Our leadership evolves. Let’s know that there is a process.
In the early 90’s I took my grandmother into Manhattan for an afternoon of high tea and a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She’d been born and bred in New York City and yet, she’d never been to The Met. That day we would take in the exhibit of Georges Seurat’s Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”.
It is here that I had one of those “hit over the head by a 2X4” moments. Bear with me. I’ll explain soon.
In the exhibition, the study sets down the chronology of the evolution of Georges Seurat’s inspired painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The curator had laid out this exhibition room by room, piece by piece of the artist’s study.
Seurat made numerous preparatory drawings and small oil sketches for his painting, as well as at least three larger studies on canvas such as the present picture; a study for the landscape without figures; and a detail of the standing couple at right. This exhibition of his study shows these preparatory drawings, sketches, and paintings. They served as visual notes and practice pieces before creating a finished artwork. This way this artist understands the problems involved in rendering a subject and plans elements such as light, color, form, perspective, and composition.
I intensely focused on how he explored specific techniques or aspects of his work by copying a section of a painting or zeroing in on a particular element such as the monkey, the hat or the umbrella.
He rendered the monkey in pencil, pen, charcoal, gouache, oils over and over again. Walls were filled with his small experiments. Seurat’s final study consisted of contrasting pigments woven together with small, patchy brushstrokes. Whereas in the final mural-sized park scene—which debuted in a 1886 Impressionist exhibition in Paris — he used tighter, dot-like dabs of paint, a technique which came to be known as Pointillism.
I was dumbfounded. How could I have missed this up to this point in my life? My hit by a 2×4 moment was Life is a Process! Bit by bit, we create.
What does this have to do with our leadership?
One thing is for sure. We don’t achieve it by jumping from A to Z. It is refined by taking small repeated steps. Daily, we create those renderings where some of them prove to be the definitive work. How can we take this awareness of the creative process and use it to our advantage? Step-by-step in a process. It’s then we know what we keep. And what we don’t keep.
What serves as your visual notes and practice pieces before creating your finished leadership style? Bit by bit we put it together.
For me, this was an unforgettable moment – to become aware of one of life’s great mysteries. How it’s a process.
(Oh, this special day made me my grandmother’s favorite grandchild)
NOTES:
Exhibition Title: Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”. The island of La Grande Jatte, was a popular recreation spot in Seurat’s time, lies in the Seine to the northwest of Paris, near the suburbs of Asnières and Courbevoie Artist: Georges Seurat (French, Paris 1859–1891 Paris) Date: 1884 Medium: Oil on canvas Dimensions: 27 3/4 x 41 in. (70.5 x 104.1 cm)
Inspired by this painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine created a stunning musical masterpiece, Sunday in the Park with George. It merged past and present into beautiful, poignant truths about life, love and the creation of art. One of the most acclaimed musicals of our time, this moving study of the enigmatic painter, Georges Seurat, won a Pulitzer Prize and was nominated for an astounding ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
