Le Bon Samaritain 1896

Maximilien Luce made this painting, titled "Le Bon Samaritain" with oil paint on canvas. It’s a traditional combination, but look closely, and you'll see that the technique is anything but. The surface is made up of thousands of tiny touches of pure color. This wasn't just about making a pretty picture; it was a statement. Luce, like other Neo-Impressionist painters, applied scientific theories of optics to his work. The idea was that the human eye would blend these dots together, creating a more vibrant, luminous effect than if the colors were mixed on the palette. But there's also a social dimension here. Luce was deeply engaged with anarchist politics, and the working class. His commitment to pointillism was partly about embracing a kind of artistic labor, a deliberate, almost mechanical process that mirrored the repetitive work of laborers in the industrial age. This wasn't art for art's sake; it was art as a form of solidarity. It reminds us that the making of an artwork is always intertwined with the world around it.