...now that you've seen the sketchy, pastel usage of degas' style, feast your eyes on the work of the most technical- minded fellow in the impressionist group of artists: georges seurat. i call seurat "the dot" for a reason. his a sunday afternoon on the island of le grande jette is famous for his execution of pointilism: a system of painting that juxtapoed dots of color that compliment or contrast with each other to create an entirely new shade or line...as long as the viewer stands further away enough to let the optical brain blend the colors together.

...many art historians consider seurat as more post-impressionism than an actual impressionist. his later works certainly focus on a different treatment of light and color compared to artists such as monét or degas. however, the piece shown above is one of seurat's earlier works, one where he has not yet perfected his color theories and the pointilism technique. the influence of impressionist artists are obvious. his strokes are reminiscent of some of monét's later works, the forms of the figures are not clearly defined (suggesting movement) and the angle of the scene captured is in keeping with impressionism's goal of capturing a moment in time. the similarities pretty much stop there though because seurat's experiments of juxtaposing different colors clearly takes the focus of the viewer's eye. instead painting realistic looking stones, seurat chose to represent them with broad dabs of paint mostly in white and contrasted with grays, blues and yellows to suggest different rock textures. up close, your human eye sees only dabs of paint but further away, your brain blends the colors together and the "idea" of different colored rocks is created. seriously, try standing back from the monitor and keep moving backwards slowly until the colors blur together. look at what you see then. ('bout time you got outta that chair anyway; how long have you been sitting there reading this site?!)

...it's probably more accurate to call this image a transitional work -- one step ahead of the impressionist techniques but not yet letting go of all the ideas. it's like the wood panel image of st. elisha (remember that one from way back when?) where the artist tried to give the figure a sense of three dimensionality but fails to achieve it because of the byzantine gold leaf decoration element. hey look, we've come full circle -- as regards to art history at least. it's pretty safe to conclude that humans always strive for improvement but never without looking behind them to see what bits and parts are worthy of bringing along for the ride.