Comparison Analysis Of George Seurat, Sunday Afternoon On The Island Essay

Comparison Analysis Of George Seurat, Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of The Grande Jatte, 1886, And Paul Gauguin, The Day Of The Gods, 1894 - Essay Example The essay "George Seurat and Paul Gauguin paintings" discovers two famous paintings, Paul Gauguin’s The Day of the Gods and George Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon. The paintings both depict the cultural gathering that a body of water can evoke. However, the gathering within the work of Seurat is defined by the formal and modest visage of the 19th century while Gauguin’s work reveals the naturalistic culture of Tahiti. The two pieces allow the viewer a distinct opportunity to see a transition between one form of painting to the next. The style of painting that George Seurat is most known for is that of pointillism. Pointillism is defined by a technique of applying paint where the artist uses small dots of color to shade and move the eye as if to create actually rounded and formed figures. The eyes create the illusion of the image as the tiny dots are blended, revealing the imagery through a trick of the eye. To look at a pointillist painting up close is to see nothing b ut a mass of dots, but when one stands back, the dots combine to create the intended imagery. Seurat had a tremendous scientific interest in the way in which they eye sees color. In the 1880’s, Seurat and Paul Signet developed pointillism as a way of stretching the scientific theories of the visually representation reinterpreted through specific, rigid rules of application. Pointillism is defined by paint that is not mixed on a palate; use of primary colors; individual dots or points of color; brushstrokes that are carefully place.