Cloisonnism

Paul Gauguin, The Yellow Christ (Le Christ jaune)
1889, oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Cloisonnism is a style of post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin on occasion of the Salon des Indépendants, in March 1888.^[1] Artists Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin, Paul Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, and others started painting in this style in the late 19th century. The name evokes the technique of cloisonné, where wires (cloisons or "compartments") are soldered to the body of the piece, filled with powdered glass, and then fired. Many of the same painters also described their works as Synthetism a closely related movement.

In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential cloisonnist work, Gauguin reduced the image to areas of single colors separated by heavy black outlines. In such works he paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of color — two of the most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting.

The cloisonnist separation of colors reflects an appreciation for discontinuity that is characteristic of Modernism.^[2]

Gallery

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  Emile Bernard Self-portrait with portrait of Gauguin, dedicated to Vincent van Gogh. Bernard, 1888

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  Emile Bernard, Breton Women in the Meadow,  August 1888. Bernard exchanged this one with Gauguin who brought it to Arles in autumn 1888 when he joined Van Gogh, who was fond of this style. Van Gogh painted a copy in watercolor to inform his brother Theo about it.

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  Vincent van Gogh, Breton Women and Children, November 1888 (watercolor after Bernard).

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  Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon, 1888.

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  Louis Anquetin, Reading Woman, 1890

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  Paul Sérusier, The Talisman/Le Talisman, 1888, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Resources

Notes

1. ^ Dujardin, Édouard: Aux XX et aux Indépendants: le Cloisonismé (sic!), Revue indépendante, Paris, March 1888, pp. 487-492
2. ^ William R. Everdell, The First Moderns, Profiles in the Origin of Twentieth-Century Thought University of Chicago Press, 1997 retrieved March 27, 2010

See also

• Émile Bernard chronology
• The Volpini Exhibition, 1889

External links

• Cloisonnism at ArtFacts