Michelle Foa
Michelle Foa is associate professor of art history at Tulane University.
Foa, Michelle
Foa, Michelle
foa@test.com
United States of America
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Description: Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00057
This revelatory study of Georges Seurat (1859–1891) explores the artist’s profound interest in theories of visual perception and analyzes how they influenced his celebrated seascape, urban, and suburban scenes. While Seurat is known for his innovative use of color theory to develop his pointillist technique, this book is the first to underscore the centrality of diverse ideas about vision to his seascapes, figural paintings, and drawings. Michelle Foa highlights the importance of the scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, whose work on the physiology of vision directly shaped the artist’s approach. Foa contends that Seurat’s body of work constitutes a far-reaching investigation into various modes of visual engagement with the world and into the different states of mind that visual experiences can produce. Foa’s analysis also brings to light Seurat’s sustained exploration of long-standing and new forms of illusionism in art.
Print publication date July 2015 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300208351
EISBN 9780300248074
Illustrations 141
Print Status in print