Post-Impressionism | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Post-Impressionism is a general term used to describe the works of artists such as Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Gauguin, who moved away from impressionism toward styles less tied to naturalism. This movement lasted from the final impressionist exhibit of 1886 to the beginnings of Cubism in the first decade of the 20th century. Cézanne and Seurat are often placed in one group known for emphasizing visual order, and van Gogh and Gauguin are often placed in another known for emphasizing emotions and personal expression.

Adapted from

Ken Kelsey, Gail Davitt, Carolyn Johnson, Cecilia Leach, Diane McClure, and Catherine Proctor, The Reves Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art, Teaching Packet, 1995.

NOTES

Education file- quotes on Post-Impressionism from education file, European Art, docent materials, "Gothic to Vienna Secession" no author, no date

Post-impressionism

"The term Post-Impressionism was coined in 1910, by the English art critic Roger Fry, as

a convenient way of referring to the artists who came immediately after the

Impressionists. These artists were centered in Paris and, for their own reasons, rejected

the principles of Impressionsim. The term can also apply to much of the later work of

the Impressionist artists themselves, who, as their careers developed, came to abandon

many of the ideas that they had once subscribed to. The Post-Impressionist artists did

not form into a coherent group or movement, and the tenn itself certanly does not refer

to a style of painting. What the artists did have in common was a desire to go beyond

the world of external appearances that had been so important to the world of the

Impressionists."

-Colin Wiggins, Post-Impressionism, p. 6

"The achievements of the Post-Impressionists (Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, and Seurat-

the main artists) laid the groundwork for a modern art based largely on concepts and

emotions, rather than on the more objective appearance of reality....Cezanne's radical

experiments in the construction of still-life and landscape helped inspire Cubism. By

contrast with Cezanne's and Seurat's cerebral art, the emotive and introspective canvases

of Gauguin and van Gogh featured private symbolism and nondescriptive color and form,

which made them an inspiration for Expressionism and Symbolism."

-Robert Atkins, Art Spoke: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements, and

Buzzwords, 1848-1944, p. 170

"I wanted to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the

musuems."

-Paul Cezanne, revealing his dissatisfaction with what he came to consider the

lightweight and insubstantial art of pure Impressionism. Cezanne's paintings conveyed

the actual mass and substance of the landscapes and objects that he used as subject

matter. He developed a tightly controlled brushstroke, painstakingly and slowly applied,

that binds the composition together in a way that conveys permanence and grandeur

(Wiggins, p. 7)

"Through the abandonment of all muddy mixtures, through the exclusive use of mixtures

of pure colors, through a methodical divisionism and a strict observation of the scientific

theory of colours, the neoimpressionist achieves the maximum of luminosity, of colour

intensity, of harmony--a result that had never before been realised."

-Paul Signac, De Delacroix au neoimpressionisme (1899, pub. 1921)

[Of the Neo-Impressionists] "The splitting up of colour brought the splitting up of form

and contour. The result: a jerky surface. Everything is reduced to a mere sensation on

the retina, but one which destroys all tranquillity of surface and contour."

-Henri Matisse, quoted in Duthuit, The Fauvist Painters (1930)

"Instead of trying to render what I see before me, I use colour in a completely arbitrary

way in order to express myself powerfully."

-Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo, 1888

bromberg, context renaissance to 19th century, 1987, education files.

By 1886, the year of the last Impressionist exhibition in Paris, artists

were moving in different directions. Men like Vincent Van Gogh and Paul

Gauguin, who had once painted in the Impressionist mode, began to look for

other ways to express their visions. Van Gogh, a painter of desperately

intense feeling, used vivid expressive color, writhing forms and tilted

perspectives to capture his emotions on canvas. Paul Gauguin retreated

from contemporary civilization, portraying the brooding mystery he

perceived in primitive peoples. Freeing color from its primary

representational function, he used it in relatively flat contrasting areas,

which emphasized its decorative or emotional effect. The patterns in his

pictures were meant to suggest mental images or ideas and not simply to

record visual experience.

In surveying 19th century French art, it is important to remember the great

diversity of art activities. In recent years, academic artists like Gerome

or Bougereau or Couture have been re-appraised by critics, who feel their

skills have been unduly neglected. The importance of architecture and the

decorative arts in the development of painting and sculpture is also

important: Rodin began his career working for the decorative artist Albert

Carriere - Belleuse.

Still, it seems fitting to end a discussion of 19th century French painting

with Paul Cezanne whose work pioneered the development of abstract painting

in the 20th century. He too began as an Impressionist but soon began to

devote himself to the structural analysis of nature. His landscape and

still life studies must be read as subtly ordered arrangements of planes

and lines and color. He claimed he wanted to redo nature after Poussin.

In a letter he wrote to Emile Bernard, published after his death in 1906 he

stated, "Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in

proper perspective, so that each side of the object or plane tends towards

a central point." Perhaps a more succinct manifesto for Cubism could not

have been written.

POST-IMPRESSIONISMS:

• Mostly later works of original impressionists

• Attempt to create a solid and durable "thing" from the ideas formed under impressionism

• Color intensity; color as subject

• Connections to symbolism and expressionism

• A breakdown of village/family (small communities), in favor of a more global community

• Move toward abstractions

"European Art Recap: Main Points" document from European education files

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WEB RESOURCES

Art Access: Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art~This selection of lessons, activities, and images is based on the Art Instiute of Chicago's collection.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read more about Post-Impressionism from the Met.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. The Outline and the Dot: Two Aspects of Post-Impressionism, Pamphlet, 1962; (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth183432/ : accessed March 04, 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas , Texas.

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