Pointillism in Art History

Early greats in the world of art - Michaelangelo, Titian, Leornardo da Vinci, Ingres, Rubens, Goya and the like have been called the Old Masters. They created images of convincing reality. Everything in their paintings looked lifelike for which they used models before their eyes for details and moulding.

The old bound pigments were mixed to a desired color tint on the palette with a hog hair brush and applied into the required areas of the drawing. The brush would lick the surface severally to get a smooth, blended finish. The process was repeated more than once to get the desired results before applying the coat of varnish for protection and gloss. With the advent of photography in the middle of the 19th century, the achievement of the "reality of the Old Masters" was reduced to the mechanical means of the camera and the dark room processing. Artists became preoccupied with the mechanics of perception, how the eye reads what it sees. Brush strokes naturally blend at a desired distance and color obtains greater energy and freshness. The eye adapts to an overall harmony. They observed that mixing of colors on the palette tended towards "graying", whereas daubs of pure colors gave amore lively view. The brush strokes also provided the artist his individual touch or signature. The practitioners of these techniques were interested in creating an impression of the scene or setting, and hence were called Impressionists. Leading names of the era are Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gough, Paul Gaugin, Sisley, Paul Cezanne, Auguste Renoir. The New Masters?

Amongst them was a young painter George Seurat who reduced the daubs to small dots (points). To him the mechanism of perception was the play of the optic nerves. The viewer has to "read" the painting. From painting as a reflection of the visible world a new concept arose, "painting as a surface", a thing in itself. The work of art is to be understood by an action, an experience on the part of the viewer; not merely by passive contemplation.

His two large paintings, "Bathing at Asniers" and "Sunday Afternoon at the La Grande Jetty" influenced artists like Paul Signac, Andre Derain, Kees Dongen, Robeert Delauny, Giacoma Balla, Piet Mondrian to experiment with these ideas.

There is no denying the fact that texture evokes a certain sensitive response from a surface. The use of a variety of brush strokes, even palette knife strokes came into vogue. Pointillism has its own textural appeal and challenges.

The technique has not been very popular, perhaps because it is very laborious. It is very time consuming and needs tremendous amount of patience other than the knowledge of the juxtaposition of colors i.e. what color dot should be placed next so that the desirable result is achieved. George Seurat died in 1891 at the age of 32. The direction he showed was effective in opening the doors to modern abstract art where color stands out on its own.