The Art Scene: 1880s and 1980s
Seurat's place in art history and the artistic scene of the late 1880s
Impression, Sunrise (1872),
Claude Monet
The Lighthouse at Honfleur (1886),
Georges Seurat
To get the best understanding of where this painting lives in the canon of art history, we have to look at the art before and after Georges Seurat. Seurat and La Grande Jatte come right at the end of Impressionism: paintings, mostly landscapes, painted outside with airy color, bright light, and messy brushstrokes. It was the beginning of more modern and abstract art. La Grande Jatte was exhibited in the final Impressionist salon in 1886.
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Seurat is considered to be the pioneer of Post-Impressionism and, specifically, Neo-Impressionism. These art eras came as a reaction to the on-the-fly nature of Impressionism. Post/Neo-Impressionist work was still colorful, but much more calculated and symbolic, rather than messy and natural. The mathematical use of color by the Neo-Impressionists, namely Seurat, became known as divisionism, pointillism, or, by Seurat's choice, chromoluminarism.
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To see more of paintings by Seurat, his Impressionist contemporaries, and his Neo-Impressionism contemporaries, refer to the "More Paintings" tab of this site.
Contemporary Art and the art scene of the 1980s
Untitled (1982),
Jean-Michel Basquiat
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Untitled (812), (1987),
Keith Haring
Unlike Georges Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists, the art of the 1980s represented in Act II of Sunday in the Park with George does not fall into a neat artistic era. By the mid-1900s, art has (literally and figuratively) abstracted and splintered into many, many styles and forms. However, if I were to pick where to categorize the art from 1980's represented in the show, I would land close to Postmodernism. A reaction to the utopian views of the Modernists, the Postmodernists embraced a lack of a singular definition and type of art making. They practiced art with skepticism and philosophical critique, often connecting with intermedia, technological, and installation art.
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Following the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, the economies' of cities in the United States were booming. This meant that places like New York City, namely, but also Chicago (the setting of the second act) were able to fund cultural institutions like museums and theaters. However, the wage disparity was increasing and AIDS was emerging, causing a dissonance between the institution's wealth and the artists themselves. Art at this time often referenced past or current political or social events and reflected the amalgamation of cultures in large cities in the United States.
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