Today’s class we continue our discussion on post-impressionism. I found today’s class particularly interesting because of the quotes from the artists we heard, which gave us an inside look about their artistic processWe discussed two different artists that focused on form in their work, Cezanne and Seurat, and two artists that focused on personal expression, Van Gogh and Gaugin.
We first focused on the works of Cezanne and Seurat, who simplified the figures they were looking at into the most basic geometric forms and shapes. Cezanne attempted to “paint the cylinder, the sphere, and the cone.” Seurat used a method of pointillism that was developed after many highly specific drawing studies. This approach was highly methodical and attempted to create optical mixing, although it was not entirely successful and the shapes remained largely separated from one another.
We then shifted our discussion to the works of Van Gogh and Gaugin, who preferred a more subjective exploration in their pieces. We spoke about Van Gogh’s “Night Cafe” and the strong contrast between the red and green. The green pool table in the foreground pushing backward fought with the red background pushing forward to create a tense, unpleasant space that was also ambiguous and one you could picture yourself in. This same color palette effect was seen in his self portrait, a reddish background contrasted with a greenish foreground. Gaugin also furthered this shift from realism in his vivid color palette and use of flat shapes.