Symbolic Colors, Essay Example

People assign individual meanings to color. In The Night Café, Van Gogh did well in articulating his emotional intent with cautious and representative color selections. Similarities with Kandinsky’s Black Lines are investigated with respect to color choices. Furthermore, one example of what a color represents to me is communicated.

Van Gogh’s The Night Cafe succeeded at expressing his emotional intent through his careful and symbolic color choices. It seems Van Gogh wanted to communicate a number of things with this work. He wanted to communicate the relative ease of the atmosphere at the café. It also seemed he wanted to communicate something of the climate. Although the red-orange and yellow-orange of the walls and lights seem to communicate an element of sultry heat and humidity, the green-yellows seem to bring down the temperature. The effect is a perception of lazy hot night at some random café in some sub-tropical climate.

Similarly, Kandinsky uses color to communicate variant perceptions. The color fields of white, yellow, orange, red, blue, and green are more-or-less static. When the artist added the black lines, it communicated an element of motion, and the piece comes alive. For me, black has often been a symbol of death and motionlessness, but here, it communicates life and vibrancy.

Similarities with Kandinsky’s Black Lines have been investigated with respect to color choices. Furthermore, one example of what a color represents to me was communicated. In The Night Café, Van Gogh did well in articulating his emotional intent with cautious and representative color selections. Both artists used color in ways that communicate variant perceptions.