Georges Seurat: The Drawings

by Jodi Hauptman, Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch

Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive publication surveys the artist's entire oeuvre, from his academic training and the emergence of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases. Accompanying the first exhibition in almost 25 years to focus exclusively on Seurat's drawings, this volume presents approximately 130 works, primarily the artist's incomparable conté drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. In an effort to bridge the seemingly opposite goals of description and evocation, Seurat masses dark and light tones to abstract figures, exploits medium and paper to amplify radiating light, and engages with the Parisian metropolis, revealing urban types, the industrial suburbs and nineteenth-century entertainment. Though Seurat is perhaps best known as the inventor of Pointillism, this volume demonstrates his tremendous achievement as a draftsman and his fundamental importance to the art of the twentieth century. It includes carefully selected details of the work, as well as reproductions from pages of Seurat's sketchbooks, which have never before been published. Texts by Jodi Hauptman, Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff and Richard Thomson address specific aspects of Seurat's techniques, materials, and subject matter. They are rounded out by a chronology, a selected bibliography and a detailed checklist.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2007

About the author

Jodi Hauptman is assistant professor in the Department of History of Art at the University of Delaware.

Her book Stargazing in the Cinema was the winner of the 2001 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic to see so many drawings by one of my favorite artists in one book. The essays are for the most part brilliant, although some authors do a better job than others, of course.

[Christy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive publication surveys the artist's entire oeuvre, from his academic training and the emergence of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases. Accompanying the first exhibition in almost 25 years to focus exclusively on Seurat's drawings, this volume presents approximately 130 works, primarily the artist's incomparable cont' drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. In an effort to bridge the seemingly opposite goals of description and evocation, Seurat masses dark and light tones to abstract figures, exploits medium and paper to amplify radiating light, and engages with the Parisian metropolis, revealing urban types, the industrial suburbs and nineteenth-century entertainment. Though Seurat is perhaps best known as the inventor of Pointillism, this volume demonstrates his tremendous achievement as a draftsman and his fundamental importance to the art of the twentieth century. It includes carefully selected details of the work, as well as reproductions from pages of Seurat's sketchbooks, which have never before been published. Texts by Jodi Hauptman, Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff and Richard Thomson address specific aspects of Seurat's techniques, materials, and subject matter. They are rounded out by a chronology, a selected bibliography and a detailed checklist.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unusually good art book in that the text (several essays
by different people, from different angles) makes you willingly
flip back and forth from text to plates as your interest and
understanding grow. Fascinating explanation of the materials
and techniques Seurat used. Intriguing connections with the
work of other artists and with the cultural milieu of the places
and the times. Blessed shortage of extended theoretical and
academic flights of fancy, so leaden to my ear in some art books.

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to start rating art books on a level of their own. I am rating them based on the quality of the images, the cropping and color, and on the essays written in the books.