A Sunday Afternoon (or Island of La Grande Jatte) by the French painter Georges Seurat is a horizontal painting in great format that measures ten point five feet in height and nineteen point 6 inches in length. There isn't a main figure in this painting, but a heap of important figures altogether in different planes in the painting. The artwork is inspired by Sunday afternoon in this famous island that was also known as "Big Bowl Island": the perfect escape spot for the bourgeois to escape from the commoners. All the figures are carefully and strategically placed throughout the painting so everything stays balanced and proportioned. We can appreciate this in the pseudo hierarchy of characters in his art; for example the boats of big size in the river that are counter-balanced by the bigger ladies' figures standing close to the edge of it, along with the weight of the background bushes. Another good example of the weight balance in this painting is in the first plane at the very front, there are 3 people and a dog sitting by the shadow on the grass and in the opposite place there's a woman standing up, leaving enough space in between them to not saturate the plane. .
Seurat especially modifies the figures represented in this painting in order to create more curved, undulating rhythms in order to diminish the "squareness" and geometry. Even though we can see in the center of this artwork a flutter of masses and activity, it doesn't overpower any of the sides of the painting and it's just as attractive as everything else in it, helping the viewer to see the painting in the whole frame and not focus their attention to something specific. .
One of the most important features of Seurat's art was both his color palette and the use of light, which go hand in hand. In Island of la Grande Jatte, Seurat's blending techniques are easier to visualize in the use of shadows; he would play with the color by defining which color he would use next depending on the color that he already used and how he could either complement it or contrast it.
The "isms" of Art In the later years of our history we have come to see art progress in many stages. These stages surround modern art. These stages are categorized into Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Modernism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Surrealism. Realism represents...
