| Post-Impressionism in
Western painting, movement in France that represented both an extension
of Impressionism and a rejection of that style's inherent limitations.
The term Post-Impressionism was coined by the English art critic Roger
Fry for the work of such late 19th-century painters as Paul Cézanne,
Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, and others. All of these painters except van Gogh were
French, and most of them began as Impressionists; each of them abandoned
the style, however, to form his own highly personal art. Impressionism
was based, in its strictest sense, on the objective recording of nature
in terms of the fugitive effects of colour and light. The
Post-Impressionists rejected this limited aim in favour of more
ambitious expression, admitting their debt, however, to the pure,
brilliant colours of Impressionism, its freedom from traditional subject
matter, and its technique of defining form with short brushstrokes of
broken colour. The work of these painters formed a basis for several
contemporary trends and for early 20th-century modernism.
The Post-Impressionists often exhibited together,
but, unlike the Impressionists, who began as a close-knit, convivial
group, they painted mainly alone. Cézanne painted in isolation at
Aix-en-Provence in southern France; his solitude was matched by that of
Paul Gauguin, who in 1891 took up residence in Tahiti, and of van Gogh,
who painted in the countryside at Arles. Both Gauguin and van Gogh
rejected the indifferent objectivity of Impressionism in favour of a
more personal, spiritual expression. After exhibiting with the
Impressionists in 1886, Gauguin renounced “the abominable error of
naturalism.” With the young painter Émile Bernard, Gauguin sought a
simpler truth and purer aesthetic in art; turning away from the
sophisticated, urban art world of Paris, he instead looked for
inspiration in rural communities with more traditional values. Copying
the pure, flat colour, heavy outline, and decorative quality of medieval
stained glass and manuscript illumination, the two artists explored the
expressive potential of pure colour and line, Gauguin especially using
exotic and sensuous colour harmonies to create poetic images of the
Tahitians among whom he would eventually live. Arriving in Paris in
1886, the Dutch painter van Gogh quickly adapted Impressionist
techniques and colour to express his acutely felt emotions. He
transformed the contrasting short brushstrokes of Impressionism into
curving, vibrant lines of colour, exaggerated even beyond Impressionist
brilliance, that convey his emotionally charged and ecstatic responses
to the natural landscape.
In general, Post-Impressionism led away from a
naturalistic approach and toward the two major movements of early
20th-century art that superseded it: Cubism and Fauvism, which sought to
evoke emotion through colour and line. |
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