Explore the Reception of this artwork, Le Chahut.
Chahut was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, 20 March–27 April 1890, eclipsing his other large entry: Jeune femme se poudrant (Young Woman Powdering Herself), to which critics at the time paid little attention. Chahut, the larger and more progressively modern of the two, was widely discussed among Symbolist critics, such as Arsène Alexandre, Jules Christophe, Gustave Kahn, Georges Lecomte, Henry van de Velde, Emile Verhaeren, and Téodor de Wyzewa. Two themes stood out: the Montmartre subject matter, and its incarnation of Henry's theories of linear expression. The painting was not liberally praised, as critics perceived its linear composition as overly schematic. Yet due to Chahut's anti-naturalist elements, its hieratic formalism and ritualistic components, Seurat was seen as an innovator. Their interpretations unintentionally paralleled the terms and concepts of Charles Blanc, whose anti-naturalist approach continued to inspire Seurat. Blanc commented on Egyptian art with a syntax the Symbolists may have used for Chahut: The figures in Egyptian bas-relief, writes Blanc, "are accentuated in a concise, summary manner, not without finesse but without details. The lines are straight and long, the posture stiff, imposing, and fixed. The legs are usually parallel and held together. The feet touch or point in the same direction and are exactly parallel... In this solemn and cabalistic pantomime, the figure conveys signs rather than gestures; it is in a position rather than in action."
John Rewald writes of both Le Chahut and Le Cirque:The figures in these paintings are dominated by monotony or joy (there is no sadness in the pictures of Seurat) and are, of course, governed by strict rules, being controlled by that play of line and color whose laws Seurat had studied. In these canvases Seurat, without yielding in any way to the literary or the picturesque, rehabilitated the subject which had been relinquished by the impressionists. His works are "exemplary specimens of a highly developed decorative art, which sacrifices the anecdote to the arabesque, nomenclature to synthesis, the fugitive to the permanent, and confers on nature—weary at last of its precarious reality—an authentic reality," wrote Fénéon
Gustave Kahn Henry van de Velde Jeune femme se poudrant (Young Woman Powdering Herself) John Rewald Fénéon Téodor de Wyzewa Arsène Alexandre Symbolist Georges Lecomte Emile Verhaeren Montmartre Charles Blanc Salon des Indépendants