Tim Marlow TV - Waldemar Januszczak TV -
The scene that Seurat depicts is a view across the Seine ... It’s a painting that subtly but I think emphatically wrestles with the idea of modern life ... The loneliness of the human condition. Tim Marlow at the Courtauld 3/3
Seurat: king of the dots. He painted some of the best known pictures in the chronicles of Impressionism. But the man himself was a mystery. Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists IV: Painting and Revolution: Final Flourish, BBC 2011
Seurat’s pictures are looking for something deeper, less fidgety, more permanent. ibid.
The Bather at Asnieres was begun when he was just twenty-three. His first masterpiece, and already so puzzling. ibid.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte: It’s such a strange strange picture ... What a thing to come up with in 1884 ... It was known as the Island of Love. ibid.
What Seurat has done is update the Sacred Grove. ibid.
He was trying to turn painting into science, to control your vision, but he never quite pulled it off. ibid.
Seurat’s marine views are among his most accessible and delightful achievements. ibid.
Seurat died when he was just thirty-one. ibid.
The more I look at Seurat’s art the more firmly I’m convinced that under this cloak of colour theory and the lines of emotion what we really have here is a very pessimistic observer of modern life. ibid.
Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte: Ever since it was painted in 1886 La Grand Jatte has fascinated people. It shows a parade of fashionable weekenders strolling along a riverbank in Paris. And everybody here is made entirely of dots. It’s one of the 19th century’s best known pictures and one of the most mysterious. The Art Mysteries with Waldemar Januszczak II: Seurat’s Island of La Grande Jatte & Les Poseuses
Les Poseuses: Why here in the corner Seurat has added La Grand Jatte. Why is it here? What’s it trying to say? Why are we getting two masterpieces at once? ibid.
The Bathers was also a picture with an important social message, a message aimed at Paris, the modern world. Look at all these factory chimneys belching smoke to the sky. ibid.