to Paris from Holland, becomes friends with Seurat and Degas

• Moves to south of France, Arles, and befriends Gauguin

Bedroom at Arles, 1888

Van Gogh

From the dark realities of his native Dutch heritage….

to the beauty and light of Southern France

The Potato Eaters, 1885

Irises, 1888

Sunflowers, 1888

Van Gogh

The Starry Night, 1889 painted a year before his death

Wheatfield and Crows, 1890The place of Van Gogh’s suicide

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)• Left his middle class life as a

stockbroker and father of 5 to devote himself to art

• Lived with Van Gogh in Arles• Traveled to Tahiti to pursue

spiritual purity, the “noble savage”• Although missionaries had

introduced the less than ideal aspects of Europe to the Tahitians, Gauguin chose to paint the spiritual and the pure

Self-portrait, 1893

Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1897

When Will You Marry?, 1892

Where Do We Come From? Where are We Going? , 1897Painted after his daughter dies and he falls into a deep depression

Gauguin• Replaces impressionistic

brushstrokes with large, flat areas of saturated color

• Loosely woven canvas shows through paint, giving added texture

• Was fascinated by Tahitian women, whom he felt embodied dignity and wisdom

Two Tahitians with Mango Blossoms, 1899

Symbolist andPost-impressionist

Paint the essence of the object

Day of the Gods, 1894•Tahitian god, Hina, in the center•3 figures represent birth, life and death•pool is abstract collection of vibrant forms, suggesting that art should reflect and symbolize underlying essences, not surface realities

GauguIn

Vision After the Sermon, 1888• Old testament story of Jacob wrestling with an angel, finally seeing the face of God• Gauguin is watching with the crowd of the faithful, but is not separated by the intersecting tree branch• The colors of the crowd are “earthbound black” but the inner vision space is intense, vivid, colorful

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901)

• Son of a count with aristocratic lineage 1,000 years old

• Sickly as a child; broke left leg at 12 and right leg at 14 that did not mend; as an adult, was 4 ½’ tall

• Loved Parisian night life, brothels and bars; died an alcoholic

• Known for his fluid line and balanced composition

At the Moulin Rouge, 1892

Lautrec

• Showed bohemian life as it was, sometimes showy, sometimes seamy, sometimes without glamour

The Bed, 1901

Jane Avril , 1899 Two prostitutes, 1894

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

Still Life with Apples, 1890

Still Life with Plaster Cupid, 1895

Self Portrait, 1875Cranky, self-absorbed and short-fused

Mme Cezanne in a Striped Skirt, 1877Hortense Fiquet, Cezanne’s counter-muse

Cezanne

•The father of modernism and cubism•Concerned with form, not content•Broke up images into their most essential parts

Mount St. Victoire "Everything in nature takes its form from the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder.”

1897

1902