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Paul Signac - Watercolors and Drawings
Don Fowler rates the current Paul Signac exhibition as the Hiroshima Museum of Art's best
for quite some time, and urges any art-lovers out there to get down there before it's gone.
Paul Signac (1863-1935) was one of the founder members of the Salon des
Independants, an organisation set up in
1884 to display the work of innovative artists whose work had been rejected by
the official Salon. There he met
Georges Seurat, whose Bathers at Asnieres had been rejected that very year,
and together they went on to develop
what came to be known as pointillism, a painstaking technique whereby dots of
pure colour were applied to the
canvas, avoiding "muddy mixtures" as Signac put it, to be blended by the viewer's
eye.
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Followers of the Impressionists, the pointillists were interested in contemporary theories of colour analysis and
visual perception, particularly the discovery that colour was mixed on the retina, each spot of pure colour
accompanied by "a halo of its complementary around it: orange rimmed with blue, for instance". Inspired by late
nineteenth-century positivism and scientific optimism, they took Impressionist notions of "true" representation to
more extreme lengths, in the process drawing flak from Gauguin, who dismissed the
pointillists as "these chemists
who pile up little dots". Lest this give the impression of a dry, academic artist,
it should be said that the finished works defy their mode of composition in vivacity
and artistic interest, and no less a figure than Pissaro,
a fervent anarchist as was Signac, experienced a complete "conversion" to the
style for a committed five year period. Even Gauguin, in spite of his scathing
comments, is said to have had the "expressive possibilities of colour revealed to
him" in the pictures of Seurat and Signac.
In any case, the exhibition currently being held at Hiroshima Museum of Art
displays not early oil pointillist
works but landscape watercolours of Signac's maturity, beautifully composed
paintings that evoke the coastline of
France with understated but supreme skill. In the words of Robert Hughes, "Paul
Signac had what comparatively few
artists - or people of any kind, for that matter - ever get: an enviably happy
life, whose pleasures never reduced
him to complacency". Born into a wealthy middle-class family he was free of the
burden of making a living, but
still managed to place himself at the centre of one of the most fertile periods
in the history of art.
He visited Van Gogh at Arles in 1889 and was hugely impressed by his late work;
and Matisse (who Picasso later
regarded as his only rival) came to stay with him in Saint-Tropez early in the
twentieth century. Signac had discovered Saint-Tropez in 1892 when it was still
nothing more than a small fishing village and moved there to
continue his attempts to capture the effects of light. Significantly, Matisse was
impressed by Signac's paintings of the bay and he travelled south again in 1905,
this time to work with Derain in
the coastal town of Coullioure.
Together, they started to produce the works that provoked cries of les fauves
but were displayed by Signac who, as president of the Salon des Independants
(from 1908 to 1934) was active in encouraging and promoting innovative and
radical artists of the day.
In the watercolours on exhibition in Motomachi, in keeping with his pointillist
past, Signac favours dabs and
washes of pure colour, but in contrast to the seamless precision of pointillism
the paint in these pictures works
in tandem with broad, rough strokes of his pencil. Standing in front of these
works, one can almost feel the breeze
or sense the rain in the air, even hear the colours in their lively, synaesthetic
array. In fact the rhythmic
beauty of these paintings can only be fully appreciated in their originals and
since this is the first chance to
see them in Japan, any art-lovers out there should make every effort to go.
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Signac was a keen sailor, naming his beloved yacht Olympia in homage to Manet, and the many sea views testify to
his love of the sea. A sense of vivified repose infuses the paintings, comparable to the mood that settles on the
city-dweller who sits finally relaxed on a quayside. Starting en plein air, Signac re-worked his paintings in the
studio with more attention to the play of colour than representative accuracy. The influence of Van Gogh, who
Signac much admired, is strongly evident in the earlier, less so in the later works where the style is very much his
own. Signac's painting is more composed, in both senses of the word, than the
impassioned Dutchman, but by no means is it merely eyeball-pleasing:
reproductions really do not do the paintings justice.
It would be difficult to come up with a more contrasting set of images from the
same era than the monochrome
Rouaults that greet the viewer who returns to ground level. The power and agony of his Miserere works send the
heart on a swift rebound, plummeting into the depths of human suffering. Be warned
but don't be put off! From the
open, colourful landscapes (apart from a few sepia monochromes) of Signac to the tormented realm of Rouault:
figures tightly boxed within the frame. From the play of colour to solid, sculptural forms, inspired more by
statuary than the evanescence of animate figures, the void of their black eye sockets unchanging whether living,
slain or, literally, skeletal. The Rouault room can only be seen as a huge bonus, the unlikely pairing making this
the best exhibition at Hiroshima Museum of Art for quite a while, but visitors
may wish to refresh themselves with another stroll through the delightful sights
of Signac before heading out into the streets.
The exhibition only runs until May 6th. Be careful not to miss it.
Don Fowler 04/2002
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