Georges Seurat

Known as “the notary” by his contemporaries for his very proper disposition, Georges Seurat (1859–1891), was nonetheless a trailblazing artist, who devised mesmerizing effects in paint, creating what Museum of Modern Art, New York director Alfred Barr described as a “strange, almost breathless poise.” Seurat's most famous painting, “La Grande Jatte” (1884), exemplifies the airy suspension of which “Pointillism” (as his style of painting-by-dabs was named) is uniquely capable, a sensation well suited to evoking in paint the sedate pace of Paris' new leisure class. For Seurat, Pointillism was also a way to attain for painting the mathematically explicable harmony of music: “Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations,” he declared in a letter to a friend. Seurat's style lent itself especially well to the portrayal of figures in space, and the endowing of those figures with volume and atmosphere. No other visual theme so well illustrates the tremendous innovations in Seurat's paintings and drawings as this handling of the figure, a theme which is at the heart of this new appraisal.

A part of Hatje Cantz's Art to Hear series, this audio guide to the life and work of the inventor of Pointillism draws on about 30 illustrations and an accompanying commentary to portray Seurat's unique achievement.

Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive publication surveys the artist's entire oeuvre, from his academic training and the emergence of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases. Accompanying the first exhibition in almost 25 years to focus exclusively on Seurat's drawings, this volume presents approximately 130 works, primarily the artist's incomparable conté drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. In an effort to bridge the seemingly opposite goals of description and evocation, Seurat masses dark and light tones to abstract figures, exploits medium and paper to amplify radiating light, and engages with the Parisian metropolis, revealing urban types, the industrial suburbs and nineteenth-century entertainment. Though Seurat is perhaps best known as the inventor of Pointillism, this volume demonstrates his tremendous achievement as a draftsman and his fundamental importance to the art of the twentieth century. It includes carefully selected details of the work, as well as reproductions from pages of Seurat's sketchbooks, which have never before been published. Texts by Jodi Hauptman, Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff and Richard Thomson address specific aspects of Seurat's techniques, materials, and subject matter. They are rounded out by a chronology, a selected bibliography and a detailed checklist.