Hermeneutical Circle

Here is a demonstration of how the hermeneutical circle is applied to Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of Grande Jatte.

The application of the hermeneutical circle to Seurat's painting is particularly appropriate when we stop to consider what all Seurat did to prepare for actually painting the final canvas. On the weekends, he would go to the Grande Jatte and make sketches of the people he saw there. Then he would practice his pointillist technique by turning his sketches into series of smaller canvases which featured just a part of the scene.

I have cut out various details of the larger painting for our study. We will be going back and forth between the details and the complete painting (the parts and the whole) several times so you will have to scroll back and forth. An alternative to this is to save the larger version of the painting (found at the Webmuseum) and open it up in a graphics program such as Paintshop Pro or Adobe. Then you can toggle back and forth between the two (using Alt+Tab).

Usually a viewer of the Grande Jatte spends a lot of time with the painting before her attention is drawn to the activity in the upper left hand corner. But considering this scene as a painting on its own (which is what we need to do to be hermeneutical) helps to widen our view of the activities of those folk using the Grande Jatte for leisure purposes. It also introduces us to how the upper classes used the Grande Jatte and the surrounding waters. The rowers in the lower right hand corner are engaged in what is known as sculling, a pursuit of upper class students and the well-to-do members of sculling clubs. Also, the pursuit of yachting is represented by the sailboats, again an upper class pursuit. But most importantly, this view contains the only implied movement in the whole picture with only two other exceptions (can you find them?). That is, although they are "frozen " in mid-stroke or in mid-breeze, we know that if the scene suddenly came to life, the boats would be moving. This is not true of the middle-class figures on the island (again, with two exceptions). Now go back and look at the entire picture, but notice what an awareness of this detail does to the painting as a whole.

It is interesting to wonder why Seurat chose the people he did to appear in his final painting. These two young ladies may have caught his eye as typical representatives of the fact that ideas toward unaccompanied single women being seen in public were changing. Considered as a painting on its own, we may get a feeling of innocence and naiveté as we gaze at the two figures. Both seem lost in their own worlds, content to sit and either watch the boaters or wonder at the intricacy of the flowers. Yet each also conveys, through their posture, a sense of propriety. Clearly women of this era did not engage publicly in physical activity.

Again, return to the painting and note where these two are placed on the canvas.

As these two figures are very nearly at the center of the painting, we must consider them on their own also. The woman, perhaps the young girl's nanny, is looking off to the left. But the little girl appears to be looking straight forward, that is, at the viewer (us). Again, if we consider the pair as the subjects of their own painting, we can't help but become aware of this difference. The nanny, while looking to the side, does not appear to be noticing anything special. The little girl, however, clearly is paying attention to what is going on around her, even if what is going on around her is the attentions of the viewer.

Without a doubt, this figure is one of the most interesting ones in the painting. Although his clothing sets him apart from the rest of the figures, perhaps his body language does so even more emphatically.

It is easy to assume that this gentleman is of the working class. Regardless of whether his clothes are his work garments or his leisure clothes, he appears to be quite comfortable both physically and socially. Clearly he does not particularly care what others may think of his appearance. His relaxed attitude suggests that he appreciates this opportunity to watch the rest of the world go by as he smokes his pipe.

As you look at each detail from the whole painting, you should allow the thoughts you had while looking at the details to reflect back upon the larger canvas. But you should also revisit each of the details several times and allow any new thoughts you had about the whole to guide your viewing of the part. Gradually, your understanding of the painting will deepen as you come to see how the various parts work within the painting as a whole.

Eventually, as we continue to study the Grande Jatte, you will also come to see the various perspectives we use to look at the painting (cultural, social, institutional, critical, design, hermeneutical circle, etc.) as the parts which make up the whole, that is, your "whole" understanding of the painting. How you think about the painting will be made up of all these different parts, but how you think about each part will be influenced by how you think about the painting at any given point in time. They will also be influenced by previous knowledge you have on certain subjects or previous experiences you have had.

This brief hermeneutical circle does seem to support the idea that this painting is a statement on the class system in France of the late 1800's in general and on the middle class of this period in particular.