Seurat: Pointillism
The loose approach of the Impressionists freed the next generation of artists to be even more experimental. They extended Impressionism in new directions.
Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-91) wanted to scientifically explore the nature of light and color and use that knowledge in his art. He found that colors, when adjacent to each other, affect the other. For example, a blue lamp on a yellow stand casts some of its blueness on the stand and the stand casts some of its yellowness on the lamp.
He also found that each color gives off its complement, from the other side of the color wheel, in its shadow. So the blue lamp has in its shadow, not only blue but also orange. The yellow stand throws off hints of purple, so the blue lamp shows splashes of yellow and purple. Seurat applied his dots to emphasize these effects and make the colors seem more vibrant in the viewers’ eyes. His most celebrated landscape painting is ”A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”.