I recently found myself surrounded by college-age kids discussing pointillism. Pointillism is the technique of applying many small strokes or dots of color to a surface so that when viewed at distance, the dots come appear to come together in a larger, cohesive image.
The technique was invented by the Impressionist painter Georges Seurat and is used with vivid success in the painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte which is currently displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago.
A number of the kids had not seen the painting or anything like it so I said “Well, do you remember that painting that Cameron was entranced by in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?” because that was the painting in question.
I was met, quite depressingly, by the response “Ferris who???”