Cézanne

Author: He Zhengguang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: Paul Signac was a representative painter of French Neo-Impressionism and co-invented the pointillist technique with Georges Seurat. He arranged or interwove small dots of primary colors, allowing the viewer's eyes to discover the color blending effect, creating a mosaic-like appearance on the canvas. He was fond of depicting seaports, rivers, water, and sailing ships in his landscapes. His representative works include Harmonies in Time, The Dining Room, Saint-Tropez Port, and others. This book compiles Paul Signac's life works, including rare treasures. Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a man of fervor, deeply devoted to painting, science, literature, and politics—in short, he loved the era he lived in. He was always completely, both strong and cheerful, more like a Breton sailor than a painter. He spoke quickly and eagerly, mixing words that could not be repeated with a kind and gentle demeanor. His passion, combative spirit, wisdom, and unwavering determination were all part of his character. Even in his most fervent moments, he never showed meanness or unjust malice. His determination was real, and his ideas were not easily changed: he was not the type to simplify life, driving out everything that did not belong to his small circle. On the contrary, he believed that encountering new things would always invigorate him, always ready to reach higher levels. His words, however harsh, came from a generous and compassionate heart, driven by the pursuit of truth. His open-mindedness allowed him to fully agree with the idea that there were various ways to reach truth, acknowledging the legitimacy of research that often opposed his own. However, in art, as in life, he was always at war with ambition, hypocrisy, flattery, and arrogance. Struggle was part of his life, and the struggle for art was no different from social struggle, as it seemed he had more energy to dedicate to the strong, action-seeking temperament. Signac came from a bourgeois family, and his decision to pursue painting in his youth did not encounter much resistance. Initially, he was influenced by Monet, who was far from being appreciated at the time. At the age of twenty-one, he co-founded the Société des Artistes Indépendants and exhibited his works in its first salon, where he met Georges Seurat. The two worked closely together and quickly laid the theoretical foundation for the important and revolutionary movement of Neo-Impressionism at the end of the 19th century. He gathered a group of talented and dedicated companions around them. Among them were Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Charles Angrand, Hippolyte Petitjean, Theo van Rysselberghe, Albert Dubois-Pillet, and others. Signac was the driving force of the organization, tirelessly working to increase its followers, seizing every opportunity to write and lecture in favor of his beliefs and theories. After Seurat's early death in 1891, he took on the responsibility of leading his friends and continuing the struggle for his ideas. As a great navigator, Signac traveled and painted all the ports of France, sailing his sailboat from the Netherlands to Corsica. He explored the Alps, Italy, and Constantinople. For many years, his mooring point was Saint-Trope, which he called a "discovered" port, much like he had discovered Bresson Port and Collioures. From these travels, he brought back vibrant watercolors, pencil lines, and vibrating colors, capturing the ever-changing faces of things with spontaneous and flowing brushstrokes. In his studio, he would use these sketches to paint on large canvases, skillfully balancing the elements of nature to achieve what he called "harmonious, bright, and colorful" results. His close friend and loyal companion, Félix Fénéon, described Signac's paintings as follows: "His colors spread like waves, layered, colliding, intermingling, creating a rich effect combined with curved beauty. The palette he used to express these joys and conflicts allowed for pure colors. He arranged them in the order of the spectrum, weakening adjacent colors as much as possible, and establishing their tonal hierarchy. A series of brushstrokes, engaged in a life-and-death competition, were arranged on the canvas to match the local color, the color of light, and the various reflective colors. The eye discovered the optical mixture taking shape. The overlapping and arrangement of these elements ensured the variation of color, the purity of color ensured freshness, and the optical mixture ensured brightness. Unlike the mixture of pigments, all optical mixtures tended toward brightness." Signac had an insatiable curiosity, studying the optical laws determined by Chevreul with great enthusiasm and often taking up his pen to write and spread his ideas. His book From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism (1899) became the true bible of Neo-Impressionism. He also wrote an essay on The Goldfish, a highly insightful article on The Subject of Painting, the preface to the exhibition Seurat and His Friends (Paris, 1934), and a diary, with the 1894–1899 portion published in Art News (1949–1953). As his numerous activities could not satisfy his ever-boiling temperament, he became the president of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1908. Over twenty-six years, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to his companions, always encouraging young artists (he was one of the earliest customers of Matisse's works) to continuously fight for the principles of a completely new art. His strong personality made him stand out in any setting, which sometimes made people forget that this active, decisive-influencing figure was also an extremely talented, sensitive, and poetic painter.