Seurat /

Seurat's pivotal contribution to the development of modern painting has been widely and authoritatively discussed in French, while editions in English have been little more than picture albums repeatedly reproducing the artist's best-known canvases. Exceptions are John Russell's Seurat (CH, Jun'66) and Richard Thomson's Seurat (CH, Jan'86). One reason for such neglect may be the carefully veiled privacy of Seurat's life, providing only the most minimal biographical material, another the extreme brevity of his appearance on the art scene. His best-known paintings, Bathers at Asniers (1883-84) and Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grand Jatte (1885-86), key works in 19th-century art, are frequently reproduced in survey texts and in volumes on Postimpressionism; also, often and quite erroneously under the much more popular heading "Impressionism." On the other hand, Seurat's persistent effort to free himself from such facile identification with an exclusively retinal approach to painting, while carefully observed by Russell and Thomson, is more often than not bypassed in broader perspectives. Conscious of this, Madeleine-Perdrillat has produced an authoritative and readable work, his material logically evolving from the artist's systematic study of old masters and techniques, of Ingres and Manet, and of the Impressionists whose vivid colors he admired, to a new formalism combining and manipulating past and present into radical reaffirmation of the purely pictorial in visual creativity. Of exceptional quality are both the excellently rendered charcoal sketches and the abundant color images glitteringly reproduced. -R. Dittmann, St. Olaf College

Son of a one-armed, misanthropic bailiff, Georges Seurat (1859-1891) was an intensely private person. Just two days before he died of diphtheria, the painter presented his companion, Madeleine Knobloch, and their 13-month-old son to his mother. Seurat's ``withdrawal into the self,'' writes French art historian Madeleine-Perdrillat, yielded a personal language that integrated the human figure into nature. But the artist's motionless people with their slight air of unreality reflect the ultimate failure of his quest for unity. His precisely poetic art is a ``tranquil paroxysm,'' notes the author, who takes us deep inside the ``spatial anxiety'' of his paintings and drawings. This wonderfully sensitive, gorgeously illustrated study sheds new light on Seurat's enigmatic art. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

This is a fine companion to other books from the same publisher on 19th-century French artists: Jean Leymarie's Van Gogh (Skira/Rizzoli, 1978), Lionello Venturi's Cezanne ( LJ 6/1/79), and Leymarie's Corot ( LJ 1/80). The 245 illustrations (80 in color) interspersed throughout the text are of uniformly high quality. Many full-page color details are included. Of particular interest are the numerous reproductions of pencil and Conte crayon studies, which do much to illuminate Seurat's handling of light and shadow. The author guides the reader authoritatively through the development of Seurat's unique style, a style referred to by the artist himself as ``divisionism.'' Each major Seurat work receives thorough treatment. A carefully selected bibliography is preceded by translated testimonials that appeared in the French press after Seurat's untimely death in 1891. Recommended for most collections.-- P. Steven Thomas, Washburn Univ., Topeka, Kan. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.