Grand Canal (Venise) 1905

Paul Signac made this oil on canvas painting of the Grand Canal in Venice, with these delicious candy colours, like sugared almonds, but then bam, it's Venice. I imagine Signac standing there, a bit seasick maybe, dabbing at the canvas, one tiny square of colour at a time, slowly building up this shimmering, vibrating view. You can almost feel the heat radiating off those buildings, that's the optical mixing of colors at work. Up close, it's just a bunch of dots, but step back and suddenly, Venice appears! It makes me think about Seurat and how they were both obsessed with colour theory, like a science project gone wild. Signac took that idea and ran with it, pushing it to the edge of abstraction. And those gondolas! They're practically floating, hovering, a dark, almost angry contrast, like dark thoughts. But Signac’s practice offers a way of experiencing the world anew.