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I think the relationship in Seurat’s work, between the project to “restore painting’s cultural significance,” and the “mass culture” that he sought to address is the demonstration of alienation in his paintings of society. This theme greatly connects with two paintings by Georges Seurat, which are A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte, 1884-6. Oil on canvas and Chahut 1889-90, Oil on canvas. Seurat’s painting of the Grande Jatte shows women, men, and children from all classes at a suburban park where they are having picnics, fishing, and doing other things. Alfred Paulet, states a very significant point in the painting by stating Seurat gives the women, men, and children automatic gestures of lead soldiers and makes them move in the same slow, banal, and identical step. Therefore, Eisenman states that the Grande Jatte is an “ingenious image of Impressionism with the recreation of a suburban picture of the artifice and alienation of modern class society ”(Eisenman 391).
Going more into this point of the painting demonstrating the alienation of modern class society, Eisenman proclaims that Seurat placed, “curves, vertical, horizontal, or crisscrossed strokes of not mixed, blended paint to illustrate the dominance of alienation”(Eisenman 392). Another important point made by Eisenman is Seurat was subjected to make,“ his landscape and figures have a strict proportional Classical schema that was based on Vitruvius”(Eisenman 392). In terms of Vitruvius, the painting shows, “ the heads of the figures half the height of their bodies and their faces are in a position where their heads are full frontal as well” (Eisenman 392). Even another critic in response stated that the painting was perceived to be “less luster”(Eisenman 395) and there was a lack of luminosity in the painting. It shows that society was dominated by alienation and everyone is positioned where they can’t move in their own ways than moving in a similar pattern. In Seurat’s other painting Chahut, the canvas shows two women performing on stage and there are two men as well.
The picture demonstrates a very interesting fact in regard to utopia and dystopia because Eisenman states that the dancers on the stage are, “ having the utopian experience of freedom and enlightenment whereas the audience is described as the dystopia of evil spirits, bad food, and lewd display”(Eisenman 398). Eisenman even says that the opposite can also be shown by displaying, “the performers on stage with their body parts and smiles alienated and isolated from their bodies and minds in a dystopia of fetishism and objectification”(Eisenman 398). Whereas the audience is “ treated to the utopia where they have the pleasures of light, music, and sexual stimulation”(Eisenman 398). It illustrates the point that the painting shows the alienation from the performers where they have dominance over those who are in the dystopia and therefore make those who are in the dystopia feel inferior. Also, the performers also have their alienated bodies and attitudes on display and therefore they bring that alienation to the audience of the dystopia. I think Chaut does a very good job of highlighting the contradictory forms of culture of a “ dream unrestrained pleasure and a nightmare vision of vulgarity” (Eisenman 398). Seurat claims that the painting is a paradox of both the delight and alienation of mass culture because the painting shows the performers on stage displaying very harsh grins on their faces and how their body parts are alienated from the audience and have superiority over them. Grande Jatte also does a very good job of addressing the contradictory forms of culture because it shows a society where women, men, and children are placed in a utopian world where they are free, yet everyone in the painting is positioned to be very emotionless and less expressive to each other and not have the freedom to move in their own ways.
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