Paul Signac in the Barberini Museum: Like bathing in the shimmering light of Saint-Tropez

In numerous paintings he depicts Saint-Tropez, the harbor, the striking church tower, the fountain for fetching water, and of course the sailing boats; Signac was an enthusiastic sailor himself. On the upper floor of the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, the large hall is dedicated to Signac’s Mediterranean pictures, and you almost can’t stand looking at them all and bathing in this shimmering light.

Of course, they are peculiar paintings; not mere views, but coolly constructed creations made from individual points of color that illuminate each other. Signac didn’t paint colored objects, he painted the light itself.

The Barberini cultivates classic modernism

It has been almost thirty years since an exhibition on Paul Signac and Neo-Impressionism was last shown in Germany. That was in Münster in 1997, hardly anyone will remember. That always has to do with the environment. And that is much cheaper in Potsdam with the Museum Barberini, because an understanding of classical modernism that emanated from France has been built up here over the years, like nowhere else in this country.

The house impressively underlines this rank with its new exhibition, “Symphony of Colors. Paul Signac and Neo-Impressionism”. The name Paul Signac is not nearly as well-known as that of Monet or Renoir. But at the Barberini, the Signac exhibition is not isolated, but is part of an ongoing narrative, that of artistic liberation in France since the middle of the 19th century and then, starting from France, in neighboring countries. Paul Signac, along with Georges Seurat, who died in 1891, was the founder of Neo-Impressionism and became its most influential representative.

Actually it’s a kind of anti-impressionism. Because instead of the immediate eye impression, a sensual correspondence between what is depicted and what is seen by the viewer, as with the plein air painters of Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism aims at a scientifically proven color effect in the viewer’s eye. The older Seurat relied on meticulously placed color dots of unmixed colors, which only come together to form a complete picture when the viewer perceives them.

Signac and with him a soon-to-be Europe-wide group of like-minded people switched to dots or short lines, so that the principle of juxtaposed colors became clear – and at the same time any illusion of photographic representation became impossible. The paintings of the Neo-Impressionists are pure paintings that use the objective subject but reveal the artificiality of art.

Therefore, the title of the Potsdam exhibition, “Symphony of Colors,” is not just catchy, but apt. Paul Signac himself subtitled his creations from music and numbered them as “Opus”, like a composer. Signac is the central star in Potsdam around which the competitors orbit. Almost a hundred works are on view, a third by Signac. Most of it could be borrowed from secret private property, as is usual with this house with its excellent connections.

You can’t escape the musicality of the colors

The Neo-Impressionists made their first public appearance in 1886, significantly at the eighth and final group exhibition of the Impressionists, who had already achieved fame and recognition at the time. On this occasion, the critic Félix Fénéon explained the new painting principle, in which the colors on the canvas “reassemble themselves in the retina”.

The exhibition is structured according to motifs. The portrait is less suitable for the approach of the Neo-Impressionists, but interiors of the bourgeois era do exist, including, ironically, Signac’s “Sunday”. A strong interest in ornamental elements is evident, influenced by the Japanese fashion that had gripped Paris for years. Nerina Santorius, the curator of the exhibition, recognized the ornaments and arabesques inscribed in many of the paintings and goes into more detail about them in the, as always, excellent catalog.

Another, harsher moment is brought in by more politically active followers of Neo-Impressionism: images of the industrial world from Charleroi with its iron smelting and blazing fires, especially by Maximilien Luce, a follower of anarchism. The Flemish colleagues, on the other hand, especially Théo van Rysselberghe, practice landscape painting with canals and windmills and show that the light of the north can also be gently illuminating, as if all the colors of nature were set an octave higher, so to speak.

The exhibition closes with a room dedicated to the German successors of Neo-Impressionism. Henry van de Velde in Weimar was an important mediator, Christian Rohlfs painted like this at a young age before switching to earthy expressionism.

Paul Signac himself remained loyal to Neo-Impressionism, even after the First World War. However, one cannot escape the musicality of the colors, their harmonies and conscious contrasts, even today. In the end, you somehow leave the museum feeling lighter than when you went in.