What is Pointillism?

Pointillism is a painting technique that involves painting on a canvas with very small dots or dashes of color. The term “pointillism” was coined critics of this style of painting in the 1880s as a derogatory term; technically, pointillist artworks belong to the Neo-Impressionist school of painting. Sunday Afternoon on the Island La Grande Jatte, painted Georges Seurat in the late 1880s, is one of the most famous examples of pointillism. The works of pointillists are distinctive, and they are optically fascinating because they rely on tricks of the eye and mind.

Artists break down paint into its most basic elements separating it into small dots of color. A pointillist painting may appear a little hazy up close, but as the viewer moves back, the image becomes clearer. This is because, similar to how people interpret pixels on a computer screen as a single image, the eyes and mind work together to blend the dots of color into a smooth picture. In fact, the Cyan Magenta Yellow Key, or Black (CMYK) printing process used to create many printed materials is very similar to Pointillism; this can be seen magnifying a page in a magazine to see the individual dots of color that the eyes and brain smooth over.

Henri-Edmond Cross and Paul Signac, two late-nineteenth-century artists, spearheaded the Neo-Impressionist movement alongside Georges Seurat. This school of art may have been influenced the Impressionists, but it went far beyond the Impressionists’ concepts. Students of art history will recognize Neo-Impressionist works because of their unusual and interesting use of color, shapes, and lines. The Impressionists’ groundbreaking work in terms of the use of light, subject matter, and color paved the way for the Neo-Impressionists, but they went even further, pushing the boundaries of painting.

Pointillism is sometimes referred to as Divisionism or Chromoluminarism, after the terms used Seurat. Seurat believed that painting and art could be approached scientifically, relying on optical and perception rules to give his work dynamism and feeling. Warm colors, the painter realized, could make a piece feel more friendly and happy, whereas dark colors and jagged lines could completely change the mood of a piece.