The Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland is presenting a groundbreaking exhibition that places the humble dot at the center of modern art history. The show, titled "A Small Art History of the Point," draws exclusively from the museum's prestigious collection to explore how the dot has served as a fundamental element in painting from the Impressionist era to contemporary times.

In art, the dot doesn't mark the end but rather the beginning. Just as children create faces with "dot, dot, comma, dash," master artists like Paul Klee have employed similar principles in their sophisticated works. Klee's 1937 painting "Sign in Yellow" demonstrates this concept, where two dots form the starting point for an elaborate dance of symbols and forms.

The exhibition traces an uninterrupted artistic lineage spanning over a century, connecting works that use dots as stylistic devices, symbols, and even unavoidable chance occurrences. This journey begins with Claude Monet's 1894 Cathedral of Rouen, painted with countless points of light, and extends through Roy Lichtenstein's comic-inspired "Girl with Tear" from 1977 with its characteristic dot screens, to Wolfgang Tillmans' 2010 star-studded firmament filled with glowing celestial points.

The curatorial approach reveals how dots function in various artistic contexts. In Kazimir Malevich's 1915 "Suprematist Composition," the dot appears as a small black circular disc alongside squares and rectangles, representing geometric significance. By contrast, in Sam Francis's large-scale abstraction "Round the World" (1958/59), dots manifest only as red and blue paint splatters, creating a rhythmic and dynamic composition through drops, splashes, and gestural marks.

This focused perspective transforms how viewers perceive familiar masterpieces. Joan Miró's 1930 "Peinture," composed of lines, organic color fields, hatchings, and dots, demonstrates how the human eye inevitably searches for recognizable figures. Black dots become eyes in faces, other small points transform into bird eyes, and pairs of dots suggest the contours of a female form, serving as launching points for the viewer's imagination.

The exhibition opens with works where dots, lines, spots, and color serve as central pictorial elements. Paradoxically, the first piece contains no visible dots at all. Georges Seurat's "Reclining Man," a study for his famous 1884 painting "Bathers at Asnières" in London's National Gallery, is executed in black chalk on paper. The work creates a shimmering network of hatchings that condenses the figure in atmospheric haze, yet extended viewing causes light points to dance before the observer's eyes.

Seurat, as a leading representative of Pointillism, exemplified the technique where images compose themselves from small color dabs that merge into coherent compositions only in the viewer's eye. Paul Klee's 1931 painting "Rising Star" consists entirely of clearly distinguishable oil paint dots, while Maurice de Vlaminck's forest scene "Sous-bois" (Undergrowth) from 1905 appears as if in flames, composed of countless luminous color spots.

The exhibition ventures beyond purely painterly interpretations under the theme "Pain Points - Hole and Spike," exploring symbolic and psychological territories. Louise Bourgeois's 1992 sculpture "Deferral," featuring thread spools and needles, evokes the painful pivotal moment in Sleeping Beauty's fairy tale. In Francis Bacon's 1969 "Reclining Figure," the pain point manifests as a syringe stuck in the subject's upper arm. Henri Rousseau's monumental 1898/1905 painting "The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope" identifies pain points as the sharp fangs piercing the victim's neck.

Under the "Focal Points" theme, the Fondation Beyeler displays some of its most impressive portraits. Paul Cézanne's patient "Madame Cézanne in the Yellow Chair" (1888-1890) features a gaze that passes through the viewer's own and extends into infinity. Similarly, Rudolf Stingel's self-portrait shows the artist lying on a pillow, staring at the ceiling in a massive black-and-white photograph where the white of his eye gleams as a luminous point of light.

The exhibition successfully demonstrates that from Piet Mondrian's rectangular geometric compositions to Wassily Kandinsky's first abstract improvisations, the dot remains a constant thread connecting diverse artistic movements. Whether as geometric fundamental concept, chance occurrence, stain, dab, or splash, the dot proves to be the indivisible atom and nucleus of creative visual power. This playful yet inspiring survey of masterpieces from the museum's collection reinforces the thesis that the dot represents the smallest unit of painting, spanning from Pointillism through abstraction to Pop Art. The exhibition runs until January 4, 2026, offering visitors a unique opportunity to reconsider familiar works through this focused lens.