Georges Seurat: The Drawings

Jodi Hauptman, Georges Seurat, Hubert Damisch, Karl D. Buchberg, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Bridget Riley

The Museum of Modern Art, 2007 - Art - 269 pages

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.

What people are saying

gorgeous book

User Review  - scoutfinch - Overstock.com

beautiful illustrations for reference or coffee table and good insight into Seurat work from commentary

Contents

• FOREWORD: 6
• INTRODUCTION: 9
• SEURAT DISTRACTED: 17
• MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES: 31
• PLATES I: 43
• SEURATS DRAWINGS ON THE MARGINS OF PARIS: 107
• POLKA DOTS AND MOONBEAMS: 119
• PLATES II: 125
• SEURATS DRAWINGS 18861891: 169
• SEURAT AS MENTOR: 185
• PLATES III: 197
• CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION: 249
• LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION: 255
• CHRONOLOGY: 256
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: 258
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: 260
• INDEX OF PLATES: 265
• TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: 269

Bibliographic information

• Title: Georges Seurat: The Drawings
• Authors: Jodi Hauptman, Georges Seurat, Hubert Damisch, Karl D. Buchberg, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Bridget Riley
• Editors: Jodi Hauptman, Karl D. Buchberg
• author of text accompanying photos: Jodi Hauptman, Karl D. Buchberg, Emeritus Professor of the History and Theory of Art Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Thomson, Richard Shiff
• Compiled by: Karl D. Buchberg
• Illustrated by: Georges Seurat
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007
• ISBN: 0870707175, 9780870707179
• Length: 269 pages
• Subjects: Art / Individual Artists / General; Art / Techniques / Drawing; Art / Techniques / Painting