Le Chahut (Can-can)

Le Chahut is a Neo-Impressionist painting by Georges Seurat, dated 1889-90. It was first exhibited at the 1890 Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris, where it eclipsed other works. Chahut became the prime target of art critics, and was widely discussed among Symbolist critics. Chahut (literally meaning noise or uproar) is an alternative name for the can-can, a provocative, sexually charged dance that first appeared in the ballrooms of and places such as the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre. Seurat focuses on an upward movement of lines throughout the painting giving the illusion of a high-spirited ambience of both dance and music. The caricatural figures are treated stiffly and imposingly, with humor and gaiety. The anti-naturalist tone of Chahut, with its primacy of expression over appearance and its eloquent use of lines and color, reflects the influence of both Charles Blanc and Humbert de Superville. Humbert's theory inspired Blanc's idea that lines (just as colors) induce feelings. The direction of a line changes the expression, and are therefore signs of emotion. Horizontal lines are synonymous with calmness, by association with equilibrium, duration and wisdom, while expansive lines embody gaiety, by virtue of their association with expansion, inconstancy and voluptuousness. Chahut's voluptuous expression and upward linear schematic embodies the Humbert-Blanc qualities and features of gaiety. Chahut was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, 20 March–27 April 1890, eclipsing his other large entry: Young Woman Powdering Herself, to which critics at the time paid little attention. Chahut, the larger and more progressively modern of the two, was widely discussed among Symbolist critics. Two themes stood out: the Montmartre subject matter, and its incarnation of Henry's theories of linear expression. The painting was not liberally praised, as critics perceived its linear composition as overly schematic. Yet due to Chahut's anti-naturalist elements, its hieratic formalism and ritualistic components, Seurat were seen as an innovator.