Science Avant-Garde

o think that the neoimpressionists are painters who cover canvases with little multicolored spots is a rather widespread mistake, " wrote Paul Signac in his manifesto of their movement. " This mediocre dot method has nothing to do with the aesthetic of the painters we are defending here, nor with the technique of divisionism they use. " Signac was referring to, among others, Georges Seurat, who in trying to systematize the optical discoveries of the impressionists, had taken a scientifi c approach to painting, one based on color theory. His goal, he once said, was to make " modern people, in their essential traits, move about as if on friezes, and place them on canvases organized by harmonies of color, by directions of the tones in harmony with the lines, and by the directions of the lines. " Signac wholeheartedly adopted Seurat's invention, pointillism or divisionism, though he considered it simply a means of expression, a way to apply paint to the canvas. " The dot is nothing more than a brushstroke, a technique. And like all techniques, it does not matter much. " The idea was to render the surface of a painting more vibrant, to maximize the brilliance of color. But the methodical scien-tifi c technique alone did not " guarantee luminosity or the intensity of colors or harmony. This is due to the fact that complementary colors are favorable to and intensify each other when they are blended, even optically. A red surface and a green surface, when adjacent, stimulate one another. Red dots blended into green dots produce a gray and color-less whole. " " My family wanted me to become an architect, but I preferred drawing on the banks of the Seine rather than in a workshop of the École des Beaux-Arts, " wrote Signac. A visit to an exhibition of Claude Monet in 1880 was a life-changing experience. After a brief stint at the Collège Rol-lin, he set out to become a painter, which he did, a stellar one and self-taught. His earliest work was fi lled with energy. " It consisted in pasting reds, greens, blues, and yellows, without much care but with enthusiasm. " When he lost his father to tuberculosis, his fi nancially stable and supportive family saw to it he did not have to make ends meet. The same year, at age 17, he bought a painting by Paul Cézanne. …