norman lebrecht<\/p>\n
December 20, 2025<\/p>\n
This month marks the birthday of Georges Seurat,\u00a0\u00a0 born on 2nd December 1859. He died on March 29th, 1891, aged only 31.<\/p>\n
In 1886, the young French artist\u00a0Georges Seurat caused a major scandal when he unveiled a radical new style of painting. Known as Pointillism, this technique involved painting in \u2018dots\u2019 of pure complementary colours. Artists working across Europe, including Paul Signac, Jan Toorop, Henri-Edmond Cross and Anna Boch, experimented with the style in different ways. They became known as the Neo-Impressionists.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Georges Seurat invented an entirely new way to see. It was scientific, complicated and yet once you understand it, simple. Pointilism was the application of colours in small dots, close together until they appear to blend, the brain conceiving new colours constructed from the old. The other artists who attempted to follow his system met with greater or lesser success but it was\u00a0Seurat\u2019s\u00a0obsessive pursuit of the perception of colour that remains with us, nearly 200 years later.<\/p>\n
Here are two documentaries that tell us all about Georges Seurat \u2013 the facts, the history, the background:\u00a0 \u00a0 four passionate National Gallery curators shine a light on this band of artists \u2013 whose political ideas were as radical as their painting \u2013 and explore how they paved the way for art as we know it today in the best art film the\u00a0National Gallery\u00a0has yet made.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s most significant collection of\u00a0Neo-Impressionist\u00a0art is displayed in the National Gallery\u2019s current exhibition,\u00a0\u2018Radical Harmony: Helene Kr\u00f6ller-M\u00fcller\u2019s Neo-Impressionists\u2019.<\/p>\n
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And the second documentary \u2013 Georges Seurat: Great Art Explained<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
But, more significant, at least to a writer obsessed with musical\u00a0theatre, is the masterpiece that is\u00a0Sunday in the Park With George, the 1985 Broadway show by Stephen Sondheim that got to the heart of what art is.<\/p>\n
There are so many moments in this show that resonate with anyone who wants to understand the incomprehensible feat of making a work of art. I think\u00a0\u201cFinishing The Hat\u201d is the best song ever written about the process and compulsion to make art and, as sung by ManyPatinkin,\u00a0 the best performed.
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\u200bDo watch the documentaries but, above all, don\u2019t miss the full-length original production of\u00a0Sunday in the Park with George, starring Mandy Pantinkin as George and Bernadette Peters\u00a0 \u00a0in her career-defining performance as Dot, from 1986. It was a revelation at first viewing on Broadway and the many times I have seen it since and, having just watched it again, it still is.<\/p>\n