He was the one who came up with the now iconic Bauhaus symbols, the red square, blue circle and yellow triangle, along with the claim that these color-shape connections are universal truths. No matter how esoteric he could get in his quest there was always a system that needed to be followed. He used to talk about color that causes vibrations in the soul of the observer or color that is directly analogous to music or shapes. Color was of great importance in the career of Wassily Kandinsky from his early Expressionist days to Abstraction. Regardless of the new-found freedom, artists often tried to create a color system, no matter how self-referential or arcane it might have seemed. Henri Matisse, Red Room (Harmony in Red), 1908 Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930 From that moment on we have seen an explosion of different approaches to color in art. Color gained, at least for a little while (and definitely not for the last time), precedence over line and form. A well-defined structure of a drawing was still at the base of their paintings, but the main preoccupation was to capture the unstable visual nature of light in an immobile medium such as painting. The Impressionists’ goal was to capture the ever-changing and unstable shimmer of physical reality. It was also light, thanks to Newton and many others after him. At that point oil paint was already a usual and widespread medium and there was also an idea that color was not just a material.
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Quite unjustly we will dash past brightly painted Greek temples, Roman frescoes, Byzantine mosaics, medieval illuminated manuscripts, stained glass windows and Renaissance painterly revolution and jump straight into XIX century Impressionism. Vincent Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, 1890 Color in an Art World Georges Seurat, The Seine and la Grande Jatte – Springtime 1888 The color was there to mimic, represent, symbolize, express and signal. Whatever the approach, an artist’s choice was influenced by the culture and the availability of pigments. From getting as close as possible to what the artist saw (and tried to reproduce) to being faithful to some usually sacred symbolic code. But what was the right color? Depending on the period of time, the culture and location, that notion changed considerably. Getting the color right was very much part of the artist’s skill. Since pigments were usually made of what could be found (minerals and plants), the hard-to-find colors were precious and highly desirable.įor thousands of years color was associated with material, i.e., a pigment, and an artist was usually also a paint maker. Color was the most suitable means to differentiate from (but also mimic) a wild and unruly nature, to distinguish tribes, clans and families, or to present oneself as god’s favorite. Being different and unique was particularly desirable.
It didn’t take long for the human race to develop a taste for decorating and a pure enjoyment of the visual. Why did the artists use those particular colors? Most of the time the answer could be: “Those were available.” The earliest ritualistic cave drawings were made with whatever was around, a burnt stick, piece of clay, chalky rocks, or mud. Lascaux Caves, Paleolithic Cave PaintingsĪboriginal Ochre Source Artist Color Choices But color is always there - whether accidental or intentional - and it is an indelible part of the work of art, from the color traces left on cave walls by our prehistoric ancestors up to this very day. On the other hand, shape, light and dark contrast, and movement are much more important aspects of human vision than color, line almost always precedes color in art history.
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From accidental to intentional, from very strict and coded, to free and random. How color is used and how artists approach color can tell us a lot about the culture and the period.
Art usually reflects and anticipates changes in a society or culture, and color plays not a small part. The use of color in art through history encompasses and reflects all of the aspects of color that were previously discussed in this blog. Of course it wasn’t always like that (it’s still hard to imagine, isn’t it?). My generation grew up in a world where every color was accessible in pretty much any form. The possibilities were endless and just waiting to be released. That feeling of awe when I received a set of 24 color markers as a kid has never gone away.
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