In the context of Neo-Impressionism, analyze the The group of Neo-Impressionist painters of the Overview.
Neo-Impressionism was first presented to the public in 1886 at the Salon des Indépendants. The Indépendants remained their main exhibition space for decades with Signac acting as president of the association. But with the success of Neo-Impressionism, its fame spread quickly. In 1886, Seurat and Signac were invited to exhibit in the 8th and final Impressionist exhibition, later with Les XX and La Libre Esthétique in Brussels.
In 1892, a group of Neo-Impressionist painters united to show their works in Paris, in the Salons of the Hôtel Brébant, 32, boulevard Poissonnière. The following year they exhibited at 20, rue Laffitte. The exhibitions were accompanied by catalogues, the first with reference to the printer: Imp. Vve Monnom, Brussels; the second refers to M. Moline, secretary. Pissarro and Seurat met at Durand-Ruel's in the fall of 1885 and began to experiment with a technique using tiny dots of juxtaposing colors. This technique was developed from readings of popular art history and aesthetics (the French administrator, Charles Blanc, and Swiss aesthetician, David Sutter), and manuals for the industrial and decorative arts, science of optics and perception. At this time Pissarro began to be involved with the coterie that helped found the Société des Artistes Independants in 1884. Some members of the group attended gatherings for naturalist and symbolist authors at the home of Robert Caze who was an ex-communard and radical Republican journalist. It was here that the painters got to know each other, and many showed their work at independents' shows for all their lives. Pissarro asked Seurat and Signac to participate in the eighth impressionist exhibit in May 1886. This is where A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte was shown. They had a separate room at the show. The Republicans' liberalization of press laws in 1881 also aided this avant-garde movement. It made it easier for people to begin their own newspapers, thus allowing more art critics to get published.The idea of the "modern primitive" drew this group and began with Signac. After Seurat displayed La Grande Jatte, the critic Fénéon coined the term Neo-Impressionism. Pissarro, his son Lucien, and Signac also showed work at the same time. Soon other artists began to join the movement including Charles Angrand, Henri-Edmond Cross, Albert Dubois-Pillet, Léo Gausson, Louis Hayet, and Maximilien Luce. The allure of the scientific and new techniques captivated the young artists of this movement. The movement then spread abroad when Seurat and Pissarro were invited to Les Vingt, an avant-garde society in Brussels. This style became the dominant form in Belgium by 1889 and even artists like Van Gogh tried their hand at this style.
Seurat's mission as an artist was to celebrate the power of pure color, the expressive power of line, color and value, the reform of Impressionism and of the Beaux-Arts tradition. Seurat "wanted to be perceived as a technician of art, and so he borrowed from science some of the signs of its authority, including the regularity and clarity of pattern." This can be compared to how Signac "saw and emphasized a connection between anarchism, the Neo-Impressionist technique, the Mediterranean location, and the classical tradition in painting". Signac also viewed the Mediterranean as the place for anarchist avant-garde art. The Mediterranean was rarely depicted by avant-garde painters partially because of the association between the south of France and academic classicism as well as cultural and political conservatism. By setting his pastorals in the south, Signac followed the literary examples of Stendhal and Guy de Maupassant, who linked the region with liberty. Stendhal "described the south as a place of freedom where the worst faults of capitalist society were less entrenched than in the north." Stendhal also saw the South as a connection to other "Latin" countries who are "outside the civilized societies' concern for money."
France Signac Henri-Edmond Cross symbolist La Libre Esthétique avant-garde Durand-Ruel Impressionism art critic Stendhal Lucien anarchism Les XX Guy de Maupassant Louis Hayet A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte Beaux-Arts Les Vingt Albert Dubois-Pillet Pissarro Van Gogh Maximilien Luce communard Léo Gausson rue Laffitte Charles Angrand Charles Blanc Salon des Indépendants