https://emuseum.cornell.edu/internal/media/dispatcher/80364/fullLa Bouée (The Buoy)189420 1/8 x 15 7/8 inches (51.1 x 40.3 cm)Color lithographBequest of William P. Chapman, Jr., Class of 189557.4190When Seurat first exhibited his painting Une Baignade at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in 1884, a movement whose underlying principles Paul Signac was instrumental in formulating, Signac was indelibly marked by Seurat's radical new approach. Upon meeting and exchanging views, Signac's comma-like applications of clear, brilliant colorÑnot quite Seurat's ÒpointsÓÑdeveloped into a formal systematization of complementary colors. The Buoy demonstrates the application of this method in its juxtaposition of fragmented tones of orange and blue, repeated by reflections in the water. In 1886, after having seen Pissarro's first small divisionist canvases, Signac described how he also produced paintings Òby optical mixture of uniquely pure pigments (all the colors of the prism and their tones); by the separation of various elements (local color, light, and their interactions); by the balancing of these elements and their proportions (according to the laws of contrast, gradation, and irradiation); by the selection of a brush stroke commensurate with the size of the canvas.Ó The Buoy may have been made at Portrieux or Port-en-Bessin, the picturesque Normandy harbor Signac discovered at about this time, although he also worked on similar motifs in other French ports. He was thought of as the most accurate theorist of the avant-garde and claimed to be Òalways looking for a freer hand without giving up the advantages of division and contrast.Ó
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Signac was a French neo-impressionist painter and one of the originators
of the technique known as pointillism or divisionism, a technique in which the composition is broken down into dots of diffused color, as if looking directly into the sun. As with impressionism, the viewer becomes an
active participant, visually merging the colors to create the forms of
the composition.
—SWJ
Prints1836691412Paul Signac
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