Editor's Note, 9/4

George Seurat’s "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette," 1884, is one of the most well-known examples of pointillism, a painting technique born in the 1880s involving the application of dots of pure color to create an overall image. Devotees of the principles of color theory—a guide to color mixing that places emphasis on the purity or ideality of colors, as well as the juxtaposition of complementary colors, as defined by the color wheel—pointillists dot their canvases with blue and orange straight from the tube to create a radiant lake; with purple and yellow to create a sunflower and its shadow, or with red and green to create the leaves of a tree.

Our eyes perceive color through the activation of light-sensitive cone cells in the retina, which relay information to the brain regarding the colors we see. We have over six million cones, yet this wealth of cones can be divided into merely three types: those that absorb red, green, and blue, respectively. To say an apple is red is to say that it reflects red light, while absorbing other colors. The red light it reflects stimulates our red cones, and we see an apple as being red. But if we challenge the apple to a staring contest, we stimulate our red cones for an extended period of time, fatiguing them. This complex physiology manifests itself beautifully in “Hello, Red Fox,” a children’s book by Eric Carle that I joyously preoccupied myself with for months after receiving it.

Upon fatiguing our red cones by staring at a red apple, we can observe a fascinating phenomenon by turning to look at a white wall. On the white wall, we will see the same apple from before, except this time it will be green. All colors in the “after" image are complementary, or opposite to, the all respective colors in the original image. These after images have long been explored in the mind-boggling designs of optical illusionists, who have created illusions ranging from inverted rainbows to an image of Jesus.

However, in pointillism, the extremely close juxtaposition of dots of complementary colors causes our eyes to move from one color to its next-door neighbor in continuous minuscule vibrations. This constant vibrational motion makes it nearly impossible for the eye to become fatigued toward a particular color, as it constantly switches between a color and its complement to the order of a fraction of a millisecond or so. This game that we play when we look at "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette" eliminates our ability to focus on one particular color at a time, effectively preventing the development of familiarity and monotony even as we continue to look at the piece.

From a psychological standpoint, pointillism’s destruction of the concept of familiarity is radical.

In the development of language abilities, infants show preference for the words that are most familiar to them—a preference that starts in the womb with the mother’s voice and her daily conversation. In the development of archetypes within cultures, familiarity further plays a role in determining whether we tend to associate “avocado” or “peach” with the archetypal group “fruit.” Unconsciously, we tend to migrate towards that which is familiar. Yet pointillism hinders the development of familiarity, forcing us to continuously remake old associations and create new ones among all the dots on the canvas. Looking at a pointillist piece, we become violators of our own natural tendencies.

Just as much as it lends its voice to the field of psychology, pointillism predicts common sociological and behavioral norms. By causing continuous micro-movements of our eyes from one point to another, pointillism makes it quite impossible for one dot, or one color to stand out from the ocean that is the rest. The focus is not on the individuality of the tiny dots of color, but rather on the image or objects that the dots comprise. Just as normative social influence leads to conformity, so do the dots of color—although each vary in brush stroke, shape and personality—blend into a larger picture.

Ultimately, art is a radical enterprise, but, at the same time, art plays to our natural tendencies. By looking at "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette," we see two juxtaposing ideas: that art defines itself beyond the bounds of science and that art embraces the sensory experience on a biological level. The radicalism and introspection that pointillism and art in general present to its viewers is as powerful as it is humbling.