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Georges-Pierre Seurat, Un dimanche
après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, 1884-1886
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I have young nephews visiting. It seemed on this blistering
hot day that a day at Ontario Beach Park would be a good way to burn off some
of their energy. They went swimming and I sat in the shade sketching.
As they strolled slowly along the boardwalk between the
bathhouse and the jetty, my neighbors reminded me powerfully of Seurat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande
Jatte (A Sunday Afternoon on the
Island of La Grande Jatte).
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| The boardwalk at Ontario Beach Park. |
Seurat saw women with parasols; I saw a woman wearing a
leopard-print micro-bikini, her hair dyed an impossible neon pink. Seurat
depicted a pet monkey on a leash; we saw beach volleyball. Seurat’s Parisians
were uniformly white; my fellow Rochesterians come from all corners of the
globe.
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Georges-Pierre Seurat, Une baignade à
Asnières, 1884-1887. Today we swim in mixed company in far skimpier outfits, and then some of us amble over to Abbott's for ice cream in the same outfits, or lack thereof.
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But the most striking difference is that Americans display
considerably more tattoos and less clothing than holiday-makers on the Île de
la Jatte 130 years ago. It’s not just a question of too much flesh on display
as too much flesh overall. There's nothing erotic about it; in fact, it is almost the antithesis of eroticism.
