Постимпрессионизм: Француздық өнер қозғалысы (1886-1905)

Predominantly French art movement, 1886–1905

Post Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and colour. Its broad emphasis on abstract qualities or symbolic content means Post Impressionism encompasses Les Nabis, Neo Impressionism, Symbolism, Cloisonnism, the Pont Aven School, and Synthetism, along with some later Impressionists' work. The movement's principal artists were Paul Cézanne (known as the father of Post Impressionism), Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat. The term Post Impressionism was first used by art critic Roger Fry in 1906. Critic Frank Rutter in a review of the Salon d'Automne published in Art News, 15 October 1910, described Othon Friesz as a "post impressionist leader"; there was also an advert for the show The Post Impressionists of France. Three weeks later, Roger Fry used the term again when he organised the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post Impressionists, defining it as the development of French art since Édouard Manet. Post Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, sometimes using impasto (thick application of paint) and painting from life, but were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort form for expressive effect, and use unnatural or modified colour.

The Post Impressionists were dissatisfied with what they felt was the triviality of subject matter and the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings, though they did not agree on the way forward. Georges Seurat and his followers concerned themselves with pointillism, the systematic use of tiny dots of colour. Paul Cézanne set out to restore a sense of order and structure to painting, to "make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums". He achieved this by reducing objects to their basic shapes while retaining the saturated colours of Impressionism. The Impressionist Camille Pissarro experimented with Neo Impressionist ideas between the mid 1880s and the early 1890s. Discontented with what he referred to as romantic Impressionism, he investigated pointillism, which he called scientific Impressionism, before returning to a purer Impressionism in the last decade of his life. Vincent van Gogh often used vibrant colour and conspicuous brushstrokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. Although they often exhibited together, Post Impressionist artists were not in agreement concerning a cohesive movement. Yet, the abstract concerns of harmony and structural arrangement, in the work of all these artists, took precedence over naturalism. Artists such as Seurat adopted a meticulously scientific approach to colour and composition.

Rewald wrote that "the term 'Post Impressionism' is not a very precise one, though a very convenient one"; convenient, when the term is by definition limited to French visual arts derived from Impressionism since 1886. Rewald's approach to historical data was narrative rather than analytic, and beyond this point he believed it would be sufficient to "let the sources speak for themselves." In 1913, the Art Association of Montreal's Spring show included the work of Randolph Hewton, A. Y. Jackson and John Lyman: it was reviewed with sharp criticism by the Montreal Daily Witness and the Montreal Daily Star. Post Impressionism was extended to include a painting by Lyman, who had studied with Matisse. Lyman wrote in defence of the term and defined it. He referred to the British show which he described as a great exhibition of modern art.

A wide and diverse variety of artists are called by this name in Canada. Among them are James Wilson Morrice, John Lyman, David Milne, and Tom Thomson, members of the Group of Seven, and Emily Carr. In 2001, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa organized the travelling exhibition The Birth of the Modern: Post Impressionism in Canada, 1900 1920.