A: Is for the melding of science and emotion

One of the most illuminating shows New York has seen in years was “George Seurat: The Drawings,” at the Museum of Modern Art. Seurat, is one of the great late 19th century visionaries. In the musical theatre community Seurat is valued because of the musical Stephen Sondheim wrote about his masterpiece, “Sunday on the Island of Grand Jatte,” a revival which opened to rave reviews at the Roundabout and is still playing. Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. He believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses variation in sound and tempo to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art using lines, color intensity and color. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. We see Seurat’s works through the sketches he made in preparation for his paintings. Invariably you notice that the effect of the soft pencil on the heavy paper is to create a pointillisme that pointed to what he would do on canvas. One such drawing is “The Zone (Outside the City Walls),” shows the silhouette of a young woman against a background that, though sketchily drawn, suggests the harshness, the coldness of the pre-suburban space on the outskirts of Paris. It is a reminder that even in his mastserwork, “Sunday,” the figures have a sense of isolation that signifies the tensions of modern life despite the ostensible beauty of their surroundings and costumes. In his drawings you see what a consummate draftsman he was. His gifts at conveying character are manifest in many of the works that were on display, nowhere more impressive than in several portraits of his parents. The profound emotional effects he creates come not from his gift for line, evident in many drawings, but from his ability to create masses of shading. One simply stands in awe before them.

Seurat captured humanity and you too can enjoy his work at The Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and The Pierpont Morgan Library. There is an upsurge in the works of Seurat because he touches places within us and that is a F.A.C.T.