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Pointillist painters such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, working in France in the 1880s, built pictures from small dots of pure colour set side by side, so that the colours would blend in the viewer's eye rather than on the palette.

D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, 1899

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The style is also called Neo-Impressionism, a name the critic Félix Fénéon gave it in 1886, or divisionism. It drew on the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul's 1839 study of how neighbouring colours change each other's appearance. Seurat spent about two years on his best-known painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86), building it from countless small, carefully placed touches. Signac later set out the group's ideas in his 1899 book From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism. Real perception is more complicated than the slogan that 'the eye mixes the paint': the dots often read as a shimmer rather than a smooth blend, and Seurat's effect also depended on composition and contrast.

Türkçe oku
Georges Seurat ve Paul Signac gibi noktacı ressamlar, 1880'lerde Fransa'da resimlerini yan yana konmuş küçük, saf renk noktalarıyla kurdu. Renkler palette değil, izleyicinin gözünde karışacaktı.
D'Eugène Delacroix au néo-impressionnisme, 1899

Bu üsluba, eleştirmen Félix Fénéon'un 1886'da koyduğu adla Yeni Empresyonizm ya da divizyonizm de denir. Kimyager Michel-Eugène Chevreul'ün, yan yana duran renklerin birbirini nasıl farklı gösterdiğini inceleyen 1839 tarihli çalışmasından beslenir. Seurat en bilinen tablosu Grande Jatte Adası'nda Bir Pazar Öğleden Sonrası (1884-86) üzerinde iki yıla yakın çalıştı ve onu özenle yerleştirilmiş sayısız küçük fırça dokunuşuyla kurdu. Signac, grubun fikirlerini 1899'da yayımladığı Eugène Delacroix'dan Yeni Empresyonizme adlı kitabında anlattı. Gerçek görme, “boyayı göz karıştırır” sloganından daha karmaşıktır: Noktalar çoğu zaman düzgün bir karışım yerine bir ışıltı gibi algılanır; Seurat'nın etkisi de kompozisyona ve kontrasta bağlıydı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Pointillism
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