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Characterized by bold brush strokes, thick layers of paint (impasto) and bright and saturated expressive colors, post-impressionism further experiments with abstraction and flattened perspective. The artist's subjective feeling takes a front seat, and we begin to see an emphasis on geometric forms.
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Vincent van Gogh,
Café Terrace at Night
1888, O/C, 2’8” x 2’2”
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands Perhaps the most iconic of the Post-Impressionists, Vincent Van Gogh's work is instantly identifiable by his visible artist's hand- through thick impasto painting techniques, short brush strokes come together to form a flattened perspective of the night life of the city. Van Gogh's use of complimentary primary colors are emotionally activating, as if the cafe is a warm light to a moth. -
Vincent van Gogh
Wheatfield with Crows
1890
O/C, 19.8” x 41”
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam This landscape work shows us further example of van Gogh's iconic technique of short brush strokes to visually communicate the texture of the environment- the wheat, the grass and dirt path, the road off the side, the evening sky and moon-lit clouds. One of van Gogh's final works, the flattened perspective evokes an emotional feeling of the unseen path ahead and what mysteries may lie there. -
Primitivism is an artistic trend inspired by a colonial perception of the exoticized "other" in non-europeans regions such as Africa, Asia, Oceania, as well as indigenous Americans. The aesthetics of these regions are taken and turned into inspiration for European artists who infantilized these "uncivilized" cultures into a conceptual idea of natural innocence due to the lack of European style industrialization.
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Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau)
Paul Gauguin
1892
Oil on canvas
45.6 in × 53 in
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo Gauguin made a lifestyle out of his Primitivist colonial expressions. Here we see his Tahitian child bride posed in an overturned odalisque with a caught-off-gaurd expression. At the foot of the bed is a spectral figure, referencing local beliefs of the supernatural. This work is visually similar to 1814 Orientalist work Grande Odalisque by
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres -
Jane Avril
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
1893
Lithograph
50 13/16 x 36 13/16 in. Toulouse-Latrec's work signifies the beginning of a new look to advertising, legalized in France in 1881, this visual style is still seen in graphic design today. A colorful dancing performer on a stage-turned upright base is a work meant to advertise performers in Paris. These simplified flat 2D figures and objects are inspired by the Japanese wood block technique very popular in Japan at the time, (japonaiserie) -
The Dream
Henri Rousseau
1910
Oil on canvas
204.5 cm × 298.5 cm (80.5 in × 117.5 in)
Museum of Modern Art, New York Henri Rousseau the dream shows us a wider palette of jewel tones, and a surreal exotic environment of geometric nature and animals. Rosseau's work would go on to inspire Picasso's cubism.