Georges Rouault and Material Imagining

Described as a difficult and dark painter, Georges Rouault’s oeuvre is deeply experimental. Images of the circus emerge from a plethora of chaotic marks, while numerous landscapes appear as if ossified in thick paint. Georges Rouault and Material Imagining approaches Rouault in relation to contemporary theories about making and material, examining how Rouault’s oeuvre constructs a ‘material consciousness’ that departs from other modern painters.

Rouault’s work explodes the genre of painting, drawing upon the residue of Gustave Moreau’s symbolism, the extremities of Fauvism, and the radical theatrical experiments of Alfred Jarry. The repetitions and re-workings at the heart of Rouault’s process defy conventional chronological treatment, and place the emphasis upon the coming-into-being of the work of art. Ultimately, the process of making is revealed as both a search for understanding and a response to the problematic world of the twentieth century. Georges Rouault and Material Imagining offers an innovative critical approach to the questions raised by this difficult modernist.