Post-Impressionism
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a term used to designate the development in art that succeeded impressionism, a movement in the domain particularly of painting and sculpture, that sought the representation of the subjective conception of nature rather than nature itself. In these new theories the depicting of light plays an important part, and an effort is made to find expression for the things that lie behind the surface, the human feeling and conception, the qualities of depth, and weight, and permanence, and the abstractions as opposed to the superficial appearance of things. The attempts to embody these ideas in color and stone have resulted in representations having little resemblance to objects as they appear to the eye. Both Cubism and Futurism are developments of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. In Cubism geometrical forms play a large part. Picasso, the Spanish sculptor and painter, was the first to give the movement an international vogue, and in the establishment he had the co-operation of both French and Spanish artists, who organized the first collective exhibition in Paris in 1911. Futurism had its birth almost simultaneously with Cubism, the originator being the Italian Marinetti. Its central idea is the representation of the interior energy and possibility of objects in nature and the results are usually bizarre. The movements have spread to all the countries of Europe and America, but though they have found conspicuous adherents, and embody certain truths, the more successful Post- Impressionists have remained faithful to the traditions of the old masters, blending as far as they can what is new and true to the older principles of the arts.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote in 1921 while the term was barely a decade old "Roger Fry had coined it for his 1910 London exhibition 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists'" and treated it as a still-unfolding movement that swept in Cubism and Futurism. Art history has since narrowed it sharply: Post-Impressionism now names the generation of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat working roughly between 1886 and 1905, and Cubism is understood as a break with that generation rather than a development of Impressionism. The 1921 prediction that the "more successful Post-Impressionists have remained faithful to the traditions of the old masters" reads oddly now, since Cézanne is routinely credited as the pivot into modernism and Picasso, described here as a Spanish sculptor and painter who gave the movement its "vogue," became the most famous artist of the century. The paintings the account found to have "little resemblance to objects as they appear to the eye" are now among the most expensive objects on earth: Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr Gachet sold for $82.5 million in 1990.
Written for this edition, 2026.