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Pointillism is a style of painting
Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting....
 in which small distinct points of primary color
Primary color

Primary colors are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors. For human applications, three are often used; for additive combination of colors, as in overlapping projected lights or in cathode ray tube displays, the primary colors normally used are red, green, and blue....
s create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors. Aside from color "mixing" phenomena, there is the simpler graphic phenomena of depicted imagery emerging from disparate points.






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Seurat La Parade Detail
Pointillism is a style of painting
Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting....
 in which small distinct points of primary color
Primary color

Primary colors are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors. For human applications, three are often used; for additive combination of colors, as in overlapping projected lights or in cathode ray tube displays, the primary colors normally used are red, green, and blue....
s create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors. Aside from color "mixing" phenomena, there is the simpler graphic phenomena of depicted imagery emerging from disparate points. Historically, Pointillism has been a figurative
Figurative art

Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork - particularly paintings and sculptures - which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representation ....
 mode of executing a painting, as opposed to an abstract
Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world....
 modality of expression.

The technique relies on the perceptive ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to mix the color spots into a fuller range of tones and is related closely to Divisionism, a more technical variant of the method. It is a style with few serious practitioners and is notably seen in the works of Seurat, Signac
Paul Signac

Paul Signac was a France Neo-impressionism Painting who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the pointillism style....
 and Cross
Henri-Edmond Cross

Henri-Edmond Cross , was a France pointillism Painting....
. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists and is now used without its earlier mocking connotation.

The practice of Pointillism is in sharp contrast to the more common methods of blending pigments on a palette
Palette

A 'palette' is: a surface on which a painter mixes colour pigments. A palette may be made of wood, glass, plastic, ceramic tile or other inert material and can vary greatly in size and shape....
 or using the many commercially available premixed colors. Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some color printers and large presses, Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black (called "CMYK"). Televisions, computer monitors use a pointillist technique to represent images but with Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colors.

Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity refers to changes that occur in the organization of the brain as a result of experience. The coining of the term plasticity in regards to neuronal process is attributed to Polish neuroscientist Jerzy Konorski....
 is a key element of observing a pointillistic image. While two individuals will observe the same photons reflecting off a photorealistic image and hitting their retina
Retina

The vertebrate retina is a light sensitive tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. The optics of the eye create an image of the visual world on the retina, which serves much the same function as the film in a camera....
s, someone whose mind has been primed with the theory of pointillism will see a very different image as the image is interpreted in the visual cortex
Visual cortex

The term visual cortex refers to the primary visual cortex and Extrastriate cortex such as V2, V3, V4, and V5....
.

Practice

If red, blue and green light (the additive primaries) are mixed, the result is something close to white light. The brighter effect of pointillist colours could rise from the fact that subtractive mixing is avoided and something closer to the effect of additive mixing is obtained even through pigments.

The painting technique used to perform pointillistic color mixing is at the expense of traditional brushwork which could be used to delineate texture
Texture (painting)

Texture in a painting is the feel of the canvas. It can be based on the paint and its application or addition materials such as ribbon, metal, wood, lace, leather, sand, etc......
.

Pointillism also refers to a style of 20th-century music composition, used by composers like Anton Webern
Anton Webern

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and Conducting. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known proponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of pitch, rhythm and dynamics were formative...
. h

Notable Artists

  • Chuck Close
    Chuck Close

    Chuck Thomas Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits. Though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work which remains sought after by museums and collectors....
  • Henri-Edmond Cross
    Henri-Edmond Cross

    Henri-Edmond Cross , was a France pointillism Painting....
  • John Roy
    John Roy

    John Roy was a noted professor in the Art Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1964 until his retirement in 1994. He continued to paint until his death in 2001....
  • Georges-Pierre Seurat
    Georges-Pierre Seurat

    Georges-Pierre Seurat was a France Painting and drawing. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century History of painting....
  • Paul Signac
    Paul Signac

    Paul Signac was a France Neo-impressionism Painting who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the pointillism style....
  • Maximilien Luce
    Maximilien Luce

    Maximilien Luce was a France artist associated with Neoimpressionism. A printmaker, painter, and Anarchism in France, Luce gained a modicum of fame using the pointillist methods developed by Georges-Pierre Seurat....
  • Vincent van Gogh
    Vincent van Gogh

    Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch people Post-Impressionism artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art....
     also learned and used Pointillism


See also

  • Stippling
    Stippling

    Stippling is the technique of using small dots to simulate varying Grayscale or shading.In a drawing or painting, the dots are made of pigment of a single color, applied with a pen or brush; the denser the spacing of the dots, the darker the apparent shade?or lighter, if the pigment is lighter than the surface....
  • Circulism
    Circulism

    Circulism An art movement/style was found that was founded by the Kuwaiti pioneer Khalifa Alqattan in mid 1963. This new trend is based on philosophy with a strong tendency for human drama....


  • Divisionism