Post-Impressionism:Moving towards more

personal interpretations.

EXPRESSION

ABSTRACTION

FANTASY

Van Gogh Portrait

Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Van Gogh Van Gogh Self-portrait

Van Gogh: Potato EatersEmpathy with a brush without clients.

Van Gogh The Blooming Plumtree

Eastern Influence.

Van Gogh: Patch of Grass

Impressionist’s influence could not restrain personal expression.Van Gogh Patch of Grass

Van Gogh Sunflowers

Psychological attachmentto color.

Van GoghCafé Terrace at Night

Toulouse-Lautrec: Subjects from Paris night life.

Personal and social deformities.

Toulouse-Lautrec Moulin Rouge Patronage

The Entertainers of Lautrec’s world.

Lautrec: Toilet

Lautrec The Toilet

Degas The Bath

Candid momentsUnusual views

Lautrec: Two Half-naked Women

Lautrec Bed

Lautrec: Portrait of Justine Dieuhl

Lautrec

Nobility in search of another nobility?

Gauguin: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

A search for a reality beneath appearances.

Gauguin: Les Alyscamps, Arles

Shapes and Colors For their own sake.

Gauguin: Swineherd

Gauguin: Spirit of the Dead WatchingThe “Noble Savage”.Portrayal of the significance of reality.

Why so flat& stylized?

“…if you see a blue tree in the forestand you like the color, paint it all blue!”

Paying homage to color for its own sake.

Gauguin The White Horse

Gauguin: Self-Portrait

Photograph of Gauguin

The Great Escape From Convention.

Seurat: Sunday Afternoon Controlled arrangements of form and color.

Art Takes From ScienceChevreul was a French chemist whorestored old tapestries. During hisrestorations of tapestries he noticed thatthe only way to restore a section properlywas to take into account the influence ofthe colors around the missing wool; hecould not produce the right hue unless herecognized the surrounding dyes.Chevreul discovered that two colorsjuxtaposed, slightly overlapping or veryclose together, would have the effect ofanother color when seen from a distance.The discovery of this phenomenonbecame the basis for the Pointillisttechnique of the Neoimpressionistpainters.

Seurat Profile

Neo-Impressionism/Pointillism/Divisionism

Cezanne: Self-Portrait

Paul Cezanne: The Father Of Modern Art

Cezanne: Still-life With ApplesParticulars surrender to the Universal

Cezanne: Still-lifeMore than one side to every story…

Paying homage to the canvas; not the subjects.Cezanne The Card Players

Cezanne: Mt. St. Victoire

Spatial illusion in mutation. Perceptual rules of nature no longer serve as the guide.

Wanda’s Quote

“We have to reconnect to that wild stream of creativity; andagain I think that education has practically banishedcreativity because we've so siphoned it through a tunnel ofthe rational that you're fortunate if you can come out at theother end with any imagination still intact; and I even speakto graduates of our art institutions and our musicconservatories, that very often they succumb to techniqueand they kill the wild spirit of the soul that has entered thatlearning place in order to discipline the wildness, to findlanguage for it, but not to domesticate it.”

Mathew Fox

Art & Plants

Art and plants thrive in fertile soil. For some, art is onlythere for the picking. They plant and harvest endlessly,with little thought of replenishing or rotating the crop.

But there are those artists and patrons who replenish, andin so doing, harvest a crop rich in both tradition and insight.Their soil encourages new growth and a mutation of endlessvarieties of new visual and tactile experiences.

And then there are those who plant a new variety of seedwhich germinates to become esoteric concepts. Their soilbears abundant fruit, rich in verbal, philosophical, socialand political pronouncements for a chosen few. This cropis not a feast for the eye or touch of a hand, for suchqualities are no longer recognized by these artist or theirfollowers.

© 2009Richard Nelson