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The ideology of color, Hesychasm and the pictorial color of
light, return color to pure movement, to its power of
undefined mutation, each tint reacting upon the next, the
ongoing work being able to change key continuously:
transposition (Duthuit), improvisation that rests on an
implicit knowledge (Sperber), where colors in differentiated
structures combine with and result from cultural
contexts (Sahlins). Pictorial polyphony: the effect of colors
applied flat where some jump and some retreat, overlapping
planes simultaneously implying spatial recession and asserting
surface flatness, illusion of volume through the fluting effect,
the shifting of hues by mixing with a dominant – emphasis on
color-light, presentation rather than representation.
Within a room with windows made of colorless,
transparent
plates of glass, daylight is cool, bluish, while
shadows and
reflections are warm. In the mausoleum of Galla
Placidia
daylight is filtered through window panes of orange-tinted
alabaster. The mosaics are mostly blue.
An Edict of Diocletian gives a good deal of information on
mosaicists’ workshops. It was incumbent upon the pictor
imaginarius to supply the model of the composition with the
iconographic data. The pictor parietarius transposed the
designs into the desired dimensions and adapted them to the
curvature of the wall. The musearius was the craftsman who,
on the basis of the color indications supplied by his colleagues,
chose the glass cubes or tesserae, two to ten centimeters square,
from a range of about two hundred colors, broke and
fashioned them with a hammer and inserted them at various
angles in the intonaco. The parietarius replaced later the
imaginarius. Turning to frescos, it was the parietarius
who was
responsible for the entire work.
Color harmony is the reenactment of the central theme of
Byzantine philosophy, the relation of the multiple to the
One, a qualitative scale of the sensible where other units
may be situated as ‘transitions’, ‘nuances’, etc.
Charles Henri has shown that perception of color comes before
perception of shape. This brings about dissociation of color
and outline, e.g. Dufy, and modulation, i.e. the use of flat
areas of color (aplats) instead of chiaroscuro. One has
to choose between chiaroscuro, color and ornament. When
color is exalted, ornament is subdued and chiaroscuro almost
eliminated. During the process of painting, colors are
continuously changed, both in tone (lightness or darkness)
and in tint, by simultaneous contrast (Chevreul). Brushwork
texture (Renoir, Van Gogh) may also express the sense of form.
The Impressionist revolution consists of the resurgence of color,
the oscillation between color and trait, the recuperation by the
artist of ancient procedures.
Finally, limiting the commentary to oil painting, there remains
a matter of the greatest interest – the question of the use
of color. The painter uses paints, i.e. pigment ground in a
vehicle. An addition of medium may change the visual properties
of the paint. Materials often constitute long lasting limitations.
Complementary colors, used in proper proportions, have a
stabilizing power (Itten). A color stared at and the complementary
afterimage that appears as a halo surrounding it, are matched
by paints that neutralize each other in mixture, producing a
colored gray. [There are also the optical complementaries that
spin to gray on Maxwell discs, slightly shifting away from the
above matched paints.]
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The eye discerns about 150 tints between violet and red and
about 200 light-dark gradations (Chandler). Visual perception
implies the formal coherence/good continuation/consistent
shape rule (Arnheim). One sees the hidden structural forces of
the surface (Kandinsky), direction, isolation, intrinsic interest:
-perception gradients (depth);
-texture (microstructure) gradients;
-color gradients: often, complementary dyads and
triads
are perceived as forming a pattern which preserves
the
unity of the object and/or of the painting, although
complementaries may be separated by passages
(Cezanne);
-gradients of light-dark contrast, e.g. the three
traditional
vertical planes parallel to the picture plane
(Gibson):
foreground, middleground and background.
The eye sees the global constructive law, the chromatic syntax:
-saturation;
-temperature (cold-warm contrast);
-surface size, i.e. a light, warm colored surface
‘irradiates’
and seems larger than it actually is;
-structural inversion: the subordinate color may
become
dominant in certain areas or in a different scale;
-the principle of similarity: similar elements
tend to
appear on the same plane, units of similar tint
and/or
similar light or dark tone are perceived together
–chromatic
similitude;
-the simplicity principle causes a perceptive
scission (Arnheim):
a colored spot appears located on top of the
background, not
within it; local color appears separated from
the superposed
layer of light and shadow: by a delimitation
of light and dark
areas (Braque, Hering); shadow may be replaced
by a color,
e.g. blue, complementary to light, e.g. orange
(Cezanne), the
complementaries tending to form a pattern resulting
in
dynamic stillness.
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The works shown in this essay are conceived on the basis
of a consonant scale of imperfect complementaries, thus
producing a slight dissonance. Colors are selected from real
available paints. Paints are superposed as well as broken
by mixing together and/or by the addition of black and/or
white. The complementary of a given color may also consist
of either a mixed color or two/three colors that are the
equivalent of the complementary, e.g. the dyad cadmium
orange + Prussian blue: Prussian blue may be replaced by
viridian and, as dissonance, cobalt violet (Bonnard); the
dyad cadmium yellow deep + ultramarine blue: ultramarine blue
may be replaced by ultramarine green and cobalt violet (a
dissonant scale).
The mixing of two colors located near to one another on the color
wheel produces a pure hue, e.g. green –yellow + blue - green = green.
Two distant colors produce a variety of grays.
The phenomenon of cyanotropy occurs when white is mixed
with a paint and the hue acquires a degree of blueness – for this
reason Rubens used ‘warm gray’ grounds. The exceptions are
some yellow-green hues that become warmer by mixing with
white (Marc Havel). A lighter scumbling over a dark underpainting
(white over red ochre) produces a cool hue.
Red mixed with black tends to violet, yellow mixed with black
takes a green hue. When black is mixed to orange, no cooling
occurs (Marc Havel ).
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Opacity –
Translucence –
Opalescence –
Transparence –
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underpainting (dead colors), covered by
opaque overpainting, although left uncovered
here and there (reserves), e.g. gray or red ochre
underpainting for blue
the effect of colored grounds or dead colors
when the overpainting is dominant, but,
depending on its thickness, its color will be
modified by the underpainting
an opaque, but thinly applied color (frottis)
the glaze; a color glazed with a similar hue will
be enhanced; a dark underlayer
may be glazed with its complementary, e.g.
brown -black covered by a blue glaze produces
a deep black.
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