VISUAL ARTS
06.24.09
VISUAL ARTS, Pre-20th-Century Art, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Realist Art, Art Criticism and Theory, Painting, Figurative Painting, Sculpture, top 5, modernism, Post-Modernism
by Jason Ramos
Many beers at Barbara’s bar at the Brewery here in LA resulted in the following list. They are all French. They are all painters. So it goes, in descending order: 5. Seurat. He’s underrated the way Roy Lichtenstein is. Divisionism / pointillism, like all Impressionist trends, was in part a reaction to the development of photography. In a mindbendingly sexy ironic twist, photography is now suffering (or, perhaps benefiting) from a similar crisis, as digital technology quickly redefines the old language and creates new. And the basis for digital photographic imagery? Pixels, my friend. The very notion of breaking an image down into small dots of color begins with monsieur Seurat, providing an excellent example of how the avant-garde trickles