Divisionist

Divisionism, traditionally speaking, refers to the style developed by Neo-Impressionist painters in an effort to compose images through the use of small units of pigment (dots, dashes, etc.), with an emphasis on the optical effect that complementary colors placed near each other on the canvas would have on the eye. As a general technique of composing an image of semi-regularized “units,” divisionism has had a rich, varied afterlife, from Giacomo Balla’s carets of vivid color and Roy Lichtenstein’s replication of the newspaper printing technique of benday dots, to Chuck Close’s gridded portraits and the near-sculptural application of Suh Jeong Min.