Assignment 5: Colour - Abstraction, Perception and Modernity

While people once thought that vision was created by rays projecting from the eyes, reflecting onto objects and returning to the eyes to allow us to see, our understanding of colour vision and colour has come a long way. Artists have discovered that the relationship between colour and vision is a subjective, physiological and psychological one.

  Weavers and Michel Eugene Chevreul contributed to the discovery that colour vision is subjective as they noticed “accidental colours” and “Simultaneous Contrast”, which shows the optical effect colours have in relation to one another. Particularly with complementary colours, when the same colour has different coloured backgrounds, the colour appears lighter or darker.

 Polymath Goethe discovered that colour is a sensation for the eye. He experimented with volunteers, asking them to describe their experiences of colour and light. For example, he realised the existence of the way colour and light “impresses” into the eye through the way light would leave an “after burn”.

 Phillip Otto Runge developed the colour sphere, which demonstrates the way light and shadow creates the tones of colour, and painted morning and day to exemplify the affect of changing light. JMW Turner also believed in the subjective influence of light and shadow, using both to create atmospheric senses of warmth, doom, movement, stillness etc.

Fig. 1

Ogden Rood took simultaneous contrast to another level with optical mixing, which was a key aspect of impressionism. Artists such as Georges Seurat dabbed paint to create new tones and hues, similar to the way newspaper images are created by CMYK halftoning dots. Monet also plays on the human experience by reducing things to pure colour and shades.

 Our understanding of colour vision has been developed by artists who experiment with ways of translating human experience of colour and light onto canvas through various techniques.

Figure 1. Monet, C. (1908) San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk  [Painting]. From National Museum Cardiff, Wales. Retrieved from http://www.intermonet.com/prints/m1768003.jpg