Georges Siera "Sunday Day on the island of Grand-Zhant. Georges Syra
Picture: "Sunday day on Grand-Zhant island."
Georges Pierre Syra; (Fr. Georges Seurat, December 2, 1859, Paris - March 29, 1891, ibid) - French post-imagressionist, founder of the French school of neo-impressionism of the XIX century, whose methods of transferring the game of light with the help of tiny strokes of contrasting color became known as Pointelism or Divisionism, as the artist himself called her.
With the help of this technique, sulfur created compositions with tiny, separate pure strokes, which are too small to highlight them when looking, but make it pictures with single delightful solid works.
Georges sulfur was born on December 2, 1859 in Paris in a rich family. His father, Antoine-crisis of Syra, was a lawyer and a native of Champagne; Mother, Ernestin Fevr, was a Parisian. Surrived school of fine arts. Then he served in the army in Brest. In 1880 he returned to Paris. In the search for his style in art invented the so-called pointelism - artistic reception of shades and colors using individual colors. Reception is used in the calculation of the optical effect of merging small parts when looking at the image at a distance. Working from nature, Siera loved writing on small skirts. A solid, non-refined brush surface of a tree, in contrast to the vibrating stretched canvas plane, emphasized the direction of each smear, which occupies a clearly defined place in the colorful compositional structure of the etude. Siera turned to the discarded by impressionists the method of operation: on the basis of etudes and sketches written in the Plenuel, create a large format picture in the workshop.
Georges Siera first studied art with Justin Lena, sculptor. After returning to Paris, he worked in the studio along with two friends of the student period, and then equipped his own workshop. Among the artists most of all were interested in Delacroa, Coro, Coutur, he was amazed by the "intuition of Monet and Pissarro." Syrahtotel to a strictly scientific method of Divisionism (the theory of decomposition of colors). On the electronic analogy of this method, the operation of the raster display is based. Over the next two years, the art of black and white drawing was mastered. The sulfur read a lot, vividly interested in scientific discoveries in the field of optics and colors and the latest aesthetic systems. According to his friends, his desktop book was "Grammar Art Figure" "Grammaire des Arts du dessin" (1867) Charles of the Blanche. According to Blanov, the artist must "acquaint the viewer with the natural beauty of things, revealing their inner meaning, their clean entity."
In 1883, Syra creates his first outstanding work - a huge picturesque canvas of "swimsters in Anniere". The Picture of the Salon's jury presented on the court was rejected. Siera showed it at the first exhibition of a group of independent artists in 1884 in the Pavilion of Tuileries. His acquaintance with Xinyaka, who later responded about the picture was happening: "This picture was written by large flat strokes, who were alone on another and taken from the palette, drawn up, like Delacroix, from pure and earth paints. The ocher and the Earth dimmed the flavor, and the picture seemed less bright than the pictures of impressionists written by the colt colors. But compliance with the contrast, systematic separation of elements - light, shadow, local color, is the right ratio and equilibrium gave the harmony to this canvas. "
After his painting was rejected by the Paris Salon, Syra preferred individual creativity and unions with independent artists of Paris. In 1884, he and other artists (including Maximillene Lusa) have formed the creative society "Soschie de Artist Independents". There he meets the artist by the Xinyak field, which will later also use the Pointilism method. In the summer of 1884, Syra began work on his most famous work - "Sunday day on Grand-Zhant island." The picture was completed in two years.
"Sunday Day on the island of Grand-Zhantt" - the famous picture of huge sizes (2; 3 m) of the French artist Georges Syra, which is a bright example of Pointilism - directions in painting, one of the founders of which was Syra. It is considered one of the most wonderful paintings of the XIX century period of postmingness. The picture is part of the collection of the Chicago Institute of Arts.
"Mosaic boredom" - the philosopher Ernst Bloch responded about the Syra canvas. Bloch saw on the canvas only "poverty Sunday" and "Landscape of depicted suicide".
Publisher Felix Feneon, on the contrary, considered the canvas cheerful and cheerful and responded to him like this: "Sunday a variety of crowd ... Enjoying nature in the midst of summer."
When the picture was exhibited in 1886 at the 8th exhibition of Impressionists, various literary groups took it in completely different keys: Realists wrote about it as a Sunday Guliana of Parisian Luda, and the symbolists in the squeezing silhouettes of figures heard the szles of the processions of the Pharaohs and even Panafine Processions . All this caused a ridicule of an artist who just wanted to write "a cheerful and bright composition with equilibrium horizontals and verticals, dominants of warm colors and light tones with a luminous white spot in the center."
Siera made a lot of drawings for her and several landscapes with the views of the Seine. Some critics that wrote about Siera suggest that "bathing" and then written "Grand-Zhant" are pair paintings, in the first of which is depicted working class, and in the second - bourgeoisie. Another opinion was adhered to English aesthetics and historian of art Roger Fry, who opened the art of postimipressionists by the English public. Fry highly appreciated neo-simpressionists. In the "bathing", in his opinion, the main merit of Syra was that he was distracted from the ordinary, and from a poetic look at things and moved to the area of \u200b\u200b"clean and almost abstract harmony." But not all impressionists adopted the neo-surgressionistic creativity of Syra. So the degi in response to the words of Camille Pissarro, also fightered by Puntilism, that the "Grand-Zhant" is a very interesting picture, ITIFICAL noticed: "I would notice it, but it is very great," hinting on the optical properties of Pointelism, from which Near the picture seems to be a color knee. The characteristic feature of the sulfur style was his no one similar to the image of the figures. Hostile critics certainly sharpened attention on this element of sulfur paintings, calling his characters with "cardboard dolls" or "lifeless cartoons." Sulfur went to simplify the form, of course, completely consciously. The preserved etudes show that he, when it was required, knew how to write quite "living" people. But the artist sought to achieve the effect of timelessness and deliberately stylized the figures in the spirit of flat ancient Greek frescoes or Egyptian hieroglyphs. Once he wrote to his friend: "I want to bring the figures of modern people to their essence, make them move along the same way on the frescoes of Fidia, and lay on the canvas in chromatic harmony."
At a certain period, Syra lives with the model Madelin Nobloch, which he depicts in the work "Poodly Woman" (1888-1889). This "unthinkable woman in the grotesque debit of the 80s" (Roger Fry) is presented in terms of the same absence and contemplation, as well as the characters of his other pictures. The influence of the "JapaJenus common in those years" was probably affected in the image of the toilet Madeleine.
Just like the "parade" and "Kankan", the last, unfinished picture of Syra - "Circus" (1890-1891) applies to the world of spectacles and ideas on their plot. But if in the first two points of view from the hall on the stage, then in the last acrobat and the public are shown by the eyes of one who performs in the arena, the clown, which is depicted from the back in the foreground of the picture.
Series died in Paris on March 29, 1891. The cause of death of Syra is doubtful and has been attributed to the form of meningitis, pneumonia, infectious endocarditis, and / or (most likely) diphtheria. His son died two weeks later from the same disease. Georges Pierre Syrah is buried in the cemetery of Per Lachez.
"Sunday day on the island of Grand-Zhantt" is one of the most famous paintings of the Great French artist Georges-Pierre Syra. Georges Syra (1859-1891) is a famous painter, a bright representative of postmingnessism, one of the founders of neo-simpressionism.
Georges Syra. Sunday Day on the island of Grand-Zapt
Also, Georges Syra became known for the fact that he created a method of painting, which is known as Pointelism - drawing by points. The picture "Sunday Day on the island of Grand-Zhatt", which is also known as "Sunday afternoon on Grand-Zhatt island" is a vivid example of Pointelism, who invented Georges Syra. This work is not only an excellent example, but is considered one of the best paintings of this direction of postmingnessism. The art of pointelism here provides the present perfection of beauty and splendor. Perhaps, it is thanks to this canvase that Pointelism took a strong position in world art and is still used by artists on all continents.
The picture "Sunday Day on Grand-Zhatt Island" was written in 1886, canvas, oil. 207 × 308 See Currently located in the Chicago Institute of Arts. The picture is a summer sunny landscape with people who enjoy nature. The picture looks very harmonious, weathered, calm, saturated. Following your technique, Georges Syra does not mix paint, but makes them points in a certain order.
The picture caused the ambiguous opinion of the audience and critics of art, but received its place in the history of art, the history of postmingnessism, and became one of the most vivid examples of the beauty of the stylistry of the Pointelism.
Georges Pierre Syra (December 2, 1859, Paris - March 29, 1891, Paris) - French gradesimiprecisonist, founder of neo-simpressionism, creator of the original method of painting under the name "Divisionism", or "Pointelism".
"Disagreements" publish the translation of the artist of the American historian and criticism of the Linda Noklin "" Sunday Day on the island of Grand-Zhortt "George Syra: Antiutopic Allegory." This text besides its importance for art history and for Russian urbanistics: Desperate longing and mechanistic of the city leisure, which Noklin writes, is a powerful antithesis of a fashionable idea about the primary importance of a comfortable entertainment environment in a modern city.
The idea that George Syor's masterpiece "Sunday day on the island of Grand-Zhantt" - a kind of anti-nightopia, visited me when I read the chapter "Imaginary landscape in painting, opera, literature" from the book "The Principle of Hope" - the main work of the Great German Marxist Ernst Bloch. That's what fleas wrote in the first half of our century:
"The opposite of" breakfast on the grass "mana, or rather, his cheerfulness is the sulfur country scene" Sunday on Grand-Zhatt Island ". The picture is the current mosaic boredom, the workshop image of frustrated expectations of something and meaninglessness dolce Far Niente.. The picture depicts the island on the Seine near Paris, where the middle class spends Sunday Morning ( sIC!): Only and everything, and everything is shown with exceptional contempt. People with nothing expressing persons rest in the foreground; The remaining characters are mostly placed between vertical trees like dolls in boxes, staggering in place. They are visible to the pale river and yachts, rowing kayak, sightseeing boats - background, although recreational, but looking more likely as under the Sunday. The situation, although the leisure space is depicted here, rather suggests the kingdom of the dead than about the Sunday day. A greater fraction of the silent despondency, the picture is obliged to the elevated glow of its light-air environment and the inexpressive water of the Sunday Seine, contemplated as inexpressively<…> Together with the world of labor everyday life, all other worlds disappear, everything is immersed in a watery stupor. The result is a year-old boredom, the devil's dream of a little man to break the sabbath and extend it forever. His Sunday is only a binding duty, and not the desired touch towards the land promised. Sunday noon Bourgeois, similar to this, is a suicide landscape that did not take place from indecision. In short, that's dolce Far Niente.Unless it has consciousness, has the consciousness of the most advanced anti-discovery on the remains of Sunday Utopia. "
An image of the anti-nightopia, which was written by fleas - not just a question of iconography, not just a plot or social history reflected on the canvas. Siera's picture is not enough to consider as passive reflection The new urban reality of the 1880s or as an extreme stage of alienation, which is associated with the capitalist restructuring of the urban space and social hierarchies of that time. Rather, "Grand-Zhatt" - a canvas that is actively producescultural meanings, inventing visual codes for a modern artist experience in city life. This is where the allegory has been operating in the title of this article ("Antiutopic allegory"). It is the picturesque design "Grand-Zhant" - its formal techniques - turns the anti-wasteopia into an allegory. This is what makes the works of Syra unique - and, in particular, this picture. Syra is the only one of the post-acceptances, who in the tissue and structure of their paintings managed to reflect the new state of affairs: alienation, anomy, existence in the play of the performance, subordination of the life of a market economy, where the exchange cost rendered consumer, and mass production - handicraft.
Landscape with suicide not taken by indecision.
In other words, if not Cezanne, and Syra took the place of the key artist, the artist, the art of the twentieth century would be completely different. But this statement, of course, in itself is utopian - or at least historically untenable. After all, at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, part of the historical paradigm of advanced art was the departure from the global, social and, above all, a negative objective-critical position, which is reproduced in the Grand-Zhantte (as well as in the pictures of the parade and "Cankan" The author). Vnerative, non-compliant, subjective and phenomenological - in other words, "pure" painting - was alleged as the basis of modernism. As we will see, the paradoxical conviction that pure visibility and the flat surface of the canvas are modernity, is absolutely the opposite of what Syra shows the Grand-Zhatt, as in his other works.
Starting from the high revival of the ambitious goal of all Western arts was to create such a picturesque structure that would build a rational narrative and, above all, the expressive connection of the part and the whole, as well as parts between themselves and at the same time, would establish a sense relationship with the viewer. It was assumed that painting "expresses", that is, it dismisses some internal sense at the expense of its structural connectedness; That it functions as a visual manifestation of internal filling or depth, of which the fabric of the image is, but as a manifestation of superficial, although having a huge value. In this product of the Renaissance, as the "Athens School" of Rafael, the characters react and interact so as to hint (and in reality to approve) that there is a sense on the other side of the picturesque surface, so as to transmit some complicated value that is instantly read, And goes beyond the historical circumstances that spawned it.
In a sense, the "breakfast on the grass" mana claims the end of the western tradition of high art as an expressive narrative: the shade is thickened, the surface priority denies any transcendence, gestures no longer fulfill their mission to establish a dialogue. But even here, as Ernst Bloch notes in the same chapter of his book, utopian emanations remain. Indeed, flea believes "Breakfast on the grass" by the opposite of "Grand-Zhant", describing it as "... ... the desired scene of Epicurean Happiness" in the most lyrical expressions: "Soft light, which I could write only an impressionist, flows between trees, envelops two couples of lovers, A naked woman, one more - undressing in front of bathing - and dark men's figures. " "Depicted," continues Bloch, "an incredibly French situation, full of ethoma, innocence and perfect ease, unobtrusive pleasure life and carefree seriousness." Bloch ranks "Breakfast on the grass" to the same category as "Grand-Zhant" - this sunday painting;her "The plot is a temporary immersion into the world without everyday worries and needs. Although reproducing this plot in the XIX century was already not easy, "Breakfast on the grass" mana was an exception at the expense of his naivety and charm. This Sunday Mane's breathless health would hardly have been possible [in 1863, when the picture was written], if Mane made in him small-bourgeois plots and characters; It turns out, it could not exist if not the painter and his model. " And then the flea moves to the description of the "Grand-Zhant" described at the beginning of this essay: "Present, even drawn, bourgeois sunday looks much less desirable and diverse. It - excanion"Breakfast on the grass" mana; In other words, Syra carelessness turns on powerlessness -that's what is "Sunday day on the island of Grand-Zhatt"" It seems that creating a work that is so accurately and convincingly reflects the state of modernity, it became possible not before the 1880s.
All system-forming factors in the siera project could ultimately serve as democratization tasks.
In the picture of Syra, the characters almost do not interact, there are no feeling of articulated and unique human presence from them; Moreover, there is also no feeling that these drawn people have some kind of deep inner core. Here, the Western tradition of representation is not completely canceled, it is seriously undermined by an anti-violent art language, strongly denying the existence of any internal values, which the artist must reveal to the viewer. Rather, these mechanical outlines, these ordered dots refer to modern science and industry with its mass production; to shops, full of numerous and cheap serial goods; Mass printing with its endless reproductions. In short, this is a critical attitude towards modernity, embodied in a new artistic agent, ironic and decorative, and underlined (even excessively underlined) modern costs and household items. "Grand-Zhant" is strongly historical, he does not claim for highness or generalization, and it also makes it an anti-durable. The objective existence of the picture inside the story is embodied, first of all, in the famous point smear ( pointill.é ) - the minimum and indivisible unit of a new vision of the world, to which, of course, the audience paid attention primarily. This smear of Syra deliberately and irrevocably eliminates its uniqueness that was called in the work of the author's unique hand writing. Syra himself is not presented in his smear. It does not have a feeling of existential selection, allegedly constructive smears of Cezanne, or a deep personal alarm, like Van Gogh, or decorative, mystical dematerialization of the form, like Gaugaen. Collecting paint turns into a dry prosaic act - almost mechanical reproduction of pigmented "points". Meyer Shapiro in the most profound, in my opinion, article about "Grand-Zhant" considers siera as a "modest, workable and smart technologist" from the "low layer of the middle class in Paris, the immigrants from which are becoming industrial engineers, technicians and clerks." He notes that "modern siera the development of industry has educated in it the deepest respect for rationalized labor, scientific technology and inventions that driving progress."
Before analyzing in detail "Grand-Zhant" on the subject of how anti-durability is being developed in each of the aspects of its stylistic structure, I want to designate what was considered "utopian" in the visual products of the XIX century. Only by placing the "Grand-Zhant" in the context of understanding the Utopic Siera and its contemporaries, it is possible to fully realize how the character of its works is opposed to this utopia.
Of course, there is a classic utopia of the flesh - the "golden age" of Engra. Harmonious lines, smooth bodies without signs of aging, attractive symmetry of the composition, free grouping unobtrusively nude or draped to the classic of figures in an indefinite landscape "A la Poussane" - not so much utopia, how many nostalgia for the distant, never existing past, " -Hell. There is still no social message that we usually associate with Utopia. This is rather utopia idealized desire. The same, however, it can be said about the later interpretation of a tropical paradise in Gaugaen: it does not have a temporary, but the geographical distance of the utopian catalyst. Here, like the Engra, meaning Utopia serves a nude or slightly covered by irrevocated clothes, as a rule, female. Like the Utopia of Engra, the utopia of Hogen apolitis: she refers to male wishes, whose meaning is the female flesh.
Musée d'Orsay.
The painting of Dominica Papet "Dream of Happiness" of 1843 is much more suitable for immersed in the context of the utopian representation, laid by the anti-dietary allegory of the siera. Ultopic and in shape, and in content, this picture of its iconography frankly chants furyerism and strives for the classical idealization in its style, a little different from Engra, the teachers of the Papee in the French Academy in Rome. Nevertheless, the utopian concepts of Papet and Engra differ significantly. Although the fourierists considered the present - the so-called civilized conditions - vicious and artificial, the past was more better for them. The real golden age for them was not in the past, but in the future: hence the name " Dream about happiness. " Frankly, the fourierist content of this utopian allegory is supported by the Harmony's signature on a pedestal of sculptures on the left side of the web, which refers to the "Fourier State and Satirov State", as well as the name of the book "Universal Society", in which young scientists are shipped (direct reference to the Fourierist Doctrine , as well as to one of the treatises of Fourier). Some aspects of "Grand-Zhant" can be read as an open denial of the Utopia Fourier or, more precise, the utopism at all. In the Papest Papers, utopian ideals personify the poet, "chanting harmony", the group embodies the "maternal tenderness", and the other, denoting a bright children's friendship, and on the edges - various sides of love between the floors. All this is accentuated to "Grand-Zhant" - since omitted. Papeutte uses a purely classic architecture, although the picture simultaneously assumed that these utopian views were aimed at the future: it depicted a steamer and telegraph (subsequently crushed by the artist). And again we see soft, harmonious figures in classic, more precisely, neoclassical poses; Paint is applied in the usual way. At least, in the versions of the picture that came to us, the signs of modernity were dissolved in the sake of utopia, albeit the furyarest, but deeply rooted in the distant past and in extremely traditional, if not to say the conservative, the presentation method.
On more material reasons, than an unclear Utopic image of the Papet, the work of his senior contemporary Pierre Piewa de Shavanna relates to the Siera's anti-astope project. Indeed, "Sunday Day on Grand-Zhant island" could look very different or not to take place at all, if at that very year, when Syra began work on this picture, he did not see the work of Pywi "Sacred Grove", exhibited in the 1884 salon . From a certain point of view, "Grand-Zhant" can be viewed as a parody of the "sacred grove", which confronts the founding of this picture and its adequacy of our time in the form and content. Vnerative Muses and the classic situation of Piges Syra replaces the most fresh outfits, the most modern scenery and accessories. Women from Syra wear tournails, corsets and fashionable caps, and not covered with classic drapes; His men hold in their hands not Fluce Pan, but a cigar and a cane; On the background, he depicts a modern urban landscape, not pastoral antiquity.
Such a work of PweUV, as the "summer" of 1873, created two years after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war and terrible events around the commune and its consequences, the collaborated society, represents one of the cleanest sets of utopia. As Claudin Mitchell notes in his recently released article, despite the recognizable image of the distant past, the sample system of "summer" suggests a more general, even universal temporary scale - an idea of \u200b\u200bsome generalized truth of human society. According to the expression of the criticism and writer of Theophily Gautier, who reflected a lot about the work of Pyw, he "looking for an ideal out of time, space, costume or details. He seeks to paint primitive humanity, since it [ sic! ] Performs one of the tasks that we can call the sacred is to keep proximity to nature. " Gauthier exceeded Pyw for their care from optional and accidental and noted that its compositions always have an abstract and general name: "Peace", "War", "Peace", "Work", "Sleep" - or "Summer". Gauthier believed that for Piges, meaning a distant past, simpler and cleaner, set a more universal order - the order of nature itself.
So, before us is a classic picturesque version of the Utopia XIX century, identifying u.- topos. (lack of space) and u.- chronos. (Lack of time) with foggy time and antiquity space. The picturesque world of Puwi is located out of time and space - while the "Grand-Zhatt" of Syra is definitely and even aggressively placed inside his own time. It is difficult to say whether temporary and geographically defined, the secular names of the Cyra Cloths are emphasized ("Sunday Day on the island of Grand-Zhant (1884)") an anti-cultic criticism of the foggy idealized names of Pyubi and other classicists who worked with allegory. One way or another, in his paintings of Syra, it is most seriously fighting precisely with the utopian harmony of Pyw constructions. Although Puwi could have individual groups characterize, it did not mean social fragmentation or psychological alienation. Rather, in his paintings, he extols family values \u200b\u200band collaboration, during which representatives of all professions, age and gender groups perform their own, tasks allocated. The works of Pyubi are ideologically directed to the creation of aesthetic harmony just where disharmony, conflicts and contradictions are concentrated in modern society, whether the position of workers, class struggle or the status of a woman. For example, in the formal structure of the "summer", the value of motherhood for a woman and work for a man is represented as - in essence, inseparable - component of natural order, and not as a changeable and controversial issue. Syrah, as we will see, the classic elements lose their harmony: they are hypertrophy in their deliberate artificiality, conservatism and isolation. Such an accentuation of contradictions is part of its anti-astope strategy.
Utopia Gogen apolitical: she refers to male desire, whose meaning is the female flesh.
With the Antiutopia Syra contrast not only the classic and fairly traditional works of Piges. A more progressive artist Renoir also created a semi-cope system of images of the modern reality, everyday urban existence, which is based on the joy of healthy sensuality and the young joie. dE. vivre (joys of life) - for example, in such works as "Ball in Moulin de La Gaette" of 1876, where the axes of multi-colored smears and a ring dynamic rhythm in his joyful mixing of everything and all play the erase of the class and gender division at idealized leisure of modern Paris. This renuclear work is the most distinct opposite of the ulcer's look at the "new leisure". Renoir seeks to imagine everyday life of a large modern city as natural, that is naturalizes her; Syra, on the contrary, stresses it and denies any naturalization.
Paradoxically, it is the picture of a neo-simpressionist of the Xinyak field, follower and a friend of the siera, gives the most vivid idea of \u200b\u200bthe context of utopian images against which the Grand-Zhatt rises. Signac was completely aware of the social significance of the work created by his friend. In June 1891 in an anarchist newspaper LA Revolte. ("Rebellion") he published an article in which she argued that, portraying scenes from the life of the working class "or, more better, decadent entertainment<…> As a siera, who understood the degradation of our transition era with such a clarity, they [artists] presented their evidence on a great public concession, which unfolds between workers and capital. "
The picture of Xinyak "during harmony", written around 1893-1895 (sketch of oil for the wall painting of the municipality of Montreus), seems to be a response to a specific capitalist state of the anomium and absurdity - in other words, at the "time of disharmony", presented in the most famous mature His friend. In lithographs for the newspaper Jean Grava Les. Tempes. noveux ("New Times") Xinyak presented his Anarcho-Socialist version of classless utopia, in which overall carelessness and human interaction replace the statics and isolation of the "Grand-Zhant" figures; Unlike Syra, Signac emphasizes family values, and does not sharpen them, and replaces urban scenery more pastoral, rustic, in accordance with the utopian nature of their project. Heroes, despite the fact that they are dressed relatively modern, rather gently idealized, like PweUB, than match the fashion, like Syra. In the curvilinear composition with its decorative repetitions, the topic of generality - a pair or community is carried out - in the utopian future. Even a chicken and a rooster in the foreground depicts mutual assistance and interaction to which all the work encounters and which are so strongly excluded from the world with a look of Syra.
However, I came to the antiutopic interpretation of the picture of Syra not only because of the obvious differences from the utopian image of his time. The critical reaction of contemporaries also serves as a confirmation that the picture has read as the criticism of the current state of affairs. According to Martha Ward in a recent article for the exhibition catalog, "Observer believed that persons deprived of expressions, an isolated position of bodies and unreleased postures - this is a more or less fine parody on banality and pretentiousness of modern leisure[Italic My]. " For example, one of the critics, Henri Fevr, noted that, looking at the picture, "you come to an understanding of the rigidity of Paris leisure, tired and stuffy, where people even during rest are continuing." Another critic, Paul Adam, identified hard outlines and deliberate poses with the modern position of things: "Even the stillness of these stamped figures seems to be voiced by modernity; Immediately remember our badly crosslodged costumes, tightly tight bodies, stock of gestures, a British jargon, which we all imitate. We are posing as people from a picture of meming. " Another critic, Alfred Field, argued that "the artist created characters with automatic soldiers gestures, which trample on the rain. Maids, clerks and cavalrymen go slow, banal, the same step, which accurately conveys the character of the scene ... "
The idea of \u200b\u200bthe monotony and the inhuman improvement of modern urban life, this fundamental trail "Grand-Zhantt" penetrates even the analysis of the most significant of the critics of this picture, Felix Feneon, - Analysis applying for adamant formalism: Feneon describes the uniformity of the Syear technique as "monotonous and Patient weaving "- touching mistake that causes criticism. Yes, he describes a picturesque manner, but attributes the technique of Pointilism "Monotonicity" and "Patientity", allegorically interpreting it, in a way as a metaphor of the fundamental properties of urban life. That is, in this figure of the speech of Feneon, the formal language of the sieru masterfully is absorbed by both an existential state and machinery work with the material.
The figure of the girl is hope: a utopian impulse, buried in the core of his opposite.
What is the formal siera language in the "Grand-Zhant"? How will it mediate and construct the painful symptoms of the society of his time and how it creates in a sense, their allegory? Daniel Rich was completely right when in his study 1935 he emphasized the paramount importance of Syra's innovation at the form level in the fact that he calls the "transcendent" achievement "Grand-Zhant". For this, RICH uses two schemes that simplify the already sketchy composition of Siera: "The organization" Grand-Zhant "in the curves" and "The Organization" Grand-Zhant "in straight lines" is a typical reception of the formal, "scientific" art historical analysis of the time. But, as Meyer Shapiro notes in his brilliant refutation of this study, Rich was mistaken, without taking into account because of his convinced formalism, the primary social and critical meaning of the practice of Syra. According to Shapiro, attempts to offer a classic, traditional and harmonizing reading of Siera as erroneous, to enter his innovative ideas to the law-abiding "mainstream" of the picturesque tradition (as it looks like art historians!).
In order to separate the siera from the mainstream and to realize its formal innovation, it is necessary to use the concept of "system" specific for modernity, which can be understood at least in two modalities: (1) as a systematic application of a certain color, scientific or pseudocarbonory theory ( Depending on whether we believe the artist), in its "chromephuricist" technique;
or (2) As a reinforcement system associated with this theory - applying paints on canvas with small regular points. In both cases, the Syra method becomes an allegory of mass production in the era of modern and therefore is removed from both impressionistic and expressionist meant subjectivity and personal involvement in artistic production or from harmonious summary of the surface characteristic of classical representation methods. As mentioned in his recent article, the Norm Brud, Siera could borrow his paint system from the actual technique of mass replication of visual media of its time - the so-called chromium-storage. Mechanistic Syrah technique allows him to criticize the separable performance of modern life. Thus, according to the expression of Brud, "it is obviously provocative in relation to not only the audience as a whole, but also to several generations of impressionists and postmingnessists: the antoed Syra approach and his followers to painting threatened their attachment to the romantic concept of authenticity and spontaneous self-expression." As Brud notes, it was "the mechanism of technology, alien to the ideas of Siera's contemporaries about good taste and" high art ", could become attractive for him, since the radical political views and" democratic "addiction to popular forms of art became important formative factors in the evolution of its approach to Own art. " You can go even further and say that everythingthe system-forming factors in the Syra project - from the pseudo-contamination theory of color to mechanized technology and later adaptation of the "scientific" informed "aesthetic protractor" Charles Henri to achieve the balance of the composition and expressiveness - could ultimately serve as democratization tasks. Siera found an elementary method for creating successful art, in the theory of available for everyone; He came up with a kind of democratically oriented drawing by points, fully excluding the role of genius as an exceptional creative personality from the act of production of art, even "great art" (although this concept in total systematization mode was unnecessary). From a radical point of view, this is a utopian project, whereas from the point of view more elite is completely simplified and anti-dietary.
Nothing says more about the full refusal of the charm of immediacy in favor of fundamental removal than a comparison of the details of a large pre-sketch "Grand-Zhant" (Metropolitan Museum in New York) with the details of the finished picture. What could be more alien to summarizing classicism trends than the summing schematics and modernity manners manifested in how the siera designs, say, a pair in the foreground is so concise that its referment is read as instantly as an advertising sign referrant. What could be more alien to the soft idealization of late neoclassics, such as PweUV, what is the ostrichritic modeling of the hand holding a cigar, and a mechanistic rounding of canes? Both of these forms aggressively mean clapped coded masculinity, designing a man's scheme, opposed its equally socially labeled companion: its figure is characterized by rounded at the expense of a suit with the outlines reminders by how the bushes are cut off from it in a regular park. Gender differences are depicted and lined up into the system obviously artificial means.
Using the example of the Figure of the Kormilitsa, I would like to show how Siera with his sardonic look at the frostbitten leisure of the bourgeois works on the types, simplifying the image to the simplest meaning, reducing the vitality and charming impedition of the initial sketch to the visual hieroglyph. In the verbal description, as deliciously accurate, as the picture itself, Martha Ward characterized the end version of the web as "a faceless geometric configuration: an irregular quadrangle, divided into two parts in the middle of the triangle, and on top of them are closed circles." Kormilitsa, more known as Nounou- a template character that appeared in connection with the rapid development of visual typing in the popular press of the second half of the XIX century. Syra, of course, avoided the traps of vulgar caricature, just as did not try to give the naturalistic characteristics of the profession of the cormality - the topic, relatively popular in the art of this time exposed on the salons. In contrast to Berth Morizo, which in the image of her daughter of Yulia with the cormal (1879) creates a representation of breastfeeding as such - the figure in Morizo \u200b\u200bFrontalna, addressed to the viewer, was written and, although it is simplified to a single amount, it creates a sharp sense of vitality, - Syra erases all signs of professional activities of the cormal and her relationship with an infant child, instead of a biological process, imposing a simplified sign.
Syra seriously worked on this character; We can observe the process of simplifying it in a series of drawings with a pencil cover - from several completely felt sketches from nature (in the Huuder collection) to the monumental view of the Zepets Zada \u200b\u200b("Cepets and Ribbons", in the ITU Collection). Although the figure of a woman is composed here from several black and white rectangular and cricaronal shapes, combined weakly released by the tone vertical ribbons, which are carrying feeders (and as if a duplicate spine axis), it retains communication with its wards, pushing the pram. In another sketch (in the Rosenberg collection), although the child is poured, it turns into devoid of individuality geometric echo of the Round Shepza Kormilitsy, and its figure gradually acquires a symmetric trapezoidal form, which we see in the final version of the Grand-Zhant. The series is completed with the pattern (Albright-Knox collection), referring to the final variant of the Kormilitsa group. In connection with this picture, Robert Herbert noted that "the nanny, which we see from the back, cumbersome as a stone. Only the cape and ribbon flattened to the vertical axis give us to understand that this is a really sitting woman. " In short, Siera brought the figure of the cormal to the minimum function. In the final version of the picture, nothing resembles the role of the cormal rods, nourishing child, about the gentle relations of the infant child and his "second mother", which Kormilitians were then considered. The attributes of her classes - the cape, ribbon and cape - and there is its reality: as if there is nothing more in a mass society, which can present the social position of the individual. It turns out that Siera has reduced the form not to summarize images and give them classology, as it explains this rich, but in order to dehumanize human individuality, bringing it to the critical designation of social vices. The types are no longer depicted in a free-picturesque manner, as in the old codes of the caricature, but are reduced to the laconic visual emblems of their social and economic roles - the process, a related development of the most capitalism, as Signac could be expressed.
I finish, as well as the beginning, the pessimistic interpretation of "Grand-Zhant", in the compositional statics and the formal simplification of which I see the allegorical denying of promises of our time - in short, the anti-astound allegory. For me, as well as for Roger Fry in 1926, "Grand-Zhant" represents "the world from where life and movement from and all forever froze in their places fixed in a tough geometric frame."
An image of class oppression in style borrowed from capitalist tables and schemes.
And yet there is one detail that contradicts such an interpretation is a small, but contributing in the meaning of the painting a dialectical complexity, placed in the very core "Grand-Zhant": a little girl running the scout. This character was hardly thoughtful in his final, obviously controversial form, which he has in a large sketch. In an earlier version, it is almost impossible to understand whether it runs at all. The figure is less diagonal and more merges with the surrounding strokes; It seems that it is connected with a white-brown dog, which in the final version is already in the other place of the composition. The little girl is the only dynamic figure, its dynamism is emphasized by diagonal pose, fluttering hair and flying ribbon. It makes up full contrast to a little girl to the left of itself, a figure, built as a vertical cylinder, passive and conformal, subordinate and as if isomorphic mother, which is in the shade of the umbrella in the center of the picture. Running girl, on the contrary, is free and moving, it is targeted and chases something that lies outside of our field of view. Together with the dog in the foreground and the red butterfly, soaring a little left, they constitute the peaks of an invisible triangle. We can say that the figure of the girl is hope, if we speak in the terms of flea: the utopian impulse, buried in the core of his dialectical opposite; Antithesis to the thesis of the picture. How different is the dynamic image of hope at Syra - not so much an allegorical figure as the figure, which can only become an allegory - from the rigid and conventional Allegory of PyuV, created after the Franco-Prussian war and the commune! Nadezhda Pyuu, can be said hopeless if under hope we mean the possibility of change, an unknown, but optimistic future, and not a rigid unchanged entity, formulated in the classical language of suitable nudity and chaste drapery.
Gustave Kourba. Artist workshop. 1855 Paris, Museum D "OSeta
The figure of a child as a symbol of hope at Syra is an active character in the midst of the ocean of frozen passivity, which reminds us of another image: immersed in the work of the young artist, hidden in the picture of the "artist's workshop" (1855), whose subtitle is "True Allegory". From the works of the XIX century it is closest to Siera: in the fact that it is a utopia as a problem, and not a ready-made solution, as well as in a strongly modern setting and, oddly enough, is that it is organized as a static, frozen composition. Like "Grand-Zhant", the "artist's workshop" - the work of tremendous strength and difficulties in which utopian and non-removal elements are inseparable and in which truly utopian and anti-dietary are shown as interconnected dialectical opposites. In the gloomy cave, the workshop is a small artist semi-littered on the floor in the right side of the painting, the only active figure, not counting the artist himself. Alter Ego of the artist, the boy, admired by the work of the Kourba, occupying a central place, correlated with the place of the Master, personifies the admiration of future generations; Like a girl at Syra, this child can be considered an image of hope - the hopes laid down in the unknown future.
Nevertheless, in the works of Syra, a negative understanding of modernity prevails, especially the modernity of the city. Throughout its short, but an impressive activity, he was busy with a project of social criticism, which was to design a new, partly mass, methodically formal language. In "Software" (in the Barnes collection), a sardonically mocking manifest of the contradictions of modern society against "life" and "art", modern models remove clothes in the workshop, exposing their reality against the background of the picture - the Grand-Zhatt fragment, which looks more "Modern", more socially expressively than themselves. Which item indicates art here? The traditional nudity of the "three graces", which are always depicted in three angles, side, side and back, or a great cloth about modern life, serving the background to them? In the painting "Kabare" 1889-1890 (Museum of Kreller-Muller), parted entertainment, a rude product of the emerging mass-industrial industry, is shown in all its emptiness and artificiality; These are not the fleeting pleasures that Renoir could have been depicted, and not spontaneous sexual energy in the spirit of Toulouse-Lotter. The transformation of the male nose in the pig-friendly patch frankly hints for greed to pleasures. Dancers are standard types, decorative pictograms, high-quality advertising slightly dangerous leisure.
Georges Syra. The circus. 1891 Paris, Museum D "OSeta
In the picture "Circus" (1891), we are talking about the modern phenomenon of the performance and the passive contemplation accompanying it. The picture parodits artistic production, allegorically depicted as a public performance - dazzling on the technique, but dead on the movements of acrobatics on the need for a frozen public. Even the participants in the presentation seem to be frozen in their dynamic poses that are reduced to the typed bendes, which are infrequent pictograms of movement. There are also more gloomy interpretation of the relations of the viewer and the performance in the picture "Circus". This audience, frozen in a state, close to hypnosis, denotes not only the crowd of consumers of art, but may be understood as the state of the mass spectator before who masterfully manipulates. An ominous work of Thomas Mann "Mario and the Wizard", or Hitler in front of the crowd in Nuremberg, or, already in our days, the American electorate and clown candidates, who, with learned artistic, voiced slogans and gesticulate on television. In addition to the fact that the "Circus" depicts modern social problems, as an allegorical anti-nightopia, he concludes in itself a prophetic potential.
It seems to me that "Grand-Zhant" and other works of Syra too often included in the "great tradition" of Western art, a vigorous march coming from Pierro to Poussin and Pyuwe, and too rarely contacted with more critical strategies characteristic of the radical art of the future. For example, in the work of a little-known group of political radicals worked in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s - the so-called Cologne progressors - the radical wording of the experience of modern siera finds its followers: this is not an impact or continuation of his work - in its anti-dietary progressors Let's go further than Siera. As political activists, they equally denied art for art and modern expressionist identification of social pain with agitated painting and expressionist distortion, which for them were no more than an individual overexposure. Progressors - in their number included Franz Wilhelm, Heinrich Herle, Gerd Arntz, Peter Alma and photographer August Zander - resorted to the awakening revolutionary consciousness of the impassive pictographic image of social injustice and class oppression in style borrowed from capitalist tables and schemes.
Antiutopists par ExcellenceThey, like Siera, used the codes of modernity to raise the legitimacy of the existing social order. Unlike Syra, they set the very validity of high art in question, but it can be said that it was laid in certain aspects of his work. The emphasis, which he did on the antiheroic, and not on the gesture; on "patient weaving", implying mechanical repetition, and not impatient brush strokes and blows, which Feneon called "virtuoso painting"; On social criticism instead of transcendental individualism, all this allows you to talk about sieru as the forerunner of those artists who deny the heroic and the apolitical elevation of modernist art, preferring critical visual practices. From this point of view, the photomontage of the Berlin Dadaists or the collages of Barbara Kruger is more common with a neo-glressional heritage than that of safe paintings written by artists using Puantyl to create in the rest of traditional landscapes and Marin and call themselves the followers of Syra. The anti-astope impulse is contained in the heart of the achievements of Syra - in the fact that Bloch called the "current mosaic boredom", "Nothing expressing persons", "inexpressive water of the Sunday Seine"; In short, the "scenery with suicide that did not take place from indecision." It was this heritage of Syra who left his contemporaries and those who followed his footsteps.
Translation from English: Sasha Moroz, Gleb narenko
This text was first read in October 1988 in the Chicago Institute of Arts as part of the lecture cycle in memory of U. Lifton (transferred by publication: Linda Nochlin.. The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. Westview Press, 1989. - Approx. per.).
Siera himself, for the first time exposing this cloth in 1886 at the eighth exhibition of impressionists, did not point the time of day.
Bloch E. The Principle of Hope. - Cambridge, Mass.: The Mit Press, 1986, II. P. 815. Per. in English. Language - Neville Ples, Stephen Ples and Paul Knight. This fragment was also quoted in another context in the last catalog of Syra Ed. Erich Franz and Bernd Grew « Georges. Seurat.: Zeichnungen.» (Kunsthalle. Bielefeld., Staatliche. Kunsthalle. Baden.- Baden., 1983-1984), p. 82-83. For the convenience of reading in translation, small changes were made. (Only a fragment of the book was translated into Russian: E. Bloch. Principle of Hope. // Utopia and Utopic Thinking. M., 1991. - Approx. per. "Sacred Grove" in the Chicago Institute of Art - a reduced copy of a huge canvas, which is kept in the Lyon Fine Arts Museum.
GautierT.h. Moniteur Universel. June 3, 1867 CIT. by: Mitchell Cl. Time And The Ideal of Patriarchy In The Pastrals of Puvis de Chavannes // Art History, 10, № 2 (June 1987). P. 189.
Anon. Impressionistes et Revolutionaires // La Revolte, 13-19 June 1891 S. 4. Quot. by: Thomson R. Seurat.. - Oxford: Phaidon Press; Salem, N.H.: Salem House, 1985. C. 207.
The very use of the concept of "harmony" in the title refers to the furyrist and, later, more generalized socialist and anarchist designation of public utopia. The famous utopian colony, founded in the United States in the XIX century, was called New Harmony ("New Harmony").
Indeed, if you look at the criticism of this time, it becomes clear that it is the expressive-formal structure of the web, and not social differences noting the selection of characters - or, more precisely, an unprecedented comparison of working figures with the middle class figures, which such emphasized T.J. Clark in its latest note about this picture ( Clark. T.. J.. Their Painting. of. Modern. Life.: Paris. iN. their ART. of. Manet. and. HIS Followers.. - N.. Y..: Alfred. A.. Knopf., 1985. C. 265-267) - made the greatest impression on the spectators of the 1880s and made them consider "Grand-Zhant" with a stinging social criticism. As Martha Ward recently, Marta Ward, contemporaries "recognized the heterogeneity of the characters, but did not pay attention to its possible meanings. Most critics were much more inclined to explain why all the figures froze in the staged poses, stunned and deprived of expressions ... "( Their New Painting.: Impressionism, 1874-1886, Catalog of the exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts San Francisco and the National Gallery of Arts, Washington, 1986. P. 435).
Ward M. New Painting. C. 435.
Cyt. by: Ward M. New Painting. C. 435. Thomson quotes the same fragment, but otherwise it translates: "We are very looking after we look after, we guess something and then - we see and admire the big yellow spotted grass eaten by the sun, clouds from golden dust in the tops of the trees, the details of which can not see the light-blind retina; Then we feel that the Parisian promenade is inclined - normalized and empty that even rest becomes deliberate in it. " Cyt. by: Thomson R. Seurat.. C. 115, C. 229. Thomson quotes Henri FE Fevre H. L "Exposition Des impressionistes // Revue de Demain, May-June 1886, p. 149.
Adam P. peintres impressionistes // Revue Contemporaine Litteraire, Politique et Philosophique 4 (April-May 1886). P. 550. CIT. by: Ward M.. New Painting.. C. 435.
The whole piece of this fragment looks like this: "This picture is an attempt to show a banal promenade bustle, who makes people in Sundays, without pleasure, in places where it is accepted that on Sundays it is worth walking. The artist gave his characters the automatic gestures of soldiers who trample on the raid. Maids, clerks and cavalrymen go the same slow, banal, identical step, which accurately conveys the character of the scene, but does it too persistently. " Paulet A. Les Impressionistes // ParisJune 5, 1886 CIT. by: Thomson. Seurat.. C. 115.
FENEON F. LES IMPRESSIONISTES EN 1886 (VIIIE Exposition Impressioniste.) // La Vogue., June 13-20, 1886 P. 261-75b lane. - Nochlin L. Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, 1874-1904, Source and Documents in the History of Art (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1966). C. 110. Through Fenon Speech Figure, which binds the idea of \u200b\u200bpatience and weaving, of course, resembles a gender painted image of patiently embroidery penelop and whole premium stories and metaphors, including women and textiles - and not least Freud's famous statement about women and sewing ; In his essay, "On Feminy", he writes that Sewing is the only contribution of women to civilization ( FREUD S. FEMININITY // FREUD S. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Trans. J. Strachey. - N.Y.: Norton, 1965, c. 131). A detailed analysis of gender-oriented trails and narratives associated with sewing, weaving and sewing cause, see: Miller N.K. ARACHNOLOGIES: THE WOMAN, THE TEXT, AND THE CRITIC // Miller N.K. Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing. - N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1988, c. 77-101. The "patient weaving" of the Feneon can also be read as an antithesis of more familiar metaphor of modernist creativity, metaphorizing power, the spontaneity and emotionality of the artist's creative practices (men) through the likeness of his brush to the energetic or looking for a phallus and underscore, respectively, or the crusal passion of paint applies, or, On the contrary, its delicacy and sensitivity. As part of this discursive context, Feneon phraseological units can be considered a deconstruction of the main way of avant-garde production of modernity - in short, a crisis figure of speech.
Rich D.C. Seurat and the Evolution of "La Grande Jatte". - Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935. C. 2.
It is worth only to think, for example, about famous charts of paintings Cezanne in the book Earle Laurent: Loran E. Cezanne Composition: Analysis Of His Form With Diagrams and Photographs of His Motifs (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1943). These charts later used Roy Liechtenstein in such works as "Portrait of Madame Cesanne" 1962. Part of the book was published in 1930 in The Ars.. Cm.: Rewald J. The History of Impressionism, rev.ed. - N.Y.: Museum of Modern Art, 1961. C. 624.
Schapiro M. SEURAT AND "LA GRANDE JATTE". C. 11-13.
The most recent analytical material about the "scientific" theories of the color of Siera See: LEE A.. Seurat. and. Science // ART. History. 10, № 2 (June 1987: 203-26). Lee does an unequivocal conclusion: "His" chromoluminate "method that did not have any scientific grounds, was a pseudo-person: it was deceptive in theoretical formulations and was used with indifference with respect to any critical estimates of its empirical consistency" (p. 203).
Seurat in Perspective., ED. Norma Brounde. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1978). C. 173.
It's funny that Siera fiercely defended his championship in the invention of neo-simpressionism and tried not to give Xinyak and other artists to develop "his" technique. Discussion about contradictions inside a group of neo-simpressionists See: Thomson., from. 130, 185-187. Here I am talking about the possibilities of neo-simpressionism as practitioners, and not about the personal integrity of the siera as a leader of the movement. Of course, there was a contradiction between the potential of neo-simpressionism and its concrete incarnations of Syra and his followers.
At first glance, the huge picture of Georges Pierre Syra "Sunday Day on the Grand-Zhatt island", written in 1884, seems to be the usual image of people enjoying a warm sunny day in a beautiful park. But, if you look at the most famous work in the genre of Pointilism or Neo-Impressionism, a number of interesting facts will be discovered.
1. The picture consists of millions of points
Having created a similar picture, Syra became the father of Poentonism and neo-impressionism. However, he himself preferred to call his technique "chromographic lumarism" - the term, which seemed to the artist more appropriate to focus on the game of light and color scheme.
2. To finish the picture, it took more than two years.
The work on this masterpiece of Pointelism began in 1884 from the series of 60 sketches, which were made by Syra in the Paris Park. Then he began to draw the picture itself with small horizontal smears. After that, the artist until the spring of 1886 completed his creation by applying paint to tiny dots.
3. The choice of color of the artist was based on a scientific approach
"Some argue that they see poetry in my paintings, somehow said Syra. - I see only science in them." The artist was fascinated by the theories of the color of the scientists of Chevreil and Orena Ruda. As a result, the colors for the painting of the siere picked up, based on their methods.
4. Dysfunge Paris sketches
Inspiration for Paris sketches was ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek and Phoenician art. Syra sought to perpetuate what Paris looked in his era, being impressed by the study of the ancient images of people.
5. Critics hit the artist with criticism
The innovative methods of the siera became a reason for reinforced criticism at the exhibition of impressionists in 1886, where he was first exposed to the "Sunday Day on Grand-Zhant Island". Posses of people in this picture were compared with Egyptian hieroglyphs, then with tin soldiers.
6. The picture was updated in 1889
Siera refreshed the picture, drawing more clear boundaries from red, orange and blue dots.
7. Siera completed its most famous work at the age of only 26 years
He was one of the most promising and promising young artists. Unfortunately, the disease broke his life in 1891, when Syra was only 31 years old.
8. About the picture forgot 30 years after the death of the artist
After the death of Syur, for the first time, the picture appeared in the public in 1924, when Frederick Bartlett Art amateur Glue acquired "Sunday Day on Grand-Zhant's Island" and lent the canvas for an indefinite period of the Art Institute of Chicago.
9. American philosopher helped change public opinion to the picture
In 1950, Ernest Bloch in his work "The Principle of Hope" investigated the socio-political interpretations of "Sunday Day on Grand-Zhant's Island", thereby resizing interest in the picture.
10. Today the picture looks like this wanted siera
After Syra drawn the border with the picture, he put it in a specially made wooden frame of white. It is in such a frame that the canvas is exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago.
11. Colors of the paintings have changed
Siera used a new pigment in his painting, a yellow zinc chromate, hoping that with his help it would be possible to more realistically pass the color of the grass of the park. But for many years this pigment has undergone a chemical reaction that changed its color to brown.
12. The picture is greater than what is considered to be
"Sunday day on the island of Grand-Zhantt" is not only the most famous picture of Syra, but also his biggest picture. Its size is 207 × 308 cm.
13. Scene from the park may have a hidden meaning
Some researchers noted a lady with a monkey in the picture. On the French monkey sounds like "SingeSe", the same word on the jargon denotes a lady of easy behavior. They also refer to a lady that stands with a fishing rod on the shore. For fishing, it is too elegantly dressed.
14. The picture almost died during a fire in New York
On April 15, 1958, "Sunday Day on the Island Grand-Zhatt" was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, when the fire broke out in the nearby Whitney Museum. The fire damaged six cloths, 31 people were wounded, and one worker was killed. The picture of the siera was evacuated.
15. One of the most reproducible and parody paintings in the world
"Sunday Day on Grand-Zhant island" and her replicas appeared in a variety of films, and somehow it was depicted even on the cover of Playboy. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine made a musical about its creation, which was called "Sunday in the Park with George."
Very interesting and, which for more than 500 years has been controversial from lovers of art worldwide.