In the manner of Georges Seurat
French, 1859–1891
Circus Sideshow, Livestreamed, 2026
Oil on canvas
200 × 300 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.10.4
We stand at the back of a crowd at night, looking past a row of heads at a stage where a band plays on a giant screen, and the screen's light falls on the backs of every neck in coloured dots. Seurat painted *Circus Sideshow* by gaslight to find out what artificial light does to colour. The screen is doing exactly what he said it would: building the picture out of dots.
The brief
A night crowd seen from behind watching a stage lit by a huge LED screen, their heads a row of dark silhouettes, the screen's light in tiny dots on the backs of their necks. Neo-Impressionist pointillist oil painting, the entire surface built from thousands of small separate dots of pure colour that mix in the eye, complementary pairs of orange and blue and violet and yellow, stiff frieze-like figures in profile, still formal composition, dappled light, a painted dotted border at the edge, matte chalky surface. Flat frontal reproduction of the painting, the canvas fills the frame edge to edge, even lighting, no frame, no wall, no text.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
