1. Post-Impressionism

2. Artists
French phenomenon that included French artists like Gauguin, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Dutchman van Gogh
Careers spanned

3. Key Characteristics
Their canvases shone with rainbow-bright colour patches
The Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with Impressionism
They wanted art to be more substantial, not completely dedicated to capturing a passing moment
Monet (fleeting moment)
van Gogh (emotion and sensation through colour and light) 3

4. They were split into two groups
Seurat and Cezanne concentrated on formal, near scientific design- Seurat with his dot theory and Cezanne with his colour planes.
Gaughin, van Gogh, and Lautrec, emphasized expressing their emotions and sensations through colour and light

5. Formal Design v.s. Expressing Emotion and Sensations
Seurat
Van Gogh
Cezanne
Lautrec

6. Seurat

7. Always wore a top hat and dark suit with precisely pressed trousers
He was just as meticulous in his art
His method was known as pointillism
He applied confetti-sized dots of pure, unmixed colour over the whole canvas

8. He theorized that complementary colours, set side by side, would mix in the viewer’s eye with greater luminosity than if mixed on the painter’s palette
His method was so intensive he only finished seven large paintings in his decade-long career
Died at age 31

9. His most celebrated work, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte took him two years and forty preliminary colour studies
Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,

10. For Seurat, warm colours (the orange-red family) connoted action and gaiety, as did lines of moving upward
Dark, cool colours (blue-green) and descending lines evoked sadness
Middle tones or a balance of warm and cool colours, and lateral lines conveyed calm and stasis (inactivity)

11. Seurat’s last painting, “Le Cirque” (circus), conveys a mood of frenetic activity
The acid yellow and orange colours and upward-curving lines of the performers contrast with the muted spectators ranged horizontally in static rows
Seurat, Le Cirque, 1891

12. Toulouse-Lautrec

13. He caricatured his own deformed appearance in bitter self-portraits
Born to France’s most blueblood family- the 1,000-year-old Counts of Toulouse
Lautrec was a self-imposed exile from high society due to a childhood tragedy

14. As a teenager, he broke both legs, which atrophied, giving him a five foot stature with a child’s short legs, the powerful torso of a man, and a grossly disproportionate head
He abandoned his love of riding and shooting for his interest in art
His teacher pronounced his early drawings “simply awful”

15. He was an alcoholic and syphilitic
He consorted with bohemians (a person who has unconventional social habits) and social outcasts
He lived in a brothel for a time to complete his series paintings of bored prostitutes

16. Work was similar to Degas in style and content
Drew his subjects from contemporary life: Parisian theatres, dance halls, and circuses
Portrayed movement and private moments through slice-of-life glimpses with abrupt, photo graphic cropping
Primary interests were actresses with doubtful morality, entertainers, acrobats, and prostitutes

17. Asymmetrical cropping derived from their mutual admiration of Japanese prints
Almost all of Lautrec’s paintings are of figures in interior night scenes lit by glaring, artificial light
Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892

18. Beginning about 1890, he designed posters of bold visual simplicity
Toulouse-Lautrec, Divan Japonaise

19. Paul Cezanne

20. Was a loner who felt alien in the city
Even among the Impressionists he was considered beyond the pale
Manet called him a “farceur” (a joke)
Degas thought he was a wild man because of his provincial accent, comical clothes, and unorthodox painting style

21. The public denounced Cezanne’s paintings with vengeance
At the first Impressionist exhibit in 1874, sneering crowds were loudest around Cezanne’s paintings
Stung by ridicule, he retreated to Aix
He was obscure until his first one-man show in 1895, after which he was seen as a “Sage” by the younger generation

22. Cezanne’s work was radical at the time because of his new take on surface appearances
He penetrated to its underlying geometry
“Reproduce nature in terms of the cylinder and the sphere and the cone,” he advised

23. He painted this subject matter over 60 times
To create the illusion of depth, he placed cool colours like blue, which seem to recede, at rear and warm colours like red, which seem to advance, in front
Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, , oil on canvas,  73 x 91.9 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

24. He was as systematic in his still lifes
“Cezanne arranged the fruit, contrasting the tones one against another, making complementaries vibrate, the greens against the reds, the yellows against the blues, tilting, turning, balancing the fruit as he wanted it to be…”
Cezanne, Still Life with Apples and Oranges,

25. In his last ten years, he was obsessed with the theme of nude bathers in an outdoor setting
Because of his extreme slowness in execution, his shyness, and a fear of his prudish neighbors’ suspicions, Cezanne did not work from live models
Cezanne, Large Bathers, 1905

26. Paul Gauguin

27. Lived in Peru as a child
Spent six years before the mast as a young man sailing to exotic ports
For more than a decade he was prosperous
Parisian stock broker, a middle-class father of five who took up Sunday painting in 1873

28. By 1883, Gauguin had ditched his new family for his new love- art
He paraded the boulevards with a monkey on his shoulder and an outlandishly dressed Javanese girl on his arm
Became a full-time painter at 35, he headed to Pont-aven in Brittany
A Javanese Girl at Her Toilette Painting

29. He lived in a native hut with a 13-year-old Tahitian mistress
Gauguin spent his last ten years in the South Seas, where he felt free at last
He lived in a native hut with a 13-year-old Tahitian mistress
Paul Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Watching, 1892

30. Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Women (on the beach), 1891
He transformed colours and distorted shapes to convey his emotional response to a scene
Simplified figures, the firm outlines, rich colours- especially lilac, pink and lemon
Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Women (on the beach), 1891

31. Paul Gauguin Vision After the Sermon, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 1888

32. Vincent van Gogh

33. Brief ten year career
When van Gogh discovered Impressionism in Paris, his work underwent a drastic change
He switched from dark to bright colours and from social realist themes to light-drenched, outdoor scenes
Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889

34. Even though van Gogh adopted the broken brushstroke and bright complementary colours of the impressionists, his art was always original
He threw himself into paintings with a therapeutic frenzy, producing 800 paintings and as many drawings in ten years.
Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888

35. He painted all day-without stopping to eat-at white-hot speed and then continued painting into the night with candles stuck to his hat brim
Rejected by several woman, when a Dutch spinster finally accepted him, her parents forbade the match and she poisoned herself

36. Van Gogh Room at Arles, 1889

37. Prototype for the suffering genius
After a fight with Gauguin, van Gogh threatens him with a straight razor and then later that night, slices off his left ear lobe, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and presented it to a prostitute

38. Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889
Did nearly 40 self-portraits in oil
Done two weeks after his disastrous quarrel with Gauguin and self-mutilation
Used very few colours
Concentrated on agony in the eyes
Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889

39. Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889
Produced “Starry Night” while he was a patient in the Saint-Remy asylum
The stars and moon explode with energy
In van Gogh’s last seventy days, he painted seventy canvases
He died in 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 37.
Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889 39

40. Vincent van Gogh was often despondent at his lack of prospects and dependence on his brother for financial support.
After receiving a letter from his brother complaining of financial worries, van Gogh ended his last letter with the words, “What’s the use?”
He then walked into a field with a pistol and shot himself, dying two days later.
Theo (his brother) soon went mad himself and, within five months of Vincent’s suicide, died.

41. Edvard Munch (Moonk)

42. Early Expressionism
Munch was a forerunner for Expressionism, a style that portrayed emotions through distorting form and colour
They used violent colours and exaggerated lines that helped contain intense emotional expression.
Expressionists were trying to pinpoint the expression of inner experience rather than solely realistic portrayal

43. An important inspiration for the German Expressionist movement
Norwegian painter
An important inspiration for the German Expressionist movement
Spent time in Paris where he learned from Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art
Most productive period was in Berlin
Edvard Munch, Self Portrait with a Wine Bottle, 1906

44. He produced paintings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts that expressed modern anguish with unequaled power
Munch was an outsider, brooding and melancholy, who called his painting his “children”
His mother and eldest sister died of comsumption (tuberculosis) when he was young, leaving him to be raised by a fanatically religious father

45. Even as an adult, Munch was so afraid of his father that he ordered “Puberty,” his first nude painting, to be covered at an exhibit that his father attended
Edvard Munch, Puberty, Oil on canvas,

46. Shows the fear of losing one’s mind
Every line heaves with agitation; there is no relief for the eye
Blood red clouds
When Munch first exhibited the painting, it caused such an uproar, the exhibit was closed
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893

47. “Illness, madness, and death were the black angels that kept watch over my cradle,” Munch wrote of his painful youth
He was treated for depression at a sanatorium
He realized that his psychological problems were a catalyst for his art

48. He specialized in portraying extreme emotions like jealousy, sexual desire, and loneliness
Although Munch often went for months without painting, once he began to work, he painted in a frenzy
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1907

49. After one bout of nonstop work, heavy drinking, and a disastrous love affair, Munch suffered a nervous break down.
Afterwards determined to put aside his tormented themes, his work became more optimistic but less moving
Edvard Munch, Red House and Spruce Trees, 1927.

50. Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907

51. An important precursor of Expressionism
German born
She worked in isolation, developing a completely modern style
Brief career, cut short by her death from childbirth

52. She concentrated on single figures: wide-eyed, often nude, self-portraits and portraits of peasants
Modersohn-Becker, Self-Portrait, 1906

53. Modersohn-Becker, Reclining Mother and Child, 1906

54. Henri Rousseau

55. Symbolism The forerunner of Surrealism
Artistic and literary movement that thrived in the last decade of the nineteenth century
Discarded the visible world of surface appearance for the inner world of fantasy

56. French painter
He was an untrained hobby painter
Quit his job at age 40 to paint full time
He believed that his fantastic, childlike landscapes - full of strange, lurking animals and tree sized flowers - were realistic paintings

57. His figures were flat and the scale, proportion, and perspective were skewed
Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897
Despite- or perhaps because of- these “flaws,” his stiff jungle scenes have an air of mystery and otherworldliness to them

58. He studied plants and animals at the Paris zoo, but his technical limitations were clear
He meticulously finished the painting’s surface so that no brushstrokes were visible
Henri Rousseau, Eve,

59. Fin