The politics of aesthetic harmony: neo-impressionism, science, and anarchism

Neo-Impressionist scholarship of the past has focused either upon the role played by scientific color theory in the creation of the characteristic divided surfaces of Neo-Impressionist paintings, or upon the way in which the anarchist sympathies of the artists were expressed through their choice of subjects. This paper brings the stylistic and the political concerns of the Neo-Impressionists together by re-interpreting their scientific aesthetic as an analogue to the ideal social configuration imagined by the anarchists. Artists and anarchists alike were intent on creating, and justifying as "natural," conditions of aesthetic and social harmony using the laws and vocabulary of late nineteenth-century French chemistry. It was this shared scientific ground as manifested in paint and politics that provided much of the basis for their well-known mutual respect.

COPYRIGHT 1991 College Art Association
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group