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"Portrait, Partially Undraped Rodent"

(highly magnified)

Georges Sureart

Sureart's technique, which came to be known as Pointlessism, involved the use of itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy little dots of paint applied with the aid of an electron microscope. Like so many of the great French Depressionists, he found few imitators. What other painter had the patience to work for 17 years on an individual painting such as the one displayed, especially when the completed work measures less than one square centimetre?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Sureart's last composition. He went completely blind near its completion and most critics believe the final dots were added by his poodle, Mitzi. The identity of the rodent is not known. From his journals we know that Sureart had difficulty finding models who could hold the same pose for over a decade, which is why he preferred cadavers.In his later years, blind and dejected, Sureart turned to musical composition as a creative outlet, producing the "Inaudible" quintet for muffled harpsichord, and the opera "The Rest is Silence," a retelling of the Hamlet tale, which was performed only once, in 1951, by the City of Paris Deaf-Mute Conservatory.

 

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(detail)

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