Color Explorations Notes

JULY 13 - AUGUST 17; Every Monday

COURSE NOTES

Jump to:

CLASS 1: Where did color come from?

Color as material from the earth.

CLASS 2:  Can color imitate nature?
The Renaissance search for realism

CLASS 3: Can darkness be beautiful?
Baroque color and the drama of light

CLASS 4:What if color is light itself?
Romanticism, Japanese prints, Impressionism

CLASS 5: What if color expresses emotion instead of reality?
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Munch, Fauves

CLASS 6: Episode 6 — What if color becomes the subject?
Abstraction to digital color

CLASS 4: What if color is light itself


From Japan to Romanticism and Impressionism

Part 1: Color Beyond Europe

  • Global trade and the movement of pigments

  • Indigo and Japanese color traditions (aizome)

  • Prussian Blue

  • Ukiyo-e

  • Hokusai and Hiroshige

  • Kabuki color symbolism

Sukumo, the dried and composted leaf material of the Japanese indigo plant

Prussian Blue, the first synthetic pigment

Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1831

Okumura Masanobu, Shibai Ukie (Perspective Picture of a Play), 1741

Part 2: Romanticism — Color as Experience

Romanticism

  • Nature

  • Emotion

  • The Sublime

  • Atmosphere

  • Imagination

J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840

Eugene Delacroix, La Mort de Sardanapale, 1827

Romanticism

  • Nature

  • Emotion

  • The Sublime

  • Atmosphere

  • Imagination

Part 3: The Science and Technology of Color

Color Science — Michel Eugène Chevreul

Key Concepts

  • Simultaneous Contrast

  • Complementary Colors

  • Optical Mixing

  • Adjacent colors influence one another

Technology

Tube paints (John Goffe Rand)

Portable easels

Industrial pigments

  • Cerulean

  • Cobalt

  • Cadmium

  • Viridian

  • Synthetic Ultramarine

Michel Eugène Chevreul, Cercle Chromatique, 1861

Early Winsor & Newton collapsible paint tubes

Part 4: Impressionism

Key Concepts

  • Broken color

  • Optical mixing

  • Changing light

  • En plein air

  • Local vs perceived color

Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872

Camille Pisarro, Late Afternoon in our meadow, 1887

Mary Cassatt, Woman bathing,1891

Exercise: Chiaroscuro Study of Glazing