Color in Various Works

The part of this week’s reading that I enjoyed the most was Arnheim’s discussion of color in individual works of art (one by Matisse and one by El Greco), so I thought that for my post, I might take a stab at doing something similar, if far less insightful! So if you will bear with me, here is my attempt with a few of my favorite color works: 

In the following painting, Creation of the Animals, painter Tintoretto uses many of the color effects described by Arnheim. For example, the air, the sea, and the earth (as well as the animals which inhabit each element) all contain complementary colors: in the air, Tintoretto pits strokes of blue against shades of orange, the earth red against green (for the most part), and the sea is a mixture of reds, blues, and yellows. I think that Tintoretto does this very deliberately and with the intent of creating the silvery gray of complimentary colors placed together in small sections (i.e. tiny brushstrokes) which Arnheim describes as “loaded with life but serene;” in this passionately pious painting, it seems fitting that this depiction of the literal creation of life would be sacredly serene. Tintoretto’s strokes also uncannily call to mind the words of Kurt Badt as cited by Arnheim: in this grayness of complimentary strokes, “there remains an ultimate simplicity of. . . the spiritual and the material;” after all, this painting portrays exactly that, the meeting of the spiritual with the material world. Badt also notes something else about this gray-like effect, that “nothing [depicted in it is predominant],” and I see this in the depiction of the earth and its animals. This is not the case with Tintoretto’s God, who is depicted in the complimentary colors red, blue, and yellow (the light surrounding him); because He is painted in larger blocks of color, the colors do not become gray, but as predicted by Arnheim, they are contrasted against one another. In this way, God becomes predominant in this painting, not blending into the rest of the world, but deeply contrasted in the three primaries (perhaps this number three is also intentional, though I realize that that is a stretch!). If this is not a stretch, though, we also can see this phenomenon in the El Greco painting discussed by Arnheim, where red, blue, and yellow combine in the Virgin and Christ. 

The use of the three pure primaries similarly appears in Titian's Assumption of the Virgin: shades of red and blue (I know they look orange and green in this image, but if I remember correctly they are actually red and blue? I think?) appear throughout the painting, but the eye will seek out the third primary: yellow. Titian draws they eye upwards to God by surrounding Him in a yellow light. Livingstone describes the "eery" quality of the sun in a Monet painting: she claims that it is eery because it is not actually brighter than its background, but that its hue makes it appear so. If we look at this Titian painting in grayscale, we notice that the yellow illuminating the faces of the cherubim is not actually brighter than the pale blue sky beneath the clouds. I have the advantage of posting after some of you intelligent people, and I noticed that Jackson eloquently drew upon Livingstone's observation of Monet in his post on realism. Perhaps Titian uses this "eery" or "unrealistic" (whichever you prefer) method of equiluminance of sunlight to evoke the otherworldliness of the heavens: they are a place where completion is found (yellow) and a place where the rules of realism do not apply (equiluminance).

I also see Arnheim’s words ring true in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (I know, I like Italian painters!). Early in the reading, Arnheim explains that two primaries may be connected or harmonized by the mixture of the two; for example, green pulls towards yellow and may connect it aesthetically to a blue on the other side of it. This occurs in the Birth of Venus: Venus, with her golden hair, on her pale yellowish seashell, is borne to shore by a green sea, a body which connects her to the blue sky. I think that this effect gives her journey a sense of harmony: she moves from sky, to sea, to shore. Botticelli also uses complementary colors in the garments of the angels and the woman who receives Venus: the blue cloth surrounding the angels completes the orange cloth thrown by the woman. Arnheim notes that “since the eye spontaneously seeks out and links complementary colors, they are often used to establish connections within a painting between [objects-- not sure of word used here due to photocopier-- sorry!) that lie at some distance from one another.” This effect then seems also to create a sense of Venus’s journey forward: from behind, the blue propels her to the orange that awaits her at the shore. 

I know I already used a McQueen piece in my image post, but I had to include another one here. In this dress, McQueen uses the complementary colors orange and blue. These colors accentuate the form of the woman wearing the dress: the blue which makes up the majority of the dress is incomplete by itself, and the eye instinctively seeks out red and yellow, both of which may be found in the orange of the dress. As the eye seeks out this orange, it forms an “ideal” (by some definitions) female form: the orange is spread out on the shoulders, cinches the waist in a tiny, concentrated v-shape, expands at the hips, and evens out at the bottom.