NOTES ON STEVEN BLEICHER'S CONTEMPORARY COLOR: THEORY & USE CHAPTER 8
-Impressionist Color
Attention to the counter-intuitive, but observable, effects of different qualities of light on objects led the mid-late 19th C. French Impressionist painters to some novel technical practices that are clearly visible in their paintings:
First, unlike earlier 19th C. landscape painters who sketched outdoors and painted in their studios, because Impressionists needed to observe colors outside of the artificial setting of the studio painted, they painted en plein air, in the open air. Monet famously asserted that he had no studio at all.
Second, where academic artists tended to begin their paintings by covering the entire canvas with a medium-dark, reddish-brown undercoating or “ground,” against which they would work up to lighter tones and down to darker ones, the Impressionists tended to first paint on a light-colored ground helping them to produce works that look saturated in light.
Third, although color usage varies considerably among the Impressionists, it is generally true that they tended to avoid the dark earth colors such as umbers, siennas and lamp black that had dominated the color palettes of earlier traditional modern painting. Instead, the Impressionists rendered entire scenes in hues closer to the colors of the light spectrum: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red, mixed with generous amounts of white.
As a result, and fourth, rather than mixing “complementary colors” together, which makes brown tones, the Impressionists tended to use complementary colors next to one another. Complementary colors are opposite one another on a color wheel, such as red and green, violet, and yellow, and blue and orange. When they are placed adjacent, they have the effect of intensifying one another...Like painting on a light-colored ground, the use of complementary colors helped the Impressionists to increase the apparent brightness of their paintings.
French Impressionist painter Claude Monet used a warm palette of intense hues to create some of his paintings of haystacks that he painted in the summer sun. He believed the color of the atmosphere (especially in winter) was violet. He used a cool palette of blues and violets to convey the feeling of the same haystacks in winter.
www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming…
-Eastern Color Traditions
In his print series Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, circa 1830-1832, Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai used large flat areas of color. His and other Japanese prints were collected by 19th C. European artists, so were especially influential in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist developments.
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne’s use of open brushstrokes to create faceted areas of color is clear in his Forest painting. To create a unified surface, he employs the same constructed planar approach to everything in the painting, including the sky, trees, and grounds.
Cézanne used a color system that he called modulation – and its subtle gradations in color – which required a larger range of colors to work from. Rather than mix colors on his palette to create new colors, he liked to use his colors, as we say today, directly from the tube.
There were two methods of showing light and dark in Impressionist painting. Modeling created shading from light to dark, for example gradating a blue object from a light blue to a dark blue. Modulation instead expresses light to shadow/dark by using warm to cool colors.
According to Emile Bernard, Cézanne habitually used no less than nineteen colors: Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine, Prussian Blue, Emerald Green Viridian, Terre Verte, Vermilion, Red Ochre, Burnt Siena, Rose Madder, Carmine Lake, Burnt Lake, Brilliant Yellow, Naples Yellow, Chrome Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Raw Siena, Silver White, and Peach Black. This list was made in 1904, towards the end of Cézanne’s life, but from about 1880 onward, his palette remained substantially unchanged. — Gerstle Mack, Paul Cézanne
artist-at-large.com/2013/08/23/art-hist…
Pointillist Color
Pointillism is a painting technique in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Branching out from Impressionism, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886. The term "Pointillism" was coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists but is now used without its earlier pejorative connotation. The movement Seurat began with this technique is known as "Neo-impressionism or Post Impressionism". The Divisionists used a similar technique of patterns to form images, though with larger cube-like brushstrokes. Painting in the pointillist technique using small dots or dabs, Pissarro took Ogden Rood’s color concepts and applied them to painting. In visual color mixing, the artist doesn’t premix colors on a palette then apply them to the canvas but paints tiny dots or points of pure unmixed color directly. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism
Fauvism, Matisse, and Color
Matisse burst onto the French art in the late 19th century as leader of the Fauvist group — painters with a wild use of colors that has no basis in nature. This striking departure from the artistic conventions of his day left an indelible and colorful mark on art history. With an application of paint that is raw and unrefined, the Fauvists are celebrated as les fauves or “the wild beasts”. Matisse’s ideas on color and composition, and his art movement and philosophies continue to inspire contemporary artists today.
Born in 1869 to a family of weavers and growing up in Bohain-en-Vermandois in northern France, Henri Matisse was heavily influenced by the bright colors and patterns of local textiles. Matisse greatly admired like Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh. Both artists’ ability to build form with color and unorthodox approaches to nature would inspire Matisse throughout his artistic career.
Color and the combination of colors were at the center of all Fauvist works, shaping the structure and rhythm of each painting. Because colors were used by these artists to convey emotion rather than a specific scene, skies could be red, trees could be blue, and a face could be a combination of greens and purples. For example, the left side of the face in Matisse’s Madame Matisse (The Green Line), he used warmer hues, while the right side contains more cool colors.
The result of this clashing of colors was a subject rendered by the artist’s perception of their subject rather than a true depiction of the actual physical form….Furthermore, the composition of Matisse’s works are built up through the placement of color, rather than an underlying line drawing or perspectival system.
canvas.saatchiart.com/art/art-history-1…
Abstract Impressionism and Color Field Painting
Color field painting is a mid-twentieth century style of abstraction that emerged in New York City. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to late 1940’s, early 1950’s abstract expressionism,
While many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists, color field painters were characterized primarily by their large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane.
The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. In color field painting "color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_field
Minimalism
Self-referential: Minimalist art does not refer to anything beyond its literal presence. The materials used are not worked to suggest something else. Color, if used, is also non-referential, ex. if a dark colour is used it does not mean the artist is trying to suggest a somber mood. In his Yellow/Orange minimalist painting, Ellsworth Kelly uses color for its optical sensations. Each colored element echoes the flat illusionistic cube surface it describes. www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/m/minimal…
Color and Op Art
Op Art was a 1960s art movement that investigated optical illusions and color interactions. Some pieces were black and white, while others exploded with color. Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely is one of the predecessors of op art. His sculpture ‘Kedzi’ appears to be fully three-dimensional but is really a flat plane. The 3-D effect is purely an illusion.
New Realism and Color
Through presenting what was real rather than what was appropriated or conjured, the Nouveaux Réalistes stripped art of a dogma that insisted it had to mean something. On the heels of Dada, they took the readymade object beyond negativity, banality, or polemics to become an active participant in a work of art or performance in its simple, unadorned form. An accumulation of trash became a picture. A crushed car informed a sculpture. A block of color could dwell on a wall, unapologetically itself.
www.theartstory.org/movement/nouveau-re…
Late 20th C. Visual Color Mixing
The highly decorative surface of Chuck Close’s work keeps the viewer’s eye moving between colored dots that make up the patterned surface and the overall image. Close, who is known for imposing a set of rules on a given body of work, sometimes sets himself the task of painting with only three colors: red, yellow, and cyan in thin washes of oil. By applying layers of paint in seemingly infinite combinations to each little square, he produces an electric and dazzling array of color. The candy-store hues that make up a Close’s painting ultimately achieve a meditative work with alchemical appeal. brooklynrail.org/2015/10/artseen/chuck-…
Neo-expressionism and Color
The warm bright hues create a feeling of frenetic movement, pushing the image to the foreground. As the colors move into the background, they become less saturated, which helps to create some sense of depth. As with earlier expressionist movements, color is used for its emotional content without regard for the natural world.
1980s Neoexpressionist style in general is often marked by vivid colours and contrasts, in the tradition of fauvism; rapid, violent brushwork; distorted subject matter; and a generally spontaneous technique, sometimes incorporating 'found' objects.
www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art…
Aboriginal and Outsider Art
Aboriginal art is the oldest unbroken tradition in the world and is iconic for its use of colours to tell stories and communicate visually. As Aboriginal culture does not have a written language, drawings and paintings are crucial to passing along knowledge and history through generations.
-Materials including colours used for Aboriginal art were originally obtained from the local land. Ochre or iron clay pigments were used to produce different colours. Other colours, such as smoky greys, sage greens and saltbush mauves were later added.
-True of paintings created by aboriginal men, Darby Jampitjinpa Ross uses colorful wavy lines to represent ceremonial journeys.
mbantua.com.au/aboriginal-art-blog/colo…
Digital Art and Color
The first piece of digital art that became widely known was created in the 1960s in the scientific research company Bell Labs where EAT founder Billy Klüver was employed. It was here that computer graphics specialist Kenneth C. Knowlton, in his work Young Nude, 1966, transformed a photograph of a young nude woman into an image made up of computer pixels, bringing the historical artist's muse (the naked female body) into the 21st-century art lexicon.
www.theartstory.org/movement/digital-ar…
Vik Muniz uses bits of paper to produce his large-scale 21st C. pointillist works. He uses the same concept of visual color mixing (directly on the canvas) as Post-Impressionist Pointillist Georges Seurat used to generate his chromatic hues.
Alternative Media
In the 1960s light art became an increasingly popular feature in modern art, running in tandem with Minimalism, which celebrated clean, pure lines and a machine-like aesthetic. In the United States various artists led the way into the Light and Space movement, which had an international influence in the next few decades.
Dan Flavin was a major figure, producing quasi-religious installations and geometric arrangements with found fluorescent light tubes. James Turrell captured natural light in powerful sculptural constructions; his ‘Skyspace’ installations open large windows into the sky beyond from architectural chambers, allowing natural light to flood through in its many permutations and weather patterns.
Art historian Calvin Tompkins writes, (Turrell’s) work is not about light, or a record of light; it is light – the physical presence of light made manifest in sensory form.
Depending upon their placement in Joe Chesla, Letting Go a Breath I Didn't Know I Was Holding, 2009, light installation, the amount and quality of light and heat each bag received influenced the algae’s growth. This impacted the color and patterns created within each of the units.
Many light art installations exist in the cities around us as public works of art, taking a variety of temporary and permanent forms, including neon signage, advertising slogans and large scale installations in public buildings, museums, and city centers, revealing the hugely spirited and adventurous ways artists continue to expand its boundaries.
installationart.tv/light-art/
