Talk:Pointillism

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2019 and 5 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Fanders1.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Sunday in the Park with George

Worth mentioning Stephen Sondheim and Sunday in the Park with George in the music bit? MikeyB! 21:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The music isn't pointillist at all is it? Hyacinth 07:50, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

True, but he claims (I believe) it is a different interpretation of Pointillism as a musical form MikeyB! 23:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Pointillism

British Pointillist artist / Pogus Caesar - http://www.oomgallery.net / OOM Gallery ? Do we need this link? Is it more than vanity? Feel free to re-insert--RPD 01:58, 15 September

The last edit is exactly what I consider vandalic: altering texts that try to get a bit closer to recent state of knowledge, without preceeding discussion on the talk-page. Therefore, I revert - and at the same time I try to fix the corrupt phrase which I had added earlier. --RPD 06:29, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• It is not necessary to discuss in a talk page the revision of entries which are incorrect. The entry was incorrect, and included what I consider to be nonsense introduced deliberately, some weeks ago: the term "pointillism" does not refer either to criticism or to the ridicule of a school of painting, which is what it said. The entry as I have revised it is correct, and I suggest that you do not revert. Thanks. - Corporal Tunnel 06:35, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

-pointillims- You have reverted the corrected entry which I made this afternoon to the prior incorrect entry in this category. The prior edits were complete gibberish when I fixed them today, and you have now reintroduced incorrect information and irrelevant asides - it is not pertinent that paint comes in tubes, for example; that has nothing to do with pointillism. Please restore the proper entry. Additionally, you have accused me of vandalism simply for correcting an entry which you seem to feel you own. You do not own it; that's not how things work here. I'll appreciate if you retract that statement. Thanks. - Corporal Tunnel 06:39, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Please supply valid reference for your point of vue. Mine is based on reference works since Rewald's Post-Impressionism and art historical research published since then. As far as I see, the present version of this article does not supply any sources, and your revert does not either. --RPD 06:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Pointillism is a name for a school of painting. It is not a spoof, a parody, or a joke. It may have been once in the 1880's, but that time is long past. Pointillism is a school practiced by a few artists, whose non-ridiculous works hang without parody in great museums the world over. Seurat, Signac, and Cross are three of the best-known practitioners; I was also going to add Pissarro, whose work I am rather fond of, but there is a limit to how many examples are needed. I am not supplying a POV, just fact.
Pointillism is also closely related to Divisonism, a fact you should not have taken out. As for references, Google finds 347,000, of which 31 also use the word "ridiculize." I believe you mean "ridicule." As far as that goes, there are several hits - well under 1,000 - that use that word. Some of those mention that Pointillism was at first ridiculed, along with nearly every other expression of modern art, and was then accepted as a meaningful school. Most are off topic. Any mention of ridicule is pure POV and does not belong in an introduction to the subject. It should probably trail along somewhere by the end as an interesting bit of distant history, if it is included at all.
A few references:
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79333
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/pointillism.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/seurat/
http://www.artfact.com/features/viewStyle.cfm?genreRef=WXMDZM23Q2 http://library.thinkquest.org/J0110603/pointillism.html
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0012480.html
As to why you would remove a cogent and well-written simple explanation of how pointillism is like a modern press or monitor, or remove a relevant reference to a related school of optical painting, I find no explanation. Please restore my edit, which is correct and rather nicely written. Thanks. - Corporal Tunnel 07:17, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

• At first, I have to apologise: I'am no native speaker, so you are probably right that it should be "ridiculed". Then, please have a look here on Neo-Impressionism, which I recently had prepared for rework and enlargement, but then I had no time to continue. There you will see the historical context which I was hoping to describe.
• My alterations on Pointillism are meant strictly historical: Seurat as well as Signac would have prefered other terms, their friend and art critic Fénéon proposed a third (Neo-Impressionism - while most of the other critics amused themselves with this innovative manner to see and to paint. This is initially the background of the term. Later, both terms were mixed up or used alteratively, when the point of depart, the "scientific" analysis of visual experience, was more or less substituted by the technical aspect of using dots.
• Keeping all this in mind I think the article needs to be extended, including the topics mentioned as well as others, probably.
• Furthermore, I suggest to continue this discussion in the public space. --RPD 12:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree about pursuing the conversation here on the Talk page, and thanks for moving everything over here. I also agree that the historical basis of the term, much of which I did not know before, deserves mention, and the information above is interesting and valid, so expansion of the article is a great idea.
However, to put something in a historical context, first we have to tell people what it is. Pointillism is not simply historical. It's a functional term at use in art and art history, and that is what should be brought to readers right up top.
I really don't see the point in removing my edit - which was not reversion, but was my non-trivial writing and organizing work - to make a point about word origins, which are less pertinent in an encyclopedia than definitions. For the time being, I am returning the piece to its spot in the introduction. I think it will be interesting and valuable to include the historical context you have provided. But surely that's not the way to introduce pointillism to a reader.
Also, you might find the word "disparage" to be closer to what you're looking for than "ridicule" - but neither of these can reasonably be in the first sentence on the subject. - Corporal Tunnel 14:24, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Pen and ink

I've - for now - moved the recent (badly formatted) addition to the article: Pointillism can also be used in pen and ink pictures to create shading through spacing of dots. Is this technique called pointilism? Stumps 05:18, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• I shouldn't think so. Pointillism isn't just about the dots; it's about the dots and the colors. - Corporal Tunnel 14:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The technique you are referring to in pen and ink is called stippling. Please do not confuse this with pointillism, they are not the same thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.97.180.106 (talk) 12:11, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Did you know that it took 2 years for Seurat to paint A Sunday in the Park? Did you know that A Sunday in the Park has about 3,456,000 dots? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.128.142.105 (talk) 05:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

No - I haven't tried counting them. But I have noted that not all the dots are primary colors. Pointillists relied on the blurring of dots when seen at a distance, but they used more than the three primaries (just look at the Seurat portrait used in the article). The definition in the article needs modifying, at least with regard to the painting technique. Rikstar 21:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Problematic use of "neuroplasticity" as being involved in perceptual integration

This February 2010 edit added the paragraph:

Neuroplasticity is a key element of observing a pointillistic image. While two individuals will observe the same photons reflecting off a photorealistic image and hitting their retinas, someone whose mind has been primed with the theory of pointillism will see a very different image as the image is interpreted in the visual cortex.

There are several problems with this passage; the easiest to explain is that its implication that the integration of raw visual data into a unified and conceptually meaningful image occurs in the visual cortext is simply incorrect. But the more serious difficulty is its statement that this integration process is somehow related to neuroplasticity.

Now I'm very well aware that the word is the subject of some debate as to its definition: I was surprised to discover just now that the venerable Oxford English Dictionary doesn't yet include the term. But none of the candidate definitions really supports the unusual usage in the passage above, either. I don't have online access to page 337 of Jeffrey Schwartz's book, that's cited as a ref, but I'd be flabbergasted to learn that the good professor had actually described the internal processing by which we perceive an integrated image rather than just a mere random assortment of colored dots as an example of "neuroplasticity". Whatever the other variants in proposed definitions, that term is almost universally reserved for (considerably) longer-term processes by far. It's just extremely unusual in the field to apply the word to a single perceptual interpretation/construal event, as is being done in the above passage: One might as well say that anything that generates a P300 causes or is caused by neuroplasticity.

As most editors will be aware, nearly all persons with an interest in perception will use the noun "gestalt" in any discussion in this context, usually sooner rather than later, even if they don't happen to accept the theory of perceptual construal that's posited by so-called "gestalt psychology". For reference, here's the OED's definition of that nearly indispensable term:

gestalt (noun): A shape, configuration, or structure which as an object of perception forms a specific whole or unity incapable of expression simply in terms of its parts ( e.g. a melody in distinction from the notes that make it up ); cross-reference configuration, meaning 6. Frequently attributional, as Gestalt psychology (noun): a school of psychology which holds that perceptions, reactions, etc., are gestalts; also elliptically.

Our own Gestalt psychology article's lead instances this "attributional" usage in introducing the so-called gestalt effect in its second sentence:

The gestalt effect is the form-generating capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.

There's more on the fascinating cognitive process whereby we integrate the "raw" sensory input (like the signals that arrive at the visual cortex) to generate a unified cognitive image or representation, and the many other theories that try to account for it, in a section of our article on Visual perception, btw. Anyway, because the usage of "neuroplasticity" in the passage is so strongly at odds with the typical meanings for the term, and also because the implication present in "as the image is interpreted in the visual cortex" that the integration/construal process occurs there is just incorrect, I've removed the passage. If there's a direct quotation from the book that we can helpfully use, though, I'd be glad to include it. Comments or objections, anyone?  – OhioStandard (talk) 03:22, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Dithering

The article mentions that:

Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some color printers and large presses that place dots of Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow, and Key (black). Televisions and computer monitors use a similar technique to represent image colors using Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colors.

The technique used by CMYK printing is dithering, among others. The CMYK article even says so. Should there not be mention on this page of dithering, especially seeing as how it's popularly used for sprite and pixel art with a constricted palette? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.131.9.254 (talk) 18:32, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

File:Henri-Edmond Cross - The Evening Air - Google Art Project.jpg to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Henri-Edmond Cross - The Evening Air - Google Art Project.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on June 22, 2017. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2017-06-22. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:59, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Picture of the day

The Evening Air, a c. 1893 oil painting on canvas by Henri-Edmond Cross (1856–1910). It uses a technique known as pointillism, in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in 1886, this technique became part of the Neo-Impressionist movement.Painting: Henri-Edmond Cross