A new exhibition at the National Gallery in London reveals the extraordinary artistic vision of Georges Seurat and his neo-impressionist followers, though it struggles to balance the movement's political aspirations with its visual achievements. "Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists," running from September 13 to February 8, presents works primarily from the Dutch Kröller-Müller Museum collection, offering visitors a chance to see how Seurat's revolutionary pointillist technique influenced an entire generation of artists.

Seurat, who lived only to age 31, possessed what could be described as "kaleidoscope eyes," seeing the world in limitless colors that he translated onto canvas through galaxies of tiny dots. His 1888 painting "Port-en-Bessin, a Sunday" exemplifies his ability to find endless wonder in mundane subjects - transforming an empty harbor into a shimmering vision where myriad blues and whites create hazy skies and mirroring water, while a simple railing explodes into purple, brown, and orange as if afflicted with a vivid spotted disease. This pointillist method, though the artists themselves disliked the nickname, became the foundation for an entire art movement.

The National Gallery attempts to present these neo-impressionists not merely as dot-painting artists, but as revolutionaries who dreamed of social transformation. However, the exhibition's approach often falls short of proving this thesis. A drawing by Paul Signac, Seurat's first disciple, shows what the caption describes as "ordinary people enjoying rest, social harmony and the bounties of nature" - a man reaching for fruit while a woman offers a cherry or grape to a child. Yet this scene, clearly depicting nothing more radical than a picnic, fails to demonstrate the artistic presence of Signac's alleged radical politics, despite his design for a mural called "In the Time of Harmony."

Signac, who outlived Seurat by many decades, had relocated to Saint-Tropez by 1904, living the life of a comfortable anarchist. It was there that Henri Matisse stayed with him and, under Signac's influence, created what many consider the last pointillist masterpiece: "Luxe, Calme et Volupté," a manifesto for pure pleasure that unfortunately is not included in this exhibition. The show's attempt to argue that neo-impressionists challenged traditional portraiture also falls flat, as most portraits on display remain highly conventional beneath their thin pointillist veneer.

The exhibition's limitations stem partly from its reliance on a single collection. Helene Kröller-Müller, the early 20th-century art collector who founded the Dutch museum, was a serious and perhaps melancholic northern European whose true passion was Van Gogh - her museum houses more than 90 of his paintings. Her northern European perspective, combined with a late Romantic sensibility moved by spirituality and introspection, filters the pointillists through a lens that emphasizes inner contemplation over the joy and pleasure that actually characterized 19th-century French culture.

Despite these curatorial shortcomings, Seurat himself transcends his imitators with breathtaking artistic vision. The jewel of the Kröller-Müller's neo-impressionist collection, his 1889-90 painting "Le Chahut," stands as both realist and utterly fantastical. The work depicts a row of dancers performing a wild yet disciplined can-can, their legs high in the sky in regimented formation, while an orchestra plays below and a caricatured man with a face resembling a pork chop leers up the women's skirts. The dancers themselves are caricatured - self-delighted women alternating with men in the line, creating a scene meant to both dazzle and amuse viewers.

Seurat's mastery of color in "Le Chahut" confounds expectations. The back of a bass player pulses with shimmering purples, the dancers' red stockings display a similar pointillist shimmer, and the cabaret theater's wall vibrates with gold and blue dots. What distinguishes Seurat from his followers is his totally encompassing vision - every element in his art, from skin to fabric to voyeuristic expressions, is completely defined by tiny points of light, bathing everything in a dreamlike, lurid greasepaint glow that is, quite literally, dotty.

In "Le Chahut," Seurat identifies something both comical and seriously modern. The dancers move like well-oiled machines, seeming unconscious as they perform ritualistic, ingrained movements. The musicians operate similarly on automatic pilot, lost in the chopping intensity of their music. This mechanical quality anticipates later artists like Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, who would equate sexuality and machinery at the dawn of the 20th century. Seurat was ahead of them all, exposing the manufactured nature of reality we think we perceive and giving this insight social dimension by painting people as mechanical dolls.

The exhibition ultimately reveals Seurat's vision of Paris as a great machine - beautiful but heartless. In this interpretation, his art does indeed prove radical, challenging viewers to see beyond surface pleasures to the mechanized nature of modern urban life. While the show may not fully succeed in demonstrating the revolutionary politics of all neo-impressionists, it undeniably showcases how Seurat's unique artistic vision transformed the way we understand both color and modern society.