2.13.2011

A Staged Sunday on La Grande Jatte


At the time Georges Seurat (1859-1891) decided to memorialize it, La Grande Jatte was considered a good place to get away from the stresses of filthy, crowded Paris living. Seurat was a big fan of the island and used it as the setting for many of his sketches and paintings. According to a comment on its StumbleUpon page, this staging of Seurat's humongozoidal masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte took place in Belwoit, Wisconsin - perhaps way, way the hell farther out of Paris than Seurat wanted to go. I can't seem to find any information about the staging; it's not perfect or anything, but I'm really impressed they got the dog and sailboat in place. And, of course, by the desire to do it at all.

A little about Seurat:
A key post-impressionist painter, Georges Seurat moved away from the apparent spontaneity and rapidity of impressionism and developed a structured, more monumental art to depict modern urban life. For several of his large compositions, Seurat painted many small studies.
Seurat studied avant-garde painting techniques, especially impressionism and the latest scientific theories pertaining to light and color. From 1885 to 1886 he developed the divisionist technique. This new style, which consisted of systematically applied small touches of unmodulated color, was based on contemporary optical theories of color relationships.
Two years after his first neo-impressionist work was shown at the Salon des Indépendants, Seurat exhibited A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1886, The Art Institute of Chicago) at the eighth and final impressionist group show in 1886. His disciplined technique exerted a considerable influence over neo-impressionist artists such as Camille Pissarro, Henri Edmond Cross, and Paul Signac.
Sources:
The Art Institute of Chicago
The Wiki

Update [5/17/11]: ...with the cast of The Office

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