While Seurat admired the entertainers in his earlier café concert drawings, we can tell from the definition in his later entertainment-related works that they are diffused with negative commentary. For example, in the words of Robert L. Herbert, The Can-Can “plunges us into the raucous world of a Montemarte dance renowned for its sexual provocation.” (Herbert, Seurat in Perspective 340) This dance is considered so provocative because when the women dancers on stage kick up their heels, their undergarments are exposed to the mesmerized audience below. Their choreography is not the only provocative aspect of the show: while performing, we notice a flirtatious smirk cross the face of the foremost dancer, lips curled upwards, seemingly blowing a kiss to a prospective male client waiting below. The male audience member looking upwards at the bottom right of the painting smiles in a perverted way and appears to be simultaneously enjoying the sensual show before him while anticipating a possible rendezvous with one of the female dancers after it is done. The contours in this picture are so defined that we can tell how heavily made up the woman dancing is: her face is unnaturally pale while her lips have been obviously reddened and it is clear that she took care before the show to paint herself so as to attract the eye of a man. All this perverse interaction and allusions to prostitution is available to the viewer through the use of definition. The tiny dots of paint used in this painting, compared to the more obscure figures in Seurat’s conte crayon drawings, show a much more vivid scene and give the viewer an immediate impression of the carnal activities going on in the dancing halls.
The whole banal scene recalls the image of prostitutes lined up on stage being auctioned off to their clients below which gives the viewer the impression that Seurat thought of dance halls such as the Moulin Rouge or the Chat Noir as brothels and believed that the dancers were nothing more than prostitutes in disguise. According to Robert L. Herbert, Seurat was right, dancers were nothing more than prostitutes in disguise. They chose not to directly stand up on the stage and auction their bodies off not because it was inappropriate or unladylike (judging by their dancing, they did not have any qualms about appearing unladylike), but because they were liable to be arrested. So, instead, as Seurat shows in his picture, they blew kisses at their audience while dancing, winked at them, and basically solicited clients in a more subtle manner so that the policemen roaming the nightclubs would have no evidence that any illegal doings had been occurring. (Herbert, Seurat in Perspective 344) Seurat was aware when painting The Can-Can that the women who were entertaining were not merely performing for the sake of showcasing their talents as dancers but had the ulterior motive of showcasing their sexual goods to potential buyers, and judging by his painting about the dance halls, he was disgusted by it.
What would happen if we viewed The Can-Can in the same blurred and undefined way that we see the earlier conte crayon works? Imagine squinting while viewing it, so much so that you can no longer see the come-hither pucker on the dancer’s face, the makeup covering her, or the look of captivation from the audience who sit transfixed and aroused by her? With all these characteristics taken away from the painting, we can only glean an overall impression of the scene because the definition, that once led us to believe that the subject matter was about much more than an audience simply appreciating an impeccably synchronized dance is now gone. Now, all we see when we view the painting is a colorful and seemingly innocent performance. The point is that Seurat could have made his portrayal of the singers he drew in his café-concert series more defined by using another medium, but he instead chose to do these works in conte crayon because, by giving them a lack of definition he prevented them from seeming brash or vulgar, like in his later work.
Above: Seurat, Georges. The Can-Can. Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, DE.