Art To Know With Mommy O, CVC Students and Pointillism

Since we are teaching art on a wheel and a cart and with covid restrictions, I have had to figure out how to pack as much information in my block schedule as possible with as many resources. So, here is a lesson on Pointillism. Have you ever heard of Art With Mommy O? If not, give her a look. She is most informative and jammed packed with lots of knowledge.

These are a few examples of our Pointillism art from class the other day. These were done in a 1.5 hour class. At this point in my schedule, I travel to cohorted homerooms and I only get 6 classes before I have to switch my schedule. I have had to be very mindful of what this looks like. I am thankful for folks like Mommy O which helped me do a deeper dive into this unit.

Art is everywhere and especially in movies and TV shows out kids watch. Do you guys remember this one? Everyone loves a little Bugs Bunny, right?

 The facts below came from Art With Mommy O

Georges-Pierre Seurat is the artist often credited with being the father of Neo-Impressionism, and the innovator of a highly unique painting technique called Pointillism. Using tiny dots — or points — of pure color, Pointillists, like Seurat, intentionally encourage the viewer’s eye to optically blend the points of color for a brighter and more brilliant visual art experience. You have undoubtedly heard of Pointillism before.

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Although ‘Pointillism’ is the modern-day term widely accepted for this popular style of painting, Georges-Pierre Seurat favored referring to it as ‘chromoluminarism.’ According to him, the more technical term better described the intense focus on the actual science of color and light within his artwork.

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In fact, the word ‘Pointillism’ was made up by art critics in the late 1880s in mockery of the works of Georges-Pierre Seurat and those who painted with the tiny dots of color. No doubt, this too is why Seurat rejected the term to describe his artwork.

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In response to the name given his new style of painting by the art critics — and in defense of his new technique — Seurat once said, “The inability of some critics to connect the dots doesn’t make pointillism pointless.’ Way to go, Mr. Seurat — that sure was telling them!

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To fully understand Pointillism, we must take a quick look back to the art movement immediately preceding it — that being Impressionism. A popular late-19th-century art movement, Impressionism gave the world great artists like Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Within their works of art, the Impressionists provided us a mere glimpse of their visual reality by painting a fleeting moment in time through the effects of light on color.

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Following on their heels were the Neo-Impressionists or ‘new’ Impressionists — sometimes referred to as Post-Impressionists — who embraced the same complementary color and everyday-life themes as the Impressionist movement. However, they firmly rejected the idea that they were painting a fleeting moment in time. Neo-Impressionists chose to blend art with science by considering the scientific basis of color and the physiology of vision when they created their works of art. Generally speaking, they took a much more scientific and systematic new-world approach to their art when they painted light and color.

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Pointillists also seemed to be mimicking the process of a significant 19th-century invention — the camera. A camera systematically breaks down images into arrangements of colored dots. Similarly, Pointillists systematically applied colored dots to create imagery upon their canvases.

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Rather than mixing colors on a palette or directly on the canvas — as did the Impressionists before them — Pointillists applied dots of pure color onto the canvas. This painting technique was their attempt at coaxing the viewer’s eye to connect the dots and process the colors in the mind as a part of the visual experience.

💙, 1969