Description
Book SynopsisAn anthology of essays exploring the work of Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Sections are devoted to technique and theory, Seurat's engagement with social issues, irony regarding the paintings' content, aesthetic effects, and the relation of his work to literary symbolism.
Trade Review“The book as a whole is eclectic and adventurous. There is a collective determination not to become mired in stale controversy. . . . Colour theory is not ignored, but there is far more here than Seurat’s palette and Chevreul’s colour disc. There is poetry and politics, ethics and edges, the family and the father, sensation, disenchantment, timelessness, irony and absence. It is by turns thrilling and demanding.”
—Alex Danchev The Times Higher Education Supplement
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Paul Smith
Technique and Theory
1. Hors-d’œuvre: Edges, Boundaries, and Marginality, with Particular Reference to Seurat’s Drawings
Anthea Callen
2. Seurat and Color Theory
Georges Roque
Society and the Subject
3. The Family and the Father: The Grande Jatte and Its Absences
S. Hollis Clayson
4. Illuminations of Disenchantment: Seurat’s Parade de Cirque
Jonathan Crary
Irony
5. Interpreting Seurat’s Figure Paintings
John House
6. The Ironic Eye/I in Jules Laforgue and Georges Seurat
Joan U. Halperin
Sensation
7. Seurat and the Act of Sensing: Perception as Artifact
Brendan Prendeville
8. Grave Seurat
Richard Shiff
Stillness and Symbolism
9. “Souls of Glass”: Seurat and the Ethics of “Timeless” Experience
Paul Smith
10. Seurat and Mallarmean Thought
Richard Hobbs
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
