Summary
Born in Paris, Paul Sérusier studied at the Académie Julian, an alternative to the elite and conservative École des Beaux-Arts. During his training, he visited the artist colony established in Pont-Aven, where he met a group of Symbolists. Working closely with his friends, Paul Gauguin, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard, Sérusier employed bold colors and flattened forms to illustrate his thoughts on the canvas. Seeking liberation from the strictures of classical painting and the recent Impressionist movement, Sérusier was a pioneer of Post-Impressionism, eventually founding the group Les Nabis, named after the Hebrew word for "prophet."
As the leader of the Nabis, Sérusier sought to paint what he felt as well as what he saw. He also sought unity between decoration and fine art, as did the Arts and Crafts movement in England. Many of Sérusier's paintings were meant to fit in seamlessly with their surroundings, to be as aesthetically pleasing as they were intellectually stimulating. Advancing toward abstraction, Sérusier helped to usher in a new era in artistic innovation, pushing painting away from representation to focus on sensation and evocation. Beginning in 1908, his influence was broadened as an instructor at the École Ranson, founded by fellow Nabi Paul Ranson, where students were encouraged to embrace the expressive and evocative potentials of abstraction. The École Ranson was a popular training ground for modernist painters until World War II.
Key Ideas
Most Important Art
Le Talisman, the Aven River at the Bois d'Amour (1888)
It is also the painting that marks the creation of the Nabis: this painting was supposed to be their "talisman" (or the guide and good luck charm) for future work. With this small sketch-like painting, completed on the back of a cigar box, he aimed to free his fellow artists from the artistic shackles of representation and thus allow them to pour their thoughts and emotions onto the canvas. It was enthusiastically adopted by the group as an inspirational guide to future abstraction and an emblem celebrating the prioritization of sensation over visual fidelity. Maurice Denis explained the effects of The Talisman best when he said "thus was introduced to us for the first time, in a paradoxical and unforgettable form, the fertile concept of a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order. Thus we learned that every work of art was a transposition, a passionate equivalent of a sensation received."
Portrait of Paul Ranson in Nabi Costume (1890)
The portrait is also notable for its use of Cloisonnism, the representational style favored by Sérusier and Gauguin. As is often seen in works of this style, there is very little depth in the painting; Ranson is in the extreme foreground and his form is firmly planted in the second dimension, not the third. His body is outlined in black, another distinct characteristic of Cloisonnism.
Farmhouse at le Pouldu (1890)
Additionally, this work also stands out in Sérusier's oeuvre because of its unconventional representation of a genre scene. While at first it seems like a traditional depiction of country life, when one looks closer Sérusier's true objective becomes clear: decoration. This scene centers on the decorative organization of its objects. Each element has been placed in a way most appealing to the eye; the blues of the woman's dress blends into the blue of the shadows, and the green of her apron relates to the green of the trees behind her. Farmhouse at le Pouldu is craftily organized and masterfully executed.
Apple Harvest (1891)
Three different parts of female life are represented here: on the left a woman nurtures her child, in the center the women harvest crops, and on the right the women bring back food for the town and their families. These women are, to Sérusier, unchanging in their daily tasks, unwavering in their devotion for centuries. The work is as much about what the women symbolize(the physical manifestation of religious devotion) as it is about their representation.
Apple Harvest is the apex of Sérusier's explorations into Synthetism. This painting has been entirely constructed in the Synthetist style, devoid of other artistic stylistic influences. Nothing is complex. The flowers, the women, the lake, all forms are simple. Additionally, all forms are flattened. There is no attempt to instill the illusion of depth of three-dimensionality into the painting. There is no dilution of color. The blue of the lake pops against the yellow of the background. A dress is simply a broad stroke of orange or green.
Apple Harvest is an intellectual foray into demonstrating a new artistic style, but it is also aesthetically driven; an example of one of Sérusier's many achievements in uniting decoration with fine art. As in his previous depictions of Breton women, the scene is exquisitely organized. The colors are aesthetically pleasing and the arrangement of women, going from left to right, leads the eye on an intriguing journey much in the way that genre scenes on wallpaper do. The Nabis were as much interested in uniting decoration and painting as they were to focusing on translating emotion into color.
Paul Sérusier Artist Overview Page
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