Postimpressionism is an art-historical term
coined (1910) by British art critic Roger Fry to describe the various styles of painting that
flourished in France during the period from about 1880 to about 1910. Generally, the term is
used as a convenient chronological umbrella covering the generation of artists who sought new
forms of expression in the wake of the pictorial revolution wrought by impressionism.
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"Man and Woman"
by Pierre Bonnard
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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Among the principal figures in this group were Pierre Bonnard,
Paul Cézanne, Paul
Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and
Vincent van Gogh.
Although their individual styles differed
profoundly, all of these artists moved away from the aesthetic program of impressionism and,
in particular, from the impressionists' emphasis on depicting a narrow spectrum of visual
reality. It would be a mistake to view the postimpressionists as simply rejecting their
impressionist heritage; rather, they accepted the revolutionary impact of impressionism and
went on to explore new aesthetic ideas, many of which grew out of concepts implicit in
impressionism. Another connecting link between most of the postimpressionists -- with the
notable exception of Cézanne -- was a common emphasis on surface pattern, a trait that
led many contemporary critics to use the term decorative to describe postimpressionist pictures.
Aside from a general dissatisfaction with impressionism and a widely shared interest in surface
pattern, however, the postimpressionists displayed few stylistic or thematic similarities.
Cézanne had belonged to the impressionist
movement, but he withdrew (1878) from it because he wanted to create a style that he described
as more "solid and durable." Working in isolation in Aix-en-Provence during the 1880s and '90s,
he evolved a new concept of space that was of fundamental importance to 20th-century painting.
This highly individual art, which was to be greatly admired by the next generation of painters,
laid the groundwork for the creation of cubism by Pablo Picasso
and Georges Braque.
The art of Gauguin and van Gogh, however,
reflected a more emotional bias and involved highly charged colors and a rhythmical patterning
of lines across the surface of a picture.
Like Cézanne, both Gauguin and van Gogh
abandoned the impressionist movement, but unlike their fellow postimpressionists, they directed
their talents toward elaborating on the flat decorative patterns they first encountered in Japanese
prints. Whereas Cézanne rejected the impressionist vision of reality, Gauguin spoke of the
fundamental fallacy of naturalism and of impressionism, blaming the latter style for seeking
"around the eye and not in the mysterious center of thought." In an extreme effort to shake off
the past, Gauguin sought what he viewed as the universal truths implicit in the so-called primitive
art of the South Seas. Van Gogh also searched for elemental truth, but he did so in the inner world
of the psyche. Gauguin's work led directly to Fauvism, and van Gogh's to expressionism.
The Fauves and expressionists also owed a large
debt to such neoimpressionists as Seurat, whose use of "points" or dots of pure color and whose
banishment of conventional modeling added to the mounting interest at the end of the 19th century
in unrealistic color and flat patterns (see neoimpressionism). Finally, the other-worldliness of
the postimpressionist symbolists (see symbolism, art), such as Redon, together with the distorted
lines of Art Nouveau in the works of Toulouse-Lautrec and other contemporaries, fostered a growing
tendency toward abstract art that was to prove essential to nonfigurative developments in painting
after 1910.
Although in the strict sense it cannot be called
a movement, the postimpressionist period did provide a vital and creative link between the
impressionist revolution and the founding of all the subsequent major art movements of the 20th
century.
David Irwin
Source: The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Release #9.01, © 1997
Bibliography: Richard R. Brettell, Post-Impressionists (1987);
Arthur J. Eddy, Cubists and Post-Impressionism (1914; repr. 1978);
Frank Elgar, The Post-Impressionists (1978);
Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture (1961);
George Heard Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1880-1940 (1967);
Diane Kelder, The Great Book of Post-Impressionism (1986);
Linda Nochlin, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874-1904 (1966);
John Rewald, Post-Impressionism from Van Gogh to Gauguin, 3d ed. (1978)
and Studies in Post-Impressionism (1986);
Belinda Thomson, The Post-Impressionists (1983).
Images: Pierre Bonnard - "Man and Woman" 1900 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris);
Georges Seurat - "The Circus" (Louvre, Paris).
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