What thousands of tiny dots might tell us about the everyday.

Today, I spent two hours viewing Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.” In addition to the arresting colors, the enormity of the painting, and its place within the canon, I think Seurat might be telling us something useful about work, leisure, time and the human relations governed by all three. I am not an art historian, but I understand Impressionism to depict a certain unfinished quality. If so, I find this a useful frame. After all, how much of our life is not in draft form? And, yet, we seem more prone than ever to the weight of finality, where very little ambiguity or complexity can be found. We hold strong to our views, but show weakness in our patience.

Seurat might have been suggesting an alternative with his work. Through the unique style of pointilism-the blending of small points of contrasting colors-and in the depiction of a tranquil setting, the work assumes a timeless and universal quality. For me, it evokes the familiar environs of levees along the Mississippi.

But as timeless as it might be, Seurat is also commenting on a specific history. He began the painting in 1884 when the island was a pastoral retreat from rapidly growing Paris. An earlier piece, “Bathers at Asnières” portrayed a decidedly less colorful respite for workers on the left bank of the Siene. Indeed, by the time his masterpiece was finished, daily life had been completely transformed by full scale industrialization. Consider, the bleak novel, “Germinal,” depicting a mine strike in France, was published the prior year and I think it is fair to trace a fairly direct line from Zola’s coal fields to Seurat’s Asnieres and La Grand Jatte.

What seems quite clear, however, is both the bourgeoise and workers portrayed desperately want to relax. Leisure, not labor, is the dominant representation. Rather poignantly, however, few seem able to shed their regimented lives. We cannot see inside the boats, but the people on the banks only gaze forward, not at each other. And while there is an obvious beauty and serenity to the piece, there is no apparent joy or effusiveness. People are physically together, but wildly disengaged.

This sort of late 19th century melancholy seems almost expected with momentous technological change and disruption of traditional social relations. Curiously, we seem to be recycling many of the same impulses in a post-COVID, IPhone-driven era. Suerat’s articulation via methodically dotted brushstrokes could not be more at odds with our click-bait culture, but we too create our own small dots; dots of love and beauty, envy and alienation. Maybe the tension between work and rest, between positive change and disruption can be lessened by a Sunday on La Grande Jatte? Or, maybe the demands of the moment make such a suggestion nothing more than wistful nostalgia? I don’t know. But as we navigate the everyday, we might do well to acknowledge the Impressionism of our own lives.