Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A postimpressionist school of painting exemplified by Georges Seurat and his followers in late 19th-century France, characterized by the application of paint in small dots and brush strokes.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A method of painting in which luminosity is produced by laying on the colors in points or dots which are blended by the eye, invented by French impressionists; a form of impressionism. See the extract.
Wiktionary
- n. In art, the use of small areas of color to construct an image.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a school of painters who used a technique of painting with tiny dots of pure colors that would blend in the viewer's eye; developed by Georges Seurat and his followers late in 19th century France
- n. a genre of painting characterized by the application of paint in dots and small strokes; developed by Georges Seurat and his followers in late 19th century France
Etymologies
- French pointillisme, from pointiller, to paint small dots, stipple, from Old French *pointille, engraved with small dots, from point, point, from Latin pūnctum, from neuter past participle of pungere, to prick; see peuk- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“The technique -- "pointillism" -- allows Jackson fans worldwide to sign up online to have a dot added in their name.”
“The portrait is described as a one-of-a-kind work of art being created by Los Angeles celebrity artist David Ilan, who is using a technique called pointillism, that is, making a picture from hand-drawn dots.”
“His JoinTheDot ™ Presidential Portrait is being created through the unique method of art know as pointillism, where millions of hand-drawn tiny dots join together to form one larger image.”
“This unique method of art known as pointillism uses millions of tiny hand-drawn dots to create one larger image.”
“Louise says,? which traditionally would be called pointillism, we call them? pointlessism?.?”
“Georges Seurat and Paul Signac took the style of tiny brushstrokes, neatened it up into a more rigorous "pointillism" and used the result to make clean, classical-seeming paintings whose direct influence lasted right up to Paul Klee.”
“To have said "pointillism" would have made it too easy, I thought.”
“Inspired by the 'pointillism' work Seurat, Douthwaite an devoted McLaren F1 fan considers the piece a real labour of love.”
“His pointillism, his reduction of "eminent Victorians" to a series of images that fixed them firmly in the popular imagination, rescued biography from its 19th-century imprisonment inside its subjects' own words.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pointillism’.
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Tricky Words from French
Loanwords from French -- both established and wet behind the ears -- that are tricky to spell or pronounce properly.
trompe l'oeil, hors d'oeuvre, oeuvre, objet d'art, objet trouvé, contretemps, milieu, métier, mise en scène, mise en place, éclat, faineant and 64 more...
ruzuzu For its use as a term in music, see punctualism and klangfarbenmelodie. Sep 14, 2010
ruzuzu Cf. divisionism. Sep 14, 2010