Vincent van Gogh
Self-Portrait
Image courtesy of
The National Gallery of Art, U.S.A
Geographic Center:
Paris
Background:
Post-Impressionism is a period created by Impressionism, exploiting the lack
of true object and form of the Impressionist movement. It consists of more
experimental techniques, including pointillism and divisionism. The former
used dabs of color on a white surface while the latter used dabs of color
placed closely together to form larger areas of color.
Effect on Faces and Figures:
Although artists concentrated less on people than earlier movements, it did
reshape the appearances of people in paintings. There is a distinct difference
in Post-Impressionist portraits and figures. Whereas Impressionists
had a number of classical elements, including the soft, blended skin tones,
shading, and a look that was generally a blurred out version of the original.
Many Post-Impressionists, including Van Gogh and
Seurat, put colors into skin that really didn't seem
to belong, and it was layered on without blending. Artists like Gaugin, distorted
his figures, and created a rather awkward look. And the paintings started
to decrease in depth.
Post-Impressionism foreshadows the art of the 20th Century, where originality
was key, and total abstraction was born. It went to prove that the Impressionists
had created a change that was permanent, and that art will continuously flourish
in the artist's own way.
Famous Artists:
Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin,
Paul Cézanne, Georges
Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
