In this lecture we discussed the Post-Impressionist movement. We began talking about three important aspects of the movement: Form (Cézanne and Seurat), Personal Expression (van Gogh and Gaugin) and Color. Then we talked about Paul Cézanne, who was from Aix-en-Provence, which is in Southern France and the site of a Roman bath. We compared two of his very similar pieces, “Mont Sainte-Victoire” (1885-87) and “Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley” (1885-87). These two paintings depict both Cézanne’s house and a Roman aqueduct. The two paintings have differing depths of fields and slightly different light effects, although since the weather is pretty consistent in the South of France, the light is not very different, unlike Monet’s series. These paintings have no people, activity, or wind, giving them a sense of timelessness. Cézanne claimed that he had an aim to redo the work of Poussin through nature and to make Impressionism “something solid and durable, like the art of the museums.” We then looked at his painting “Scene from Bibemus Quarry” (1897-1900). This painting is very bright, flat, and abstract. The black outlines in the cliffs remind me of Cubism. Next, we looked at some of his still life paintings of apples on a table. Cézanne worked so slowly in producing these paintings that he had to begin working with fake fruit. In these paintings, there are distinct areas of warm and cold colors without transitions in between. The cool colors are in the background, whereas the warm ones are in the front.

We then moved on to examine the work of Seurat. We first looked at “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (1884-86). The composition of this painting is stable, permanent, formal, and rigid, because of how the paint is applied. Seurat produced many sketches in drafting this painting using conté crayon.

After discussing Seurat, we looked at several paintings by Vincent van Gogh. The first was “The Potato Eaters” (1885), a dark and monotone painting made at the beginning of his career. We examined several of his other works, including “Japonaiserie” (1887), “Night Café” (1888), “Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear and Pipe” (1889), and finally, “Starry Night” (1889).

The Post-Impressionism style had two main focuses: form and personal expression. But constant through paintings was the emphasis of color driving all work. Paul Cézanne pioneered the use of form in his paintings, illustrated in Mont Sainte-Victoire. The colors focus on permanence and the harsh southern Italian lighting simplifies buildings and forms. An extensive landscape is depicted but has an overall flat composition as a result of the structured lines of the visible brushstrokes. The scene is an abstraction as you’re constantly reminded of that fact that the scene is a painting when viewing it. Cézanne’s Scene from Bibernus Quarry is another painting that is abstract in subject matter. The think black outlines (often in box shapes) contribute to giving the scene a flat quality, along with the regularly visible brushstrokes.

Vincent Van Gogh painted artwork with the personal expression themes of Post-Impressionism. His painting The Potato Eaters works to illustrate the importance of all classes of people. The continued theme of flat compositions and the earthy tones of the painting shine a light on a scene that is represented as everyday and overlooked. Night Café is an extremely personal painting as Van Gogh’s self expression influences the solitary and alienating mood. The view of the scene from above was influenced by Japanese prints, giving viewers a new vantage point. The use of color conveys Van Gogh’s feelings, with red walls closing in contrasting with the central green pool table pulling away. Finally, Starry Night was painted by Van Gogh in the year before his death while he was committed in an asylum. He was struggling with his mental health and painted a study of the stars above a sleeping town, which he wrote could be reached through death. The thick application of paint makes the stars appear to shimmer and is reached for by two objects – the church steeple (religion) and a Cyprus tree (nature). A painting that once seemed to emit a tranquility to me now has a more desperate feel as it reaches to the sky for freedom.

In today’s class, we discussed artwork from the post-impressionist era. This era can be broken down into two parts: form and personal expression. Artists such as Cezanne and Seurat were known for using form throughout their paintings, whereas artists like van Gogh and Gaugin are known for displaying personal expression throughout their works. Color also drives their work, and serves as an important way to highlight certain aspects of their paintings.

We compared Paul Cezanne’s “Mont Sainte-Victoire” along with his “Mont Saint-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley.” These two paintings are part of the same series of works, and depicts a scene in Aix-en-Provence, where Cezanne is from. The color scheme is very similar in both paintings, with green and earthy colors making up most of the two paintings. This is very different than series of paintings one would find during the impressionist era, where color schemes varied from painting to painting. The landscapes throughout Cezanne’s two paintings are very flat, with mountains in the background. These works are “painterly”, as the brushstrokes create a visual that further flattens the picture. What is fascinating about Cezanne is that he viewed himself as an impressionist artist. He wished to “make of impressionism something solid and durable.” This statement itself shows how he was not an impressionist artist, and thus falls into the era of what is now known as “post-impressionism.”

In today’s class we looked primarily at works from the Post-Impressionist movement. These works focused mainly on form and expression, and there was a great importance placed on color as well. We started first with Paul Cezanne, who was attempting to emulate Pouissin from nature, and his influence on Cezanne’s work was very clear to see. His brushstrokes were interesting to see, as they made his paintings appear flatter and some of the forms looked more like blocks due to his use of black paint as an outline. We shifted to Seurat, discussing one of my favorite paintings, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, a fascinating pointillist work. I was shocked as to how many different versions Seurat made before finally painting the final result.

Of course, it would be impossible to discuss Post-Impressionism without discussing Vincent Van Gogh, and we did just that. We looked through a lot of different works throughout his life, and it was interesting to see his opinion on his painting through his letters to his brother Theo. Finally, we briefly discussed Gaugin, who had a very interesting use of color in his paintings.

Many of the major artists of Post Impressionism were also involved at the end of the Impressionist movement. Cézanne, Seurat, van Gogh, and Gauguin were the four artists we focused on for this lecture. For all post-impressionists, color is the driving force of their painting, but both Cézanne and Seurat were concerned with form within color, while van Gogh and Gauguin made more personally expressive works.

Cézanne’s landscapes tend to depict an area he knew very well, but he moves away from capturing fleeting moments and into creating a sense of permanence. Rather than staying true to life, his paintings set out to be paintings, and the composition and brushwork contribute to this effect. Even vast landscapes appear flat and simplified–this simplification would continue to define post-impressionism.

Seurat painted the famous A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, and did so through painstaking methods. Form in this painting is necessarily precise, as each piece of color is intentionally minuscule–the overall effect is that the colors mix (albeit imperfectly) in the viewer’s eye. Over the course of many preliminary studies and drawings, Seurat composed the scene to convey a sense of timelessness and permanence.

Van Gogh, rather than form, painted scenes of personal expression. Early in his career, he was greatly influenced by impressionism, but over time he developed the post-impressionistic style he is known for today. Warm and cool colors are often juxtaposed in his paintings in order to create a flat sensation, even around other illusions of depth.

In today’s lecture, we discussed Post-Impressionism, and how this movement evolved out of and differed from the true Impressionist movement. A key figure in the shift from Impressionism to Post-Impressionism is Cézanne. Monet and other Impressionists were fascinated with light and how different lighting changed the way we perceived things. All their works have this ephemeral quality because of the focus on light. Cézanne is not like this at all, in his own words he wanted to make art that was “solid and durable”. His style is based on abstraction and reduction – he reduces objects into their most simple form.

These ideas are clear in his Mont Sainte-Victoire series. Cézanne’s series are much different from those of Monet’s who tried to observe how the same scene transformed in different lighting and weather conditions. For Cézanne who lived in the south of France, the seasons did not change much and the landscape would be almost identical throughout the year. This makes the images in his series almost identical – this permanent nature of the landscape is also very different from the fleeting nature of Impressionist scenes. Cézanne is exploring form and color in this series. He uses very harsh, straight brush strokes which greatly flattenens the scene. The paint is applied the same way for objects that are far in the distance and those up close, again flattening the landscape. The viewer can not escape the fact that what they are looking at is paint on a 2D surface, not an imitation of reality.

In the Post- Impressionism Movement, there were two categories of styles, form and personal expression. Form was displayed by Cezanne and Seurat and personal expression was displayed by Van Gogh and Gauguin. Above these things was the use of color which was ubiquitous in this movement. It was used to capture moments. Paul Cezanne does this in his multiple versions of Mont Sainte-Victoire. Each of the version is of a similar location however the differences lie in the time of day and lighting. This was similar throughout all of them as the South of France doesn’t change much. The brushstrokes create the impression of a flat image.

An example of personal expression was Van Gogh’s Night Cafe. He goes against typical norms of having reds in the foreground and greens in the background and switches them. The red walls and green floor work to flatten the work as well as the brushstrokes.

Another popular type of work was still lives. They held a lot of the same qualities as other types of works. The items’ shapes were simplified into geometric forms. Also, the colors and brushstrokes flattened the image.

In todays class we looked into Post-Impressionism. In post-Impressionism we categorized it into two ideas, the first being Form and the second being Personal Expression. Each being unique to certain artists in this movement. Paul Cézanne, a talented artist in the post-impressionism movement focused a lot of his work on Form. A popular work called the Mont Sainte-Victoire, which was Cézanne’s home and was painted trying to capture different light aspects and use line to make the bright colors of the landscape stand out. Over the years Paul Cézanne’s work evolves to be more abstract while continuing the use of bright color but increasing his use of dark outlines. I enjoyed Cézanne’s artwork because of the use of his brushstrokes and how its not perfectly blended in.

Todays class was an online lecture where we looked into Impressionism. Impressionism involves visible brushstrokes, light, and a capture of transitory feel of modern life. Impressionism sometimes looks like a continuation of realism. We first looked into the work of Claude Monet, who painted the Boulevard des Capucines. Monet painted this from his view from his room and is a city scene of the bran new set of streets of the grand boulevard. We looked at Edouard Manet and his le déjeuner sur l’herbe painting. This painting was rejected by the salon in 1863 and is considered an Impressionism painting because of its loose brushwork and the depiction of modern life. The lights and darks of the color also signify an impressionist painting. This work although has a flaw of an undeveloped background compared to its developed foreground.

Today, we began class by discussing Post-Impressionism. We talked about two different aspects of it; the first is form, as seen with Cezanne and Seurat. The second is personal expression, as seen with Van Gogh and Gauguin. We began by comparing Paul Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire and Mont Sainte-Victoire and the viaduct of the Arc River Valley. We can appreciate the depth of the field within these works. They also appear to capture different light effects as they are different moments with different conditions. Additionally, there is not much difference between the two; for example, the color scheme is the same. We also know that the seasons do not change that much in the South of France. We see beautiful weather with evergreen trees. Furthermore, the work is flat, and the brush strokes are hard to forget. It is less illusionistic. We then discussed what Cezanne declared, “I want to do Poussin over again from Nature”. This refers to him wanting to do work orderly and harmonious. He also wishes to illustrate timeless pictures. Cezanne also states that he wishes to “treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone”. We then looked at some of Cezanne’s still lives: Basket of Apples, Still Life with Apples in a Bowl, and Still Life with Peppermint Bottle. It was interesting to know that because apples spoiled fast, Cezanne actually used fake fruit to keep the form and composition of the work he was painting together. His approach was very time-consuming, and in the works, we see this cloth that falls off the table. This evokes a sort of three-dimensional point of view. There are also many commonalities between the works; the cloth is falling off the table, warm and cool colors are used, blue is in the background, which is cold and distinct from the eye, and the work is flat. This strongly contrasts with Van Goghs work, the Night Cafe. This work was created when he was a post-impressionist. Strong diagonals are used, and they convey emotion. Unlike a blue, cold background, Van Gogh chooses red, which projects the wall forward. It also flattens the space overall as the depth is not accurately converted. This is due to Van Gogh’s belief that “a cafe is a place one can ruin oneself.” We also talked about his famous Starry Night, where we see Cyprus trees, which were commonly planted in cemeteries. It is evident Van Gogh is thinking about death, and this coincides with his mental health problems at the time. There is a sense of freedom and liberation when reaching to the stars.