Original subtitles

What happens when an artist combines classical training with cutting-edge optical science

and color theory?

George Seurat, of course.

One of the most unique and popular artists of the post-impressionist era, Seurat basically

invented an entirely new way to paint.

He used small dots or blocks of pigment to assemble beautiful, detailed scenes bursting

with color and light.

Remember how Cézanne had used newfound knowledge of stereoscopic vision to make hundreds of

visual experiments in his paintings?

Well, Seurat was inspired by the science of optics as well, and did his own experiments,

just in a completely different direction.

This era is so fascinating because the artists who were inspired by new scientific discoveries

used them in such different ways.

George Pierre Seurat was born in Paris on December 2, 1859.

His father, Antoine Chrysostome Seurat, was wealthy and had already retired before George was

born.

George's mother, Ernestine Fave, was from a well-to-do Parisian family that had a number

of artists in the family tree.

So it sounds like he won the artist's lottery.

He has inherited the artistic talent and the wealth and means to study what he pleased with

no distraction of a day job.

The Seurat had made their real fortune speculating in real estate, which of course was booming

at the time with all the urban growth going on in the late 19th century.

Antoine was a bit of an eccentric introvert, though.

And after he had earned a ton of money, he decided to move to a ritzy Paris suburb about

10 miles away, leaving all the childcare responsibilities to Ernestine and only visiting his family once

a week.

With an artistic mother, an absent father, and money to burn, there's not much stopping

young George from studying art from an early age.

And when he's 19, goes on to the École des Beaux-Arts, the premier art school in France.

There he gets the best art education money can buy.

He's really good, too.

He gets very inspired by classical subjects.

He loves their regal authority, order and precision, size and power.

And he fills his sketchbook with beautiful academic studies of the human form.

His education gets interrupted in 1879, though, when he's called up for his military service.

Many young Frenchmen in this era were required to do this based on the drawing of lots.

Though some artists like Cézanne managed to dodge the draft, even when their number was

called, either before or during his military service, it occurs to George that he no longer

needs École des Beaux-Arts.

He figures he's learned about as much as he can.

So when his time in the military is up, he decides not to return.

Instead, he starts his own training by getting into Impressionism and learning about the newest,

most exciting painting techniques happening around Paris.

And he starts dabbling in the Impressionist style himself, emphasizing light, color, and mood

over the precise, perfect drawings he made at the Academy.

He's incredibly disciplined and focused with his learning.

He reads, takes notes, experiments, practices.

He's also devouring science books.

Because Seurat is a bit of a scientist when it comes to his art, he doesn't merely want

to be good at making it.

He wants to find the deeper truths behind it.

Like many Impressionists, he's a big fan of Delacroix and closely studies his use of color.

But he doesn't just want to reproduce them.

He's fascinated by new scientific discoveries that offer the potential to understand and

manipulate color on a deeper level.

Yet, for the next two years, he mostly makes monochrome drawings.

And he gets really good at them.

He's progressed well beyond his academic art school drawings.

He's also isolating certain variables in his independent study by taking out color from his

work as a means to understand it better when he returns to it.

He understood he needed to master how you create value or tone, that is lightness and darkness,

before he took on the full spectrum of color.

He makes a drawing of his roommate, and it even gets accepted into the salon.

Let's take a closer look, as this drawing is both beautiful and subtly innovative.

We can see he's thinking about his later trademark style before he tries it out with color, which

I would have expected the opposite, given the centrality of color to his technique.

But he seems to have a very deep understanding of the optical effects he's learning about.

Because in this drawing, he's not blending to create tone.

He's not smearing the marks with his finger or using a chamois.

He's not erasing, either.

He's using a Conte crayon, which is much harder than charcoal, and it doesn't blend

very much at all.

So how is he creating those darker and lighter areas?

By spacing his marks closer together to make darker areas, and spacing them further apart

to create lighter ones.

This technique has a striking, luminous effect.

Just look at the delicate aura he's created in that portrait.

That's challenging to do with just a hard black crayon.

And he will continue to explore this technique in hundreds of drawings.

Each one has a slightly different patterning of dots or lines or cross-hatching.

And he's making excellent use of the grain of the paper to make marks as well.

One can't help thinking of low-resolution, grainy video when seeing these.

In some ways, he was decades ahead of his time.

Each drawing appears to be at a slightly different focus level as well.

Because, like Cezanne, he's not just doing the same thing over and over.

He's giving himself assignments and tasks to learn how to control the light and space

in his work.

Some drawings appear very out of focus, but still very convincing and lifelike.

These create interesting optical effects as there is a slight blur to them, almost as if we

are looking through some sort of lens.

I think they're fascinating, they're extremely detailed, yet you struggle to make out any

details.

An interesting combination.

Seurat also craved order and harmony.

He studied artists like Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Pouvis de Chavon.

He shared with Cezanne a desire for permanence, for long-lasting and authoritative painting.

The Impressionists were onto something, but they were too quick, too hasty for Seurat.

He loved tradition, he loved the classics, and he also was a huge nerd for science.

He was a firm believer in his ideas and believed that there was something important about his

work and imbuing classical tradition with cutting-edge science and technology.

So after years of self-directed study, in 1883, he decides he's ready to try out his new ideas

and techniques in full color and on a grand scale.

That's the year he begins work on Bathers at Aznières, which we opened our course with.

He's only 23, but he's really stepping out with a bang on this huge canvas.

Remember the color theorist Chevrouille?

Seurat has been studying up on his ideas intensely, particularly through the work of Charles Blanc,

who interpreted a lot of these scientific discoveries for artists.

Like complementary colors, which when a pair use side-by-side can make each appear more vibrant and intense

than they would by themselves.

And a phenomenon called after-image, or retinal persistence.

After looking at a color for a while, when it's removed, we see a ghost of that color,

appearing as its opposite or complement.

A little bit of what we see is held onto the retina for a few moments after we see it.

Spooky stuff.

But the discovery that most excited Syrah was optical blending, because instead of mixing

blue and yellow pigments together to make green like every artist in history had done up until now,

it turned out there was another way to make us see green.

If you put blue and yellow close enough to each other, and then stand back far enough,

your eyes will do the mixing for you, and see green.

All of these discoveries underscore a vital truth. There is a lot more to color than meets

the eye. Pun intended. All of these discoveries are exciting new tools in Sirrah's hands.

And Bathers is his grand experiment in trying to use them to create a totally new way to paint.

He's not giving us incredibly bright and saturated color contrast the way the Impressionists were.

Up close and very small, he used contrasting colors, but as you stepped back, they blended and reduced their contrast.

He didn't want garish contrast. He wanted to use contrast to create harmony and unity,

to find the order from these underlying systems and structures. Light is additive,

and colors get lighter as you mix different ones together. If you go backwards from Pink Floyd's

rainbow, walk back into the prism, all colors combined to make white. But it's the total

opposite when you use a pigment. When you mix all your paints together, you're going to get black,

a critical detail to keep in mind when studying color.

And in some areas, he's trying to get the colors to mix optically rather than by physically mixing

the pigments. This technique is known as divisionism or pointillism, depending on the type of brush

strokes used. But this painting isn't using either fully. He's just testing out this new technique

in certain areas. For example, the trees in the background and the grass in the foreground have

had short, sharp strokes. There's green here, but up close there's also blues, oranges, and yellows as well

that blend together to create different tones of green when you step back. He's trying out color contrast.

He's pushing for more vibrancy. He wants some of that color vibration to happen.

Why are there purples and yellows on those red shorts? It's subtle, but they're there intentionally.

Purple and yellow are complementary colors. He wants those shorts to really shine out.

I find this painting quite beautiful—the variety of brush strokes, the contrast of the smooth and

the painterly, the delicate atmosphere. One thing to remember is that many of these new chemical paints

hadn't been perfected yet, and a lot of the bright colors started to fade over time. So when we see

them photographed or in museums now, we're not seeing them nearly as vibrant as they would have

been when first painted. You can see a very thoughtfully laid out composition. It's almost

mathematically precise how he keeps the same amount of distance between each subject. How he gets so much

order out of a seemingly random group. Each light area is paired with a darker part—the boots on the

clothes, the hair on the body, the grass in the light, the grass in the shadow, large figures up

front, tiny figures in the back. And here's a subtle detail that I really like. The skin tone and the water

are about the same value, but if he painted them that way, then they would get lost and they wouldn't

stand out. So on the light side of the body, he darkens the water, while on the shadow side of the

body, he lightens the water. This is a really useful trick that I use all the time. Whenever you have

two things of a similar value, but one needs to stand out from the other, you can adjust the contrast of

where they meet. All this didn't just fall out of Seurat's head and onto a canvas. Like Cezanne, he was a

very hard worker and incredibly dedicated to his craft. And you see that in the dozens of studies

he made for his major paintings. This early one for the bathers shows just how much he changed in the

final composition. Here we're looking at the scene from a different angle, higher on the hill looking

down. And there's even a horse that didn't make it to the final cut. Each study gets more detailed,

more refined, and when he has the composition just right, then he starts the painstaking process of

constructing the final work. Divisionism requires an incredible amount of discipline and planning

before it can be executed. Seurat submitted bathers to the official salon, but it was rejected. So he

turns to the Societe des Artistes Independents, and in 1884 begins exhibiting with them and making a lot of

new friends. Many artists like Pissarro and Signac are simply blown away with what he's pulled off.

But they had no idea what was coming next. Because now he's ready to start his most famous painting of

all, A Sunday on the Grande Jatte, a painting that needs no introductions. You've probably seen

hundreds of reproductions throughout your life. It took two years and dozens and dozens of preparatory

sketches and paintings to make. He was hyper-focused on this project, the composition meticulously and

carefully planned. This is the first fully divisionist work, and you can see up close in

every section how colors are built up and contrasts augmented by painstaking dots of paint or small

strokes of paint. Dots of complementary and contrasting colors show up everywhere, creating a totally unique

optical effect. There is a very tightly woven arrangement of people, each one placed ever

so carefully so there is a near even amount of space around them. This and the strong silhouettes

create an almost eerily still and isolated feeling, almost frozen like a stage set. If you look closely,

there are some indications of movement, particularly with the monkey ,

favorite detail by the way, the dog and the girl dancing. But I'm not convinced. It's almost like

someone told him how stiff everything looked and he got mad and he's like, no way, I can prove it. See,

that dog is running. They seem very much like afterthoughts to me and they don't show up in many

preparatory sketches. In fact, a lot of the studies for La Grande Jatte are eerily tranquil and quiet and

show the park with barely any people in it. This was probably how the park usually was when he

visited. But see this woman with the red dress? A version of her appears in the final work. In fact,

most of the people he captured in his studies end up in the final painting together. So, in a way,

we are seeing multiple slices of time all at once, as if we're looking through the space-time continuum.

Just like he's using dots of paint to create the picture, he's also using dots or moments of time

to construct the composition. Kind of meta and cool, if you ask me. But this also gives a strange mood to

the overall piece. Everyone appears to be absorbed in their own thoughts, looking straight ahead, unaware

of their surroundings. A bizarre contrast that is tempting to dissect. Was he intentionally showing

them together, but isolated like this, as a critique of modern life, alone in their thoughts? And this

lovely day is all somewhat of an illusion? Not coincidentally, the setting here is actually the

other side of the river from where The Bathers is set in Asnières, drawing a contrast between his

last painting and this one. The river was a sort of boundary in this period, and this park was on the

wealthier side. It seems he is deliberately making commentary on the contrast between the middle

class and the working class. Scholars have also noted curious motifs that could reference the fact that

prostitutes frequented the park in this period. The lady with the monkey, particularly. Because an

archaic French word for a female monkey, cignesse, was also slang for a prostitute. Unfortunately,

Seurat didn't record much about the meaning of what he painted, and so were he left to speculate about

what he really intended us to take away. There are beautiful and subtle uses of contrast happening

all throughout the painting, and as if to drive the point home, he gives us a curious border around the

entire painting of contrasting colors using the same divisionist technique. Even if it ended up in a

gaudy gold frame, he still had control over that outside contrasting edge. Despite all of its calm,

it was a wild and polarizing painting, unlike anyone had ever seen before. It must have been quite a

visual experience for people to see something like this for the very first time. Many hated it.

Many loved it. Young artists were very excited about it. A critic seeing his technique called it

pointillism, which sort of stuck as a way to describe it, but Seurat never used the term, preferring

divisionism or sometimes chromoluminarism. Today, pointillism usually means to specifically use dots

to create optical blending, while divisionism is the more general term for any stroke or approach that

achieves this. Seurat is so fascinating because he was a walking contradiction. He was a cutting edge

visionary, yet an old school traditionalist. He used tiny wild and free brush strokes that made up large,

carefully still, and ordered compositions. His painting featured contrasting colors throughout.

He had a creative mind, but with a mathematical precision. He was a well-to-do bourgeoisie,

but has working-class sympathies. His characters usually appear together in groups, but they each

stare off into the distance, looking very much alone. This is a man who loved contrasts, and not just with

colors. A theme that shows up repeatedly however you look at his work, or his life for that matter.

And after he paints La Grande Jatte, he's looking for contrast in subject matter. He loves depicting

coastlines, boats, and harbor towns, and will travel to the coast just about every summer. These seem to

have been some of his most productive times. He makes dozens of soft and calming pictures on these trips.

This one, showing a beach scape near the coastal town of Hanfleur, is pretty meta too. He's using

pointillism to depict sand. Sand operates in a similar way. From a distance, all the grains blend

together, and the sand looks like a solid golden color. It's only when you hold it close to your eyes

that you notice just how incredibly diverse the colors and shapes are. He's touching on the extremely

complex nature of reality. The closer you inspect it, you see that nature becomes exponentially more

complex. By pinning thousands of dots, he's hinting at the billions and trillions of dots required to

make a real beach with real sand. But the beach is just part of his year. And as a local celebrity in

the art community now, after La Grande Jatte, he moves to Montmartre, where the artists, nightlife,

and bohemians are. And I think it opens up his eyes to a world he wasn't very accustomed with.

He grew up sheltered, in an upper-class lifestyle, in a place with very strong class structures.

Now he's living next to Moulin Rouge! And the life of the city is thrilling, even to this nerdy,

albeit handsome, introvert. This move seems good for Seurat. Things start changing in exciting ways in his

painting after coming to Montmartre. The second half of his career is focused on the amped up,

exciting world of Paris in the Belle Epoque. Another exciting addition to Seurat's world was

Madeleine Knobloch, an artist model that Seurat is immediately drawn to, and he wants to paint her.

She's unnamed in this painting, with the romantic title of young woman powdering herself.

He starts this painting in 1888. Remember, Seurat's divisionist technique can take years,

so he doesn't finish the painting until 1890. At some point, these two really hit it off,

and she moves in with him in 1889, about halfway through the portrait.

Already as someone who kept mostly to himself, he didn't tell anyone about this relationship.

He's cohabitating with a model, so there are quite a few conservative folks in his circle

who wouldn't approve, especially his parents. While working on Madeleine's portrait,

he also starts another ambitious painting. Not quite as big as The Bathers or La Grande Jatte,

maybe about half the size, but he seems to be fully immersed in and captivated by Paris nightlife at

this point. Perhaps to address the critics about his stiff and immobile figures, he goes all out with

movement. Le cahoot, or what we call the can-can in English, was a super sexy and scandalous dance in

those days. And Seurat goes for the moment, legs kicked high, skirts flying around, the band in full

effect. This is a fun and sultry painting. But it's also not. In Seurat's awkward way, each figure

still seems incredibly stiff and immobile, like cardboard cutouts, enhanced by the flattened perspective

of stacking each dancer centimeters behind the previous one. We somehow are four dancers deep

on a stage built for one. Curiously, he's using mostly traditional earth tones, which he had

previously abandoned. A traditional palette for a modern theme? A curious contrast once again.

Upon closer inspection, there is a bit more than meets the eye. Yes, it's abstracted. Yes, it's stylized.

But looking close at the dots, there are some fascinating uses of color and contrast.

There are some strange glowing colors emanating and intermingling. There are quite a few very

bright and saturated colors within the brown. But it's all optically blended, so we see mostly browns.

There's a strange shimmer, though. And despite having a traditional overall palette,

there's absolutely nothing traditional about this painting. Around this time, Madeline becomes pregnant,

and they wisely decide to move out of Montmartre to a place more conducive to a baby. Little Pierre

Georges is born February 1890. Despite the new baby, as seems to be custom with the men of this era,

and perhaps channeling his absentee dad, he flees to the coast for the summer, continuing his annual

tradition where he soaks up the sun and makes a bunch of new paintings and drawings, including

the channel of Gravelin's Petit Four Philippe. In contrast to the rich and deep colors of his

paintings in Montmartre, these coastal scenes are more in tune with an impressionist scene,

drenched in light, peaceful, and tranquil. Getting out of town and getting into nature became

commonplace for artists in the late 19th century. During the winter, they would often be in their

studios in Paris, working on more ambitious works that they intended to show at the next big exhibition.

These projects would be bigger canvases with controversial themes and technical innovations

on display. In the summer, they could go out and roam in nature, soaking up the inspiration and beauty,

while making smaller, quicker studies. In part, that's practical. You can't do huge canvases on the road,

nor would you have the time. And smaller canvases are much easier to finish and much easier to sell.

His pretty coastal scenes could easily fit above your sofa. He's sold many in his lifetime.

La Grande Jatte, though, is ten feet wide, tricky to fit in a dining room.

Interestingly, though, he's definitely getting faster with his technique. The studies he makes

for some of his Gravelines work are also done in the divisionist style. That's dedication.

Syrah's 30 years old now. He's starting to get a lot of attention, and he knows he's hitting his stride.

And for his next major work, he starts another ambitious painting called The Circus,

probably planning a few years as usual for a painting like this. In early March of 1891,

he unveils it, though, in an unfinished state for the Salon des Independents.

Just a few weeks later, he comes down with either pneumonia or meningitis. We aren't certain, but it

kills him by March 29th. If that isn't devastating enough for his wife, Madeline, their baby boy,

Pierre-George, dies of what appears to be the same illness just a few weeks later. Never married,

Madeline was pregnant with their second child at the time, who also died soon after being born. She had

been introduced to Syrah's parents just two days before he died. Fortunately, Syrah's mother was

compassionate, and despite no legal standing, Madeline would be supported by the family and

inherited half of Syrah's estate. Another brilliant artist who died in their prime, or perhaps before

his prime. We will never know, sadly. What would he have made at the age of 40, or 50, or 60 even?

Despite being so young at the time of his death, or maybe due in part because of it, Syrah's work grows

monumental in the minds of his fellow artists. He was one of the most original and dedicated of the

Post-Impressionists, and like Cézanne, came up with a totally new way to see the world. His techniques

and ideas inspired many young artists to try it, especially Paul Signac. He's passionate to carry

Syrah's torch forward, though, as we'll later see with his own hot political take.