Subtractive And Additive Theories Of Color example essay topic

During his short life, Georges-Pierre Seurat was an innovator in an age of innovators in the field of art. This french painter was a leader in a movement called neo-impressionist in the late 19th century. Unlike the broad brushstrokes of the impressionist, Seurat developed a technique called pointillism or divisionism. In this method, he used small dots or strokes of contrasting color to create the subtle changes contained within the painting.

Seurat was an art scientist in that he spent much of his life, searching for how different colors and linear effects would change the look or texture of a canvas. He was painstaking in his work, the technique he chose taking much longer to produce a work of art. Pointillism is a form of painting in which small dots of color are grouped to create a sense of vibrancy, tending to interact and fuse in the spectator's eye (Ros kill). It is very similar to Divisionism, but where Divisionism is concerned with color theory, Pointillism is more focused on the specific style of brushwork used to apply the paint. Originally developed by Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat, the movement is also associated with Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross (Artists). When viewed from a distance, the points or dots cannot be distinguished, and blend optically into each other.

This means that with the same set of primaries, pointillists generate a different range of colors when compared to artists using traditional colors or color-mixing techniques. The result is sometimes described as brighter or purer since the eye does the mixing and not the brush. An explanation for this could be sought in the subtractive and additive theories of color (Pointillism). Usually when colors are produced by pigments being mixed physically, the subtractive color theory is at work. Here the mixing of pigments of the primary colours produces less light; so if we mix red, blue and yellow pigments (subtractive primaries), we get a colour close to black. However when colours are produced by the mixing of light, then the additive color theory is at work.

Here the mixing of lights of the three primary colours produces more light; so if we mix red, blue and green light (additive primaries) we get something close to white light. The brighter effect of pointillist colours could rise from the fact that subtractive mixing is avoided and something closer to the effect of additive mixing is obtained even through pigments (Pointillism) The brushwork used to perform pointillistic color mixing is at the expense of traditional brushwork which could be used to delineate texture. Color television receivers and computer screens, both CRT and LCD, use tiny dots of primary red, green, and blue to render color, and can thus be regarded as a kind of pointillism (Pointillism). Impressionism is a movement in French painting, sometimes called optical realism because of its almost scientific interest in the actual visual experience and effect of light and movement on appearance of objects (Impressionism). Neoimpressionism was a late-19th century art movement led by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who exhibited their early work in 1884 at the exhibition of the Societ'e des Artistes Ind'e pendents in Paris (Neoimpressionism).

Many Impressionists in the years after 1880 began to reconsider their earlier approaches or make important adjustments to them. What many of them found objectionable in their earlier art was not its truth value but its lack of permanence. Despite the fundamental similarity of conception, later works differ from earlier works in two fundamental respects. The elements, especially the figures, are more solidly and conventionally defined, and composition is more conservative. They moved far from her early commitment to depicting only contemporary moments. This pattern of rejection and reform was originated by Georges-Pierre Seurat, who made use of a technique called pointillism (known as confetti ism).

This new technique is based on the skillful putting side by side touches of pure color. The brain then blends the colors automatically in the involuntary process of optical mixing (Impressionism). Georges Seurat died at the age of only 31 of diphtheria (George). After his death, some artists like Paul Signac continued to follow Pointillism, but the movement soon faded out. It had no chance of ever becoming mainstream art. A nice and charming episode in modern art history - not more and not less.

The work of Georges Seurat influenced later painters of Fauvism and Cubism and has an uncontested page in art history. Seurat was obsessed by the idea of being on a mission to a new form of art. To this mission he devoted his life without any compromises.

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