 |
|
Georges-Pierre Seurat, Un dimanche après-midi à l’ÃŽle de la Grande Jatte, 1884-1886
|
I have young nephews visiting. It seemed on this blistering hot day that a day at Ontario Beach Park would be a good way to burn off some of their energy. They went swimming and I sat in the shade sketching.
As they strolled slowly along the boardwalk between the bathhouse and the jetty, my neighbors reminded me powerfully of Seurat’s Un dimanche après-midi à l’ÃŽle de la Grande Jatte (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte).
 |
| The boardwalk at Ontario Beach Park. |
Seurat saw women with parasols; I saw a woman wearing a leopard-print micro-bikini, her hair dyed an impossible neon pink. Seurat depicted a pet monkey on a leash; we saw beach volleyball. Seurat’s Parisians were uniformly white; my fellow Rochesterians come from all corners of the globe.
 |
|
Georges-Pierre Seurat, Une baignade à Asnières, 1884-1887. Today we swim in mixed company in far skimpier outfits, and then some of us amble over to Abbott’s for ice cream in the same outfits, or lack thereof.
|
But the most striking difference is that Americans display considerably more tattoos and less clothing than holiday-makers on the ÃŽle de la Jatte 130 years ago. It’s not just a question of too much flesh on display as too much flesh overall. There’s nothing erotic about it; in fact, it is almost the antithesis of eroticism.