THE SCIENCE OF SEURAT

AN aura of epic (and of late, cinematic) drama hovers over the struggles, achievements and major breakthroughs of such 19th century greats as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Cezanne, on whose vision modern art largely rests. Less known but of no less importance was Georges Seurat, born in 1859, who made it his goal to weld science and art into a technique of dot, dab and stitch strokes that would not only challenge the glowing canvases of the impressionists but be a compendium of what was known in his day of optics, color and psychology.

At last coming up for reappraisal, the works of Seurat are about to have their first major museum showing, opening this week at the Chicago Art Institute and moving in March to Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. To stage the show, the Chicago Institute, which owns Seurat's key masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (now valued at more than $1,000,000), drew on 86 collections in the U.S. and abroad, brought together a total of 150 sketches and paintings. Of the seven major works that Seurat painted in his brief lifetime, four (from London, France, The Netherlands and Chicago) are present at the show. One indication of their value: both the director of The Netherlands' Rijksmuseum Kroeller-Muller and the curator of France's Louvre insisted on accompanying their Seurat loans to the U.S.

Dots in the Eye. Even to his contemporaries, who did not know until after Seurat's death that the dark, aloof painter had taken one of his models as mistress and fathered a son, the pointillist was a distant, mysterious yet compelling figure. Born the son of a well-to-do but highly eccentric Paris bailiff (who astonished dinner guests by screwing knives and forks into his artificial arm to do the carving), young Seurat got only passing marks from his drawing teacher. On his own, he delved into weighty scientific treatises. Haunting the Louvre's galleries, he tried to analyze the color alchemy of the old masters. What Seurat was working toward was a system that would break down color into its components; then he set these down in minute dots so that the result, seen from a distance, would fuse in the retina of the viewer's eye, rather than be muddled on the painter's palette.

Seurat went about his mission with a thoroughness that Louvre Curator Germain Bazin compares only to Leonardo da Vinci's own scientific preparations. To ready his first painted manifesto, La Grande Jatte, Seurat went daily for six months to the island to sketch and make quick color studies, worked for months in his studio making life studies of the 40 figures he intended to place in his finished canvas. Only after two arduous years did Seurat, then 26, finish the work--thousands of minute dots of paint, some three layers in depth, on a canvas measuring nearly 7 ft. by 10 ft.

Shown at the eighth (and last) exhibition of the impressionists in 1886, Jatte immediately became a landmark in art, evoking catcalls from the critics and attracting younger painters. Van Gogh tried pointillism but found it too exacting; Gauguin, too, gave it a try, finally decided it was fit only for "little green chemists who pile up tiny dots." The grand old man of impressionism, Camille Pissarro, doffed his cap to a new master and for five years struggled to learn the technique. Only the young disciple Paul Signac managed to make the system work with anything like Seurat's magic. Pointillism demanded the combination of cool, scientific detachment and the sensitivity to color, order and design with which Seurat was uniquely endowed. "They see poetry in what I have done," said Seurat. "No, I apply my method and that is all there is to it."

Theories in the Nude. Between major works, Seurat relaxed each year by going to the seacoasts of Brittany and Normandy "to wash the studio light from my eyes" and "transcribe most exactly the vivid outdoor clarity in all its nuances." The results, as in Harbor at Grandcamp, remain among the most glowing seascapes ever painted. On the Seine near Paris, Seurat again put his theories to the test; in Bridge at Courbevoie he demonstrated his theory that a painting done in descending lines, cooler colors and deeper tones would produce a tangible note of sadness.

Seurat methodically moved on to paint large, carefully prepared salon showpieces that applied his painting theories to the female nude, to bright, artificially lighted dance halls and circuses, and then to portraiture. Then, after only a two-day illness, Seurat died of a meningitis-like disease on March 29, 1891, at 31.

Returning from Seurat's funeral, Camille Pissarro seemed to foresee the immense appeal a scientific rationale was to have for 20th century artists, from the cubists to the Bauhaus to the surrealists. He wrote to his own son: "I believe you are right, pointillism is finished; but I think it will give rise to effects which later will have great artistic significance. Seurat really brought something."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.