Awesome essay. Censorship, is, in it's own way, a form of publicity (Streisand Effect). The naming and renaming (censorship) of this piece, emphasizes its theme, and would be less without this background. Thanks for bringing it up!

He captured more than Anarchism. He captured the essence of hope for a better world. And that is something worth fighting for.

I’ve come to realize most of my youthful presumption of the meaninglessness of visual art was really just institutions refusing to reveal the actual intentions and meanings behind the works. Attempts to remove politics from art and life do nothing but strip the world of clarity and leave us incapable of comprehending how systems function and how art has its own unique role. Thank you for this video. I finally appreciate the intent of pointillism.

Over the last year, I keep seeing more and more anarchist exposure from my favorite channels. I’m loving it!

never before has anyone defined pointillism this way to me. what a more profound understanding i now have about this rather shortlived artistic method. makes wayyyyyyyyy more sense to me now. merci bien!

Wow! I had never come across this ideological analysis of the painting, nor did I know that Signac was an anarchist. I had only ever seen pointillism from a scientific /aesthetic angle. Thank you!

Your channel, and especially videos of this subject, motivates me to pursue a career in art history. As a young anarchist, it’s really nice to see that political lens being put on art history. After watching the vast majority of your videos in the last couple of weeks, I’d like to thank you for each and every one of them because it’s not often one is able to see such love and care put into videos.

Amazing work! This is by far one of my favorite paintings and I never thought I´d see a video essay on it. I've always thought the subtitle "The Golden Age Has Not Passed, It Is Yet to Come" is alluded to in the center figure of the child striving towards the fruit being offered by the mother, as if to imply that this is an achievable reality that we must continue to push for.

I guess Signac was trying to make a point!

today i found out i’m an anarchist

Thank you so much for helping me understand pointillism. I never knew that the “point” of it was anarchy and I never knew anarchy was anything other than punk ‘80s revolution. I’m better for having watched this.

Thank you for this. This is the first time I have had the principals and historical/geopolitcal context of ANARCHISM laid out and explained to me, and for three years I attended a graduate program at The New School for Social Research, surrounded by self-proclaimed Anarchists. Never in all my many casual discussions with them was Anarchism broken down like this. An added bonus was this was done in the context of explaining one my favorite art movements.

Thanks for introducing me to anarchy and the painting. Great video as usual!

I've always had a soft spot for Impressionism and it's ilk, and I recently had the chance to see some Signac paintings up close and was absolutely enamored with to the point he's now one of my favorite artists.

Just shared this painting and story to my painting students at the university. Thanks a lot for the great quality content!

Amazing. This channel is simply incredible. Thank you.

I found your channel recently and I am really appreciating getting to learn about the political side of art.

Absolutely mind blowing. Amazing work!

Amazing video I never know the link between pointillism and anarchy but it makes so much sense. Thanks for the education ❤️

Great video.Thanks to The Canvas❣️ Greetings from Italy

Wow. excellent. Thank you so much for this great upload and the consistently powerful insight

Love this so much! Your videos are so interesting

Thankyou for this very informative and evocative video. I will definitely check out your other videos.

This channel man, keep up the good work

Very bright short documentary indeed. Congratulations. My reading of André Rezler´s "The Aesthetics of Anarchism" brought me here.

makes me wonder what he would think of today's wealthy people buying his art as assets...

One of my faves now. Proud Anarchist. Knowing that utopia is possible. Honestly the only state of the world we should move toward. It would be defitist not to. Knowing that beauty can exist makes the world worth living in.

Incredible video

fantastic video!

6:50 Inversely, if someone can create double the product in the same timeframe, then we could have: Double the wheat to feed people with Double the clean water availability for drinking and cleaning Double the lumber for building and life-sustaining fires in the winter etc. etc. One unfortunate flaw of many simple utopian concepts, like what's described in a functioning Anarchistic society, is that they assume less work = better for all. No, less work = better for the individual. While we should take advantage of technological and social advancements to lower the workload of every citizen when it makes sense, we also do need to push people to keep working hard in the face of an easy out, for the sake of their common man who needs food, water, medicine, customer service, etc. Doubly so for the elderly, disabled, and ill. What we have now is too far in one direction, but we always need to be vigilant of the dangers in going too far in the other direction. To do otherwise is to be ignorant and cause harm. I had no idea that Paul Signac was an Anarchist, it makes so much sense looking back at his most famous pieces. Something about his peaceful groups of people lazily enjoying themselves in utter peace always felt strange but pleasant. You know that just-out-of-frame a dog is peeing on someone's beach towel or a homeless person is making a ruckus or a group of teenagers are getting rowdy. But before you look over and ruin the moment, it's still nice to take in the serenity, and if more people aimed towards that sort of serenity as being their goal for both themselves and their common man, the world may be a better place.

Thank you this is beautiful

This for me, was eye opening. TBH anarchy has always made me uncomfortable because I did not understand it from an informed point that this video provided. Do you ever invite people for dinner? My only criticism of your videos is that you don't let the viewer know where (if) the work can be seen. It would be helpful to have this information in the notes. Thanks

The Canvas: REALLY INTERESTING!

Thank you so much

I love your channel

merci beaucoup

Great video

Hmm...now I get the 'point'. Thank you!

Amazing video. Love me some pointillism

gutes video mal wieder

I have a lot of things to say about this video... about Signac, about pointillisme, about history and history of arts, about propaganda... and I could add 2 personal anecdotes linked to at least 2 of the topics I mentioned... but it would be a very long post... or 6 long posts... and I unfortunately don't have the time to do it right now... So I put this video in the videos I must see later (even if I already watched it 2 times 😀) in order to find it easily when I have enough time to structure this mess of many different topics all connected together which are bringing up very important questions on all those different topics, still as important today as they were at the time 😀... I think I will start with history and The Commune where much more than 20 000 "Communards" were executed by the "Versaillais"... I will explain why the real number is closer to 30 000 victims executed than to the 20 000 in the video.. 30 000 executions in one week... without counting the tenths of thousands who were deported in French colonies... Contrary to you, Shawn, I am not an anarchist 😀... and when an anarchist says 20 000, the non-anarchist that I am should normally not answer 30 000 victims of the repression 😀... but I love truth 😀... so I say 30 000 😀... as at least one person imprisoned on your YT page says : "Be seeing you !" 😀...

😢Amazing vid

that shit go hard

How can we have it renamed to "the time of anarchy"

🙏❤️

How many Federal employees does it take to change a lightbulb?

As some other posted the message in the painting is ever present and important. Very much so now with the current political map and status. Totalitarian regimes come in all colours and disguises and "common" people gets stripped of their rights and means to fight poverty even in the "western world". Russian fascism, tories in UK, Xi Jinping in China, US with incompetent or dangerous presidents the list is very long.😟

👏👏👏👌

when the workers found time to learn, they didn't learn to appreciate art, instead, they shopped for junk online.

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Let us all be harmonists alredy

Came back because Google would not help me remember something! 8:20 no matter what I typed nothing came up.

Anarchy shares the ideals of socialism, but without the structure. It's a fantasy in which everyone is kind and fair to one another without need of authority nor democracy. The idea is that, for example, there would be no groups of violent, marauding, raping men trying to control weaker individuals because there would be so many trees from which one could pluck fruits... Anarchism is a well-meaning but completely immature political fantasy that mostly appeals to young idealists who usually grow out of it after some lucid thought experimentation.

🤔

Great video 👍 people are lazy and selfish 😜

I don't know.. if your political stance is needed to give your painting any power, if without it, it just looks bland and boring, the painting was probably not that successful

I don't believe in anarchy, since it would, like all other forms government, result in a select few abusing and manipulating others to accumulate immense power and wealth over others. In the same way as capitalism and communism promises "power to the people" or "power to the individual", that is never really the case. In reality, I think socialism is probably a good compromise to apply in the real world, since it forces everyone to contribute to the greater good in some ways at the least (high taxes and high welfare). It also generally applies the "allemansrätten" or "all man's right", making private property free to explore to anyone, including foraging. And because of welfare, practically no one is left to live on the streets and education and healthcare is completely free. There are faults in the system, of course. But it has worked well in many countries including my own.

This is why we need communısm. Only that leading to the worldwide abolıshment of capıtalism will render the state unneccessary. Only when people no longer need institutions like government to be taken from the bourgeoısie and turned against the rıch, will society be able to function without politics.

3:33 sounds like utopian communism to me

The painting does a great (though unintentional) job of showing the ignorance/naivete of anarchy. The painting shows an almost inhuman level of harmony on display as if every person in the image is void of true human nature. It's a dream world of sorts.

Anarchists obviously don't fight for harmony, they fight to do whatever they want and everyone else in the world should accept that. It's not about 'institutions of power' that cause disharmony, it's anyone - including anarchists that think they have a right to do things which others absolutely do not appreciate.

Great video but that is a remarkably one sided view of French history... It is of course far more complex and so I just hope people don't form any opinions based on this without doing thorough research. Little bit irresponsible to be honest.

Anarchy and communism are two apposing ideologies. One seeks no central government while the other establishes total centralized government.

Like most things, anarchism is a solid ideology on paper. However, most things written on paper forget one major element… the human factor. A world without leaders or some sort of enforcers those who enjoy suffering and violence thrive. Any and all harmony that is gained from a lack of social hierarchy is lost as the strong naturally prey on the weak. Not everyone follows the idea of a common good and without leaders or said enforces these wild elements destroy the idea of anarchism.

Did Signac ever thought who will buy his paintings and books if Capitalism was abolished? Philosophy works until your stomach is full.

From what I understand about anarchy, it leads to communisms and we know from our past and present (N Korea) that communism leads to unimaginable human suffering and millions of deaths sooo.... maybe the French authorities were right to do what they did

Hierarchy is innate to human nature. It's naivety to the point of madness to think that destroying all hierarchies in society, would bring it to perfect harmony, instead of chaos and barbarism.

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