 | What better way to appreciate art than to make it come to life? Steven Sondheim and James Lapine, successfully convey their perspective of what Georges Seurat's masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon in the Park La Grande Jatte, means to them by creating the Broadway musical Sunday Afternoon in the Park with Georges. |
During the late 1800s, the painting took the art world by storm by introducing a new painting style called, Pointillism. Georges Seurat's masterpiece was the first to demonstrate this innovative scientific approach to making art. As a result, pointillism pushed the art world into a new era called neoimpressionism.
Georges Seurat's masterpiece is still well respected more than a century after it blazed onto the art scene. For instance, the memorable painting serves as the inspiration for an award winning Broadway musical performed in the United States and Europe. In addition, Sunday Afternoon in the Park was paradied on Fox television cartoons, such as the Simpsons and Family Guy, as well as many other popular modern art mediums. |
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Georges Pierre Seurat was born in Paris, France on December 2, 1859. The painter's father, Chrysostome Antoine Seurat served as a legal official in La Villett, while his mother, Ernestine Farvre, descended from a prosperous middle class Parisian family. At a young age, Seurat's uncle introduced him to the world of art and triggered him to make the art of painting his life long profession.
During Seurat's artistic beginnings, he contributed to the impressionist movement with such paintings as, Bathers at Asnières, but he found his artistis home with a group of artists called, the Independents. Seurat spent two years of his life perfecting his most popular accomplishment, La Grande Jatte before he introduced it to the world at the final Impressionist Exhibit in 1886. The remarkable painting depicts a beautiful park scene outlined by a river and trees and speckled with many uniquely defined groups of well dressed Parisians enjoying a Sunday afternoon.
The painting's fresh new Pointillism style intrigued some critics, but most critics did not understand the value of the scientific art technique that Seurat used, so they ruled on the painting very harshly. The style of pointillism uses the imagination of its viewing audience by strategically placing a variety of colored dots, each representing different hues, together onto a canvas. Then, the viewer of the artwork solidifies the dots into actual shapes and images in their mind. The spectacular painting currently hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago.
 | Although Seurat's upbringing as a high society Parisian is evident in his works, he turned away from the wishes of his family to live with Madeleine Knobloch, an uneducated woman from a working class family. Seurat never married Madeleine Knobloch, but together they bared two children, but the children never lived much past the age of 2.
As a sustaining act of love, Seurat created a portrait of his lover in his painting titled, Young Woman Powdering Herself. Sadly, Seurat left this world by dying unexpectedly on March 29, 1891 due to complications from an infectious angina. |
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Sondheim and Lapine revived their fading careers by writing and producing the acclaimed musical, Sunday Afternoon with Georges, which fictionalizes the life of the French famous painter, Georges Seurat. When analyzing Seurat's masterpiece, Sunday Afternoon in the Park, Sondheim and Lapine realized that the painting told a story about small groups of people in the painting, but the story of the artist was needed to complete the painting's tale. The musical pronounces some of the experiences of Seurat, but does not completing rely on the true events of Seurat's life.
In July 1983, the musical was first performed in an off Broadway theater called Playwright Horizons starring starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. Sondheim and Lapine only presented the first act, but craftily refined that act and added the second act before the first round the showing completed. Crossing the big pond, the musical opened in a theater in London. In 2008, the play found new life opening on Broadway in Studio 54 to exceptional reviews. |
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1. In the hit 1986 movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ferris, Cameron and Sloane visit The Art Institute of Chicago which actually houses the painting. In one scene, Cameron gazes in amazement at the painting.
2. The Fox cartoon, Family Guy, the episode, The Tan Aquatic, with Steve Zissou, depicts Stewie going to a museum to see the painting as a fulfillment of one of his last wishes before he dies.
3. In 2004, 20th Century Fox's creates a poster for The Simpsons titled A Day at the River which simulates this famous painting.
4. In the world of video gaming, the game Maniac Mansion, displays a shredded image of Seurat's painting hanging above the dilapidated dining room table.
5. A Sesame Street book, printed in 1989, features a parody of the painting called Sunday in the Park with Big Bird.
6. In their 1999 album called Blue, Third Eye Blind references Seurat's famous painting within the line "Be a dream in color even on a winter's night/Thinking George Seurat afternoon bathed in light" of the song, Camouflage.
7. During the Simpson cartoon episode, titled Mom and Pop Art, the character, Barney, recreates an exact replica of Seurat's painting. |
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