Visual Arts and Film Studies
Image of Monet’s Gare St. Lazare, 1877: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/La_Gare_Saint-Lazare.jpg

Image of Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte: http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/georges-seurat/study-for-a-sunday-on-la-grande-jatte-1885.jpg

With the wake of the industrial revolution, the rise of urban cities, and the advent of technologies such as photography and railway transportation, how people saw and experienced the world fundamentally changed. Physical realities were no longer taken as a given. Rather, they can be manipulated and broken apart to show movement and light. These transitory elements become the subject of artworks in their own right and reflect the sense of the strangeness and instability indicative of modernity. In this case study, you will compare Impressionist Claude Monet’s Gare St. Lazare with Post-Impressionist Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on the Grande Jatte. Both represent modern life in Paris and reflect the massive changes brought on by modern technology and the industrial revolution. You will need to pay close attention to formal qualities—brushwork, light, shadow and color—in order to relate these elements to the experience of modern life. Use the required course materials to help you discuss, briefly, (1) the history of Impressionism and these two artists in particular, (2) the different ways these artists chose to convey the modern experience (in content and in form), and (3) how paint, brushwork, light, and color (formal qualities) become, in part, the subject of the paintings. (*Paint is no longer just used to depict reality; paint (line, space, brushwork, color, light) becomes a subject on its own.)

It is important to note that this assignment is your fourth encounter in thinking and writing about Art History and Art Criticism, so it is expected that you have had some practice and are ready for this assignment. The required course materials under “How To Write About Art: Art Criticism and Formal Analysis” will continue to be an essential reference point in order to master these skills.

Expectations for All Assignments

• An explanation of the values—influences, themes, techniques, subjects—characteristic of the period or style under study.

• Some information about how the social, political, or religious history of the period influenced its art and artists.

• Biographical information about the artist whose work is assigned or (in SLP assignments) chosen for reflection

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