Dan Bruinooge
Mrs. W
Drawing
3 October 2007

At the Concert Européen

Georges-Pierre Seurat, a French impressionist artist that lived from 1859-1891, drew At the Concert Européen from 1886-1888 on paper using Conté crayon and gouache. In this drawing, the point of view is one of a person in the audience of a European concert with the main focus, the foreground, being the singer in the white dress in the corner of the stage. The middle-ground of the drawing is the darker heads of the people in the audience in front of the viewer. The background is the stage.
All of the lines in the picture that outline and define the different shapes and figures are implied by the contrast in value. The brightness and body language of the singer in the foreground makes her stand out more than anything else in the picture. Even though the audience has a great amount of contrast, their stillness makes them not stand out as much as the singer. The background has very little texture or detail, containing few lines and light shading. The plainness of the background makes the singer and audience stand out even more.
I believe Seurat created this drawing to capture a beautiful memory he once had at a concert for two reasons. The first is that the texture throughout the drawing is general and fuzzy which gives me the idea that he did not create the drawing precisely as the concert was taken place; but was instead only worked on afterward as a general and fuzzy memory. The second reason is because of the posture of the people in the audience. Their posture and the way that all their heads are in the same direction gives you a feeling that they are being well entertained and sucked into the incredible beauty of the concert, whereas if they were more slouched with their heads in different directions, it would make the moment seem less sublime.
I think that this is a great drawing. I think this because of how interesting the texture is and how clearly his message came across to me. As I look at the drawing, I can’t help but wonder how exactly he went about making such a unique and aesthetic texture. I like how clear the emotion is to me. I think that that is a key part of making any work of art, that if you can’t relate to a work of art, regardless of how original or interesting it may be, you cannot possibly enjoy it nearly as much as if you can relate to it.

Work Cited

"The Collection." Moma.Org. 3 Oct. 2007 . .