Seurat's Circus Sideshow
- ISBN-10
- 1588396150
- ISBN-13
- 9781588396150
- Category
- Art
- Pages
- 144
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2017-02-15
- Publisher
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Author
- Richard Thomson
Description
Georges Seurat (1859–1891) created just six major figure paintings during his lifetime, one of which, the alluring Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque), has remained the most challenging to interpret since it first intrigued viewers at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Unlike Seurat’s earlier sunlit scenes, Circus Sideshow presents a nighttime tableau depicting a parade—a street show enticing passersby to purchase tickets. With its geometrically precise composition, muted colors, and elements of abstraction, the painting stands apart as a masterpiece of Neo-Impressionism and heralds Seurat’s subsequent depictions of popular entertainments. This book, the first comprehensive study of Circus Sideshow, situates the painting in the context of nineteenth-century Paris and of the many social changes France was undergoing. Renowned art historian Richard Thomson illuminates the roles of caricature, naturalist and avant-garde painting, and circus advertising; examines Seurat’s use of contemporary aesthetic theory; and discusses how artists ranging from Rouault to Picasso mined the sideshow theme into the twentieth century. Illustrated with Seurat’s related drawings, works by other artists, and period posters and broadsides, Seurat’s Circus Sideshow delves into the history of traveling circuses and seasonal fairs in France, exploring the ongoing appeal of this traditional form of popular entertainment through the fin de siècle. Two additional essays describe the painting’s enthusiastic reception in New York upon its 1929 debut and present the results of a fresh technical examination of the canvas, making this volume the definitive resource on one of Seurat’s most captivating works.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision
By Michelle FoaSee also optical mixture; Chevreul, Michel-Eugène; complementary colors complementary colors, 90–91, 110, 125–26, 218n37. See also Chevreul, Michel-Eugène Condolences, 175, 176, 177, 187–89 conté crayon, 156–58, 162–64, 167, 18O, ...
-
Modern Art and the Remaking of Human Disposition
By Emmelyn Butterfield-RosenWith this book, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen brings a new formal and conceptual rubric to the study of turn-of-the-century modernism, transforming our understanding of the era’s canonical works.
-
Delphi Complete Paintings of Georges Seurat (Illustrated)
By Peter RussellPeter Russell Delphi Classics. Albrecht Dürer Amedeo Modigliani Anthony van Dyck Artemisia Gentileschi Berthe Morisot Camille Pissarro Canaletto Caravaggio Caspar David Friedrich Claude Lorrain Claude Monet Correggio Dante Gabriel ...
-
The Clarks of Cooperstown
By Nicholas Fox WeberWhat happened from then on has the ring of fiction; with its combined elements of fabulous wealth and fantasy behavior, one could imagine it in the voice of Gogol or Turgenev. The refined millionaires landowner and the sculptor who ...
-
Georges Seurat, 1859-1891
By Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Georges Seurat, Robert L. HerbertThe centrally placed bollard anchors the foreground securely; it and the gently curving revetment allow the quay to zoom back with satisfactory conviction. The careened boat tilting toward the lighthouse marks one ofthe few contrasting ...
-
Seurat Re-viewed
By Paul SmithGeorges Seurat is best known as the painter of A Sunday on the Grande Jatte--1884, one of the most recognizable and reproduced works of art in the world. In recent...
-
Degas and the Nude
By Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, George T. M. ShackelfordDegas and the Nude is the first book in a generation to explore the artist's treatment of the nude from his early years in the 1850s and 1860s, through his triumphs in the 1880s and 1890s, all the way to his last decades, when the theme ...
-
Georges Seurat: The Drawings
By Georges Seurat, Jodi Hauptman, Karl D. BuchbergThe Drawings Georges Seurat, Jodi Hauptman, Karl D. Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Thomson, ... Peter Norton Maja Oeri Richard E. Oldenburg ** Michael S. Ovitz Richard D. Parsons Peter G. Peterson Mrs. Milton Petrie ...
-
Georges Seurat
By Iain ZaczekClose-up images of small parts of the works call readers’ attention to interesting details, like the child in this painting who’s looking straight out of the canvas.
-
Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800-1920, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
By Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kathryn Calley Galitz, N.Y.)34; “Masterpieces of Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, September 16-November 1, 1970, unnumbered cat.; ”Gustave Courbet, 1819-1877,'l Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, September 30, ...