The nature of color is light. In most of the readings they talk about how light reflects off of certain objects and give that object the color or tone that we see. History plays a big role in how we think of color. In “The Man in Black” black has a negative context to it. In Johnny Cash’s time people related black with everything bad in the world. It relates to mourning, sadness, and crime. In “Reservoir Dogs” a recent movie; color has emotion and meaning to it. Color can be useful for bullying in this scene and I’ve seen this in my school. When I was in high school when selecting teams for sports everyone wanted to be red, blue, or black. No one wanted to be associated with the color pink because pink was considered to be lame. Pink is thought of as girlie and brown is related to shit. Black was considered as negative and is considered cool now. Everyone wants to be Mr. Black. I liked Yoko Ono’s quote. She said, “Whiteness is the most conceptual colour…it does not interfere with your thoughts.” I can really relate to this because I relate white with relaxation and purity. When I see any other color it provokes an emotion. When I see red I feel angry or sexy. Blue I feel sad. Black I feel depressed. White is a nice break and you make your own decisions about how you feel about something without having a color influencing your thought process
Month: May 2014
Reading # 1 ” Chromophobia”
“Chromophobia” is the fear of color. There is an actual cultural fear of color. Earlier in history color was not important. They did not think color enhanced a piece of art. In The Realistic Manifesto Gabo and Pevsner said, “Thence in painting we renounce colour as a pictorial element…colour is accidental and it has nothing in common with the innermost essence of a thing. Also they did not want to experiment with color. Grass is green and the sky is blue. They did not want the “wrong” color used for a portrait. In more recent years people want to experiment with color. In the first few readings color and art was not supposed to be combined. In Earlier times they liked their sculptures to be plain and started using materials such as marble and granite. In the last few readings they started to challenge this idea that color cannot go hand in hand with art. In “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue?” The combination of red, yellow, and blue is the artwork. It is extremely difficult to create a nice composition using the primary colors as discussed in this reading. So when you achieve this balance it is deserving of the term art. History and time has had a huge impact on these attitudes towards color. People before the 21st century thought of art as making things exact and proportionate. They liked realistic forms of the human body and thought color was not important. Color was taboo in a way. In more recent years people are more open to non-traditional art like sculptures of the human body and portraits. We see this in cubism and expressionists. Color is used to enhance the art work and show uniqueness to it. People are no longer afraid to experiment with color and are not Chromophobic anymore. I understand the fear of using color. One color can change the whole meaning of your work. Even now I am timid to use color, but only because I know that it is hard to make colors do what you want. I do however feel like I have a better understanding of color and not as afraid as before.
Color and Design
