Post Impressionism and the Birth of Abstraction (OOL)
Osher Online - Winter | Available (Membership Required)
This course explores Post-Impressionism’s bold departure from naturalistic light and color, focusing on the expressive use of form, symbolism, and vivid, often unnatural color. Through the work of Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Matisse, we will trace the movement’s challenge to artistic norms and social values—laying the foundation for modern art and redefining the artist’s role in society.
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Lauren Weingarden
Lauren Weingarden is professor emerita of art history at Florida State University. Weingarden’s publications explore the interrelations between literature and visual arts in 19th century cultural contexts. She is the author of several scholarly books and articles on the American architect Louis Sullivan and on French art and literature, particularly Charles Baudelaire and Édouard Manet. Her interdisciplinary work includes developing an embodied aesthetic model through which art viewers re-experience artists’ immersive encounters with modernity’s fragmentation and nature’s transience—a perspective that deeply informs her teachings on Impressionism.