Sunday Afternoon on the Island of...holy crap, that's a lot of dots

I was in Chicago this past weekend, so I got took a good long gander at Georges Seurat's masterpiece. There sure are a lot of dots on that thing. It's so carefully built -- imagine if we really were characters in this painting, and we had to stand at right angles at all times. Unless we were a dog or a monkey.

I don't know about you, but I too like to take my monkey out for walks in the park, especially when I'm wearing my enormous bustle.

You never really know a painting until you see it in person (well, that's not true. For some, like Lichtensteins, I don't think it matters that much. But let's pretend this is true), and this one has a fabulous surprise in its painted purply border. The museum placard says Seurat added the border to help the eye make the transition to his custom-designed white frame, which they've replicated. (They being the Art Institute of Chicago.)

You almost never see that border in reproductions of the painting, which seems like a refutation of Seurat's intentions. I would imagine he'd like it there to lead the eye out to the white of the page of an art book, as well.

And so our eyes go unled, dazzled by orderly dots and skittering out to a chaotic 360 degree world.

I took a painting class once where we were forced to complete a pointillist painting, and boy did everyone hate doing it. It is profoundly unsatisfying. It feels like an obsessive compulsive exercise designed to force you to exert control over your own animal impulses and desires.

No wonder Seurat dropped dead at 31; he must've been exhausted.