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Art Periods: POSTIMPRESSIONISM

Postimpressionism is an art-historical term coined (1910) by British art critic Roger Fry to describe the various styles of painting that flourished in France during the period from about 1880 to about 1910. Generally, the term is used as a convenient chronological umbrella covering the generation of artists who sought new forms of expression in the wake of the pictorial revolution wrought by impressionism.

Man and Woman

"Man and Woman"
by Pierre Bonnard
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Among the principal figures in this group were Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh.

Although their individual styles differed profoundly, all of these artists moved away from the aesthetic program of impressionism and, in particular, from the impressionists' emphasis on depicting a narrow spectrum of visual reality. It would be a mistake to view the postimpressionists as simply rejecting their impressionist heritage; rather, they accepted the revolutionary impact of impressionism and went on to explore new aesthetic ideas, many of which grew out of concepts implicit in impressionism. Another connecting link between most of the postimpressionists -- with the notable exception of Cézanne -- was a common emphasis on surface pattern, a trait that led many contemporary critics to use the term decorative to describe postimpressionist pictures. Aside from a general dissatisfaction with impressionism and a widely shared interest in surface pattern, however, the postimpressionists displayed few stylistic or thematic similarities.

Cézanne had belonged to the impressionist movement, but he withdrew (1878) from it because he wanted to create a style that he described as more "solid and durable." Working in isolation in Aix-en-Provence during the 1880s and '90s, he evolved a new concept of space that was of fundamental importance to 20th-century painting. This highly individual art, which was to be greatly admired by the next generation of painters, laid the groundwork for the creation of cubism by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

The art of Gauguin and van Gogh, however, reflected a more emotional bias and involved highly charged colors and a rhythmical patterning of lines across the surface of a picture.

The Circus

"The Circus"
by Georges Seurat
Louvre, Paris

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Like Cézanne, both Gauguin and van Gogh abandoned the impressionist movement, but unlike their fellow postimpressionists, they directed their talents toward elaborating on the flat decorative patterns they first encountered in Japanese prints. Whereas Cézanne rejected the impressionist vision of reality, Gauguin spoke of the fundamental fallacy of naturalism and of impressionism, blaming the latter style for seeking "around the eye and not in the mysterious center of thought." In an extreme effort to shake off the past, Gauguin sought what he viewed as the universal truths implicit in the so-called primitive art of the South Seas. Van Gogh also searched for elemental truth, but he did so in the inner world of the psyche. Gauguin's work led directly to Fauvism, and van Gogh's to expressionism.

The Fauves and expressionists also owed a large debt to such neoimpressionists as Seurat, whose use of "points" or dots of pure color and whose banishment of conventional modeling added to the mounting interest at the end of the 19th century in unrealistic color and flat patterns (see neoimpressionism). Finally, the other-worldliness of the postimpressionist symbolists (see symbolism, art), such as Redon, together with the distorted lines of Art Nouveau in the works of Toulouse-Lautrec and other contemporaries, fostered a growing tendency toward abstract art that was to prove essential to nonfigurative developments in painting after 1910.

Although in the strict sense it cannot be called a movement, the postimpressionist period did provide a vital and creative link between the impressionist revolution and the founding of all the subsequent major art movements of the 20th century.


David Irwin
Source: The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Release #9.01, © 1997
Bibliography: Richard R. Brettell, Post-Impressionists (1987); Arthur J. Eddy, Cubists and Post-Impressionism (1914; repr. 1978); Frank Elgar, The Post-Impressionists (1978); Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (1961); George Heard Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880-1940 (1967); Diane Kelder, The Great Book of Post-Impressionism (1986); Linda Nochlin, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874-1904 (1966); John Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, 3d ed. (1978) and Studies in Post-Impressionism (1986); Belinda Thomson, The Post-Impressionists (1983).
Images: Pierre Bonnard - "Man and Woman" 1900 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris); Georges Seurat - "The Circus" (Louvre, Paris).
Copyrights Notice and Disclaimer: Images of artists' works displayed throughout this site have been obtained from numerous sources, including digital libraries at educational institutions, educational software, and Mark Harden's Artchive. Credit is attributed when known. Some works are considered to be in the public domain, based on current U.S. and international copyright acts. For more information on copyright laws, please refer to the Artists Rights Society and Benedict O'Mahoney's The Copyright Web Site. [See also: DiscoverFrance.net Copyrights.]

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