Colors: Art and Science, Article Review Example

Colors are a constant sensation to human eye. They are mere pigments that when worked with on a canvas, transform into something beautiful and amazingly appealing to us, and a painter does all the work in uniting these mere pigments for us.

Bridget Riley uses a complete chapter “Colour for the Painter”, in the book Colour: Art and Science, to explain what the different painters in different times went through in making out the basis of the painting traditions today. The colors and their blending together is an art in itself. Each color on its own cannot do the magic, while working together they bring the piece of art alive.

The major turn about in painting and colors came in Venice. Titian, worked on this matter. But his own initial work was full of mistakes or you can say in an artist’s language there was a conflict between projected space and color. Titian used his colors as one. His colors shaped his painting on their own. In ?Assunta, he used a deep warm rose color. Going over the different parts of the painting, it turned brown in the clouds, red in the cherubs and other shades around. Titian started the innovation of making a painting completely out of paint, without any use of sketches beneath to get clear or sharp lines. Monet also contributed to the development in his own way. His series of two paintings, La Petite Creuse and Petite Creuse, Sunlight, he used his technique of envelope. Painted at the same place, with just a slight difference in date and time, the two paintings suggest the use of different pigments, for specifying difference in time. Titan in his Danae used one color that ran all through and gave differences in different parts of the painting. This color started with the color of the hair, went around the body, gave the shades and at the end was used in contouring the figure. The greys and blues used behind the servant, reappeared under Danae (fig: 1, pg: 36). All the golds, pnks, and whites in the sky were combined to color Danae’s body.

Caravaggio on the other hand stressed upon the importance of tone over color. He used a uniform darkness referred to as being virtually black. The painting was painted in a way to show that light was falling on the figures, making prominent some of the figures and sending the rest in darkness. Here color is used to give a hint of the dresses the figures wore. Caravaggio was the most influential. His methods spread far and wide among the schools of painting.

Titian and Caravaggio, as being important, were both celebrated by the painters. Veronese and Rubens both found a connection between the two painters’ methodologies and strategies. In Feast in the House of Levi, greys played a supporting role. Veronese used the turquoise for the sky and pink for the buildings, mixing it all with grey, he then re-appeared the grey in the table cloth. He used Vermillion against green and oranges, which then echo in the passage way.

Rubens copied most of the paintings by Titian. Comparing the two paintings The Andrians, by Titian and Rubens, we can clearly see that Ruben used more of red yellow and blues. He showed more of the relation between the three primary colors. In the Judgement of Paris, the three goddesses comprise the brightest part of the painting, here Rubens found the magic. The human skin color is a mixture of the three primary colors that he used in his painting, thus making both Veronese and Rubens successful in their experimentation of Titian and Caravaggio.

When mixed together, the colors express a world. Velazquez’s use of color can be seen in his Las Menians. The use of black and white together brings out shades of colors, which are mixed with colors in the velvets, silks scarves and flowers. Greys are used to give a contrast. For Vermeer, yellow and blue were the basic colors. In The Milkmaid, he uses Yellow and Blue in their purest forms. Poussin was another of the contributors who used his colors as the musical notes. In his Dance around the Golden Calf, Poussin used the three primary colors in their purest forms that are later added with white repeat in all the figures dancing around the calf. Poussin brings the art of painting to a climax here. That is the reason he has been called a painter’s painter.

Poussin’s techniques were adopted by Cezanne. He even followed Monet. In Great Pine and Red Earth, Cezanne established the plane of the picture through the tree trunk and branches. He used the blues, pinks, yellows, greens and greys to give prominent contrasts to the trunk of the tree. Delacroix also followed in the footsteps of Cezanne in rediscovering Titian’s color-space. Delacroix looked towards nature whenever he needed help. He gave importance to the tiniest details in The Women of Algiers. He even detailed the design in pink and green, a flower and a few leaves in the blouse of a girl sitting in the painting. He even took care of the clarity of this tiny detail as to when it should be clear and when diminished. Delacroix wrote about his work that was published after his death, in 1893. Chevreul became professionally involved in color at Gobelin workshop but the work he did was developed even before him.

Seurat divided colors into different categories.

1. Local color.
2. Directly reflected light.
3. Indirectly reflected light.
4. Color reflections projected by neighboring objects.
5. Ambient complementary colors.

Seurat’s first painting that projected the same categories of color is not a complete masterpiece. It still needs perfection and placement. The Bathers as seen gives a beautiful blend of brightness of color and clarity. Seurat used the orange, green, blue and violet in their full radiance. It is considered as a transitional piece of work. All the colors make the figures and the articles in the painting very prominent and beautiful to look at.

Monet is compared to a scientist who has the same viewpoint and works on it in different angles. The Water Lilies and the Japanese Bridge, the color shows the time. The scenery was painted in the early hues of the morning. The darker shade is mixed with the yellow as the morning takes over the shades of the night. The sun is given a perfect morning sun color, perfect sun yellow.

The second painting of the same series, Bridge over Water Lilies has a change in colors. The sunlight is bleached with white as it is noon in this painting. Shadows have grown into pale blue shade. These shades are caused by the trees in the background.

The third painting of the series, The Japanese Footbridge and the Water Lily Pool, Giverny, the contrast can be seen very obviously. The tonal shades again shift to the yellows as evening has approached. But among all the other shades are strong reds that give the idea of the evening. The three paintings of the same series when put together can easily be contrasted one from the other because of the usage of contrasting colors.

Matisse would prefer calling his paintings as emotional sensations. The Red Studio, a single color was used to paint the walls, floor and even the furniture of the studio. The shades added to the red tone gave way to the difference in light, dark and deep corners of the painting. The curtains over the window contrast the deep red color and bring a little brightness to the painting. The Pink Studio, on the other hand, in comparison to the Red Studio, is lighter, airier and fresher. The cool feeling comes from the whites used in the center of the canvas.

Picasso, referred to as a great artist, did not make color his weakness. The Three Musicians is referred to as magnificent piece of art. But it also has a specific darkness to it, called Spanish darkness. He used warm reds and yellows for the clothes and pale yellow for the instrument of the musician.

Colors in the hands of professionals are taken to perfection. The science within it is understood by the masters only. And it is all through history that these painters made masterpieces to perfect the color usage for the future generations.

Reference

Riley, Bridget. (1995). Colour for the Painter. USA: Cambridge University Press, Print.