To begin, a Realist would be an artist …show more content…
They were determined to reject the forms of art that were traditional and taught in the Academy. Impressionists were more focused on creating the sensations that a scene would give you rather than the scene itself. While their subject matter may have been very similar to Realists, their goal was very different. Traditional forms of art focused on painting on a smooth surface, using varnish to disguise the way the applied the paint to the canvas. Impressionists were more concerned with the textures of the art instead of three-dimensional illusions. The main subject of Impressionist art was the urban middle-class, in which artists would try to capture the essence of a moment in time. A perfect example would be Paris Street: Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte (1848-94). Caillebotte captured the essence of this moment exquisitely. The perspective he used makes the viewer feel as if they are walking on the street, taking in all the moment has to offer. Even though this may be a scene from ordinary life, it is more focused on the perspective of the viewer in that …show more content…
This image depicts people engaged in the activities of everyday life. However, Seurat developed a new method of applying color theory called pointillism to this image. Color theory is the understanding of how colors can relate to each other, especially when they are mixed together or in close proximity to each other. Pointillism is a style of painting where short strokes or points of differing colors are used to form new colors. This image contains a revolutionized way of perception as well as application of colors. Seurat relied on two different optical effects. The first is called optical mixture, which is when the eye blends two colors that are placed near each other and creates a new color. The second is called afterimage effect, which is when the eye sees the complementary color of something that the viewer has spent an extended period of time viewing. These effects were used to create distinct figures within a scene. In order to reiterate the difficulty of this process, it took Seurat three years of hard work to create this work. Even further, to ensure the work would retain its optical arrangement, Seurat painted a border using the same pointillist