Claude Monet of Impressionism, Georges Seurat of Neo-Impressionism and Vincent van Gogh of Post-Impressionism all had differing artistic styles that each give specific meaning to their paintings of the Eiffel Tower.
Claude Monet, the fore-leader of Impressionism, idealised the simple, frivolous and romantic perspective of 19th century French life, with an especial focus on leisure activity. Parisians would visit the Eiffel Tower for its romance, beauty and speciality in the city of Paris, a city where people simply lived to enjoy themselves, a way of life Monet appreciated.
The soft, vibrant, essence-capturing effects of Impressionist painting are a poetical ode to the ephemerality of the enjoyment of the moment, so indulged in by the French, representing their free, comical approach to life as a nation, embracing love and light. The rushed, short brush strokes also influence this theme of romance, ephemerality and leisure, impassioning and charging the painting, capturing emotion, and thus perfectly complementing the French energy and way of life, especially in a post stamp.
The effects of Seurat’s techniques contrast greatly with those of Claude Monet. Seurat had a desire to depict art with solid, permanent and almost geometrically shaped forms with his techniques of Pointillism and Divisionism, which focused on scientific colour theory and the optical mixing of colour in the eye. He believed Neo-Impressionism should reflect the scientific development of this his time period in France by including scientific theory, relation to the modernity of the developed, late 19th century mind. Seurat actually did complete a painting of the Eiffel Tower, a building which to him and many other French people was a great symbol of the modernity that had developed in France at this time, and the progression of technology, science and the mind.
Seurat’s technique of painstakingly precise placement of specifically coloured points, side by side, created an overall solid, yet luminous effect that can be compared to the attractiveness of the Eiffel Tower, and its convicting presence of new creation and development in the world. Initially, people struggled to accept Seurat’s malaise-inflicting Pointillist paintings, because they demonstrated how a single soul can turn the face of art in another, completely fresh direction, that showed precision, strength and vibrancy that came from such a driven and forthright man.
Seurat’s Neo-Impressionist style used as a French national postage stamp would reflect the transition through a century of malaise, challenge and industry into a more enlightened and experienced France, ready to create for the future.
Vincent van Gogh, a foremost Post-Impressionist and expressionist-inspiring man of spirit, like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, had fervent and religious appreciation of nature, believing it to be a necessary focus in life, especially in painting and poetry. Nature to van Gogh was the most pure form of spirit or god manifest on earth. He chose to show this with expressive, swirling brush strokes of vibrant colour, which results in the uplifting of nature with the artist’s expressive emotion. In doing so, the nature of reality is distorted, while it is remade as a part of the artist’s expression, romanticising it, giving it human emotion. With this emotion driven process, an artwork of swirling patterns, unrealistic colours and momentary capturing with excited brush strokes is formed, with contrasts of bright, passionate reds, oranges and yellows against calm, happy, peaceful colours such as green and blue.
Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionist, emotion driven art techniques reflect a god empowered archetype that stands for the power of humanity. By building constructions like the Eiffel Tower, that pose and impending threat to nature, the French erected the artificial side in their humanity; a compensating, phallic power within the centre of their so-called city of love. And so Vincent’s style would give an opposing point-of-view to the French Eiffel Tower, and what it means of France.
Where Monet used vibrant colour and soft, short, rushed brush strokes to capture the essence of their subject, ephemeral light effects and the total impression, Seurat used vibrant, yet structured and very specific colours, calculatedly and precisely placing them in dots of pure colour juxtaposed to yield the effects of geometry, luminosity, permanence and solidity that captures the modernity of late, 19th century France. Van Gogh used vibrant colour like Monet and Seurat, but his colours were unrealistic, and used for expressing feeling and experience. His frenzied brush strokes with swirling patterns to communicate his state of mind and feeling also give a human life quality to nature, uplifting it and transforming it, something that neither Monet nor Seurat could fathom.
These three artists all created artistic techniques, involving colour and paint application, for their own purposes, such as expressing their thoughts and/or feelings about the world. They communicated their feelings to the world through their individual techniques, whether romantic and simple, a testament to man’s scientific prowess, or the love of god in nature and the opposition to the destructive feats of humanity.