Kacey Evans

Catalogue Overview Essay

Color Through Modern Art
Theme
Modern art is known for the diverse exploration of artistic media potential contrasted with
the conservative traditions of much of western history. In the past, there had been an emphasis on
realistic rendering that now is surpassed by abstraction of form and subject. The start of the
modern art movements began to experiment with the form and elements of art. In the beginning,
form used color merely as a media to rethink the representational composition aesthetics, only
color would eventually leave form behind in an attempt to pursue its existence.
Art can exist without color, but color has been such an important part of modern art through
each of the movements, that it is important to track the progress and changes of how the artists
used color. As a major principle of art, color is a crucial part of any artwork weather it be
monochrome or containing many hues. Color gives context to the subject, meaning to the
abstract and psychological connections to the viewer. It lives as a limitless media that can cause
unity or conflict just by association. The artists of the modern era realized that the potential for
color exceeded the realistic renderings of the Romantic period.
Paul Czanne, Still Life with Apples and Pears, 1885-87, Oil on canvas 17 5/8 x 23 1/8 in.
(44.8 x 58.7 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art
Often thought of as one of the most important leaders in modern art, Paul Czanne was in
innovative artist during the Post-Impressionist movement. Following on the heels of the
Impressionist movement that explored the use of color and light, Czanne took a more scientific
approach as he developed his painting technique. His work shows a detailed eye for how a color
changes hues in light and shadow.
Initially looking at Still Life with Apples and Pears, the viewer sees a flat looking still life of
fruit on a table. Vibrant colors compose each fruit in a flat plane; shadows are even, and flat,
each plane of the table is a different, uniform plane of color, but next to each other, they give the
illusion of three-dimensionality. When the viewer looks closer, they notice that each new tint on
the pears is a bold stroke of the brush making many different tiny planes of color to form a
cohesive whole. The composition is formed by the relation of the individual planes of various
colors next to each other that tell the brain how to interpret the vibrant blues as shadow and
slashes of yellow as a highlight.
Vassily Kandinsky, Summer Landscape (Houses at Murnau; Study for "Houses on a Hill"),
1909, oil on paperboard, 33 x 45 cm, Italian and other European Art (Scala Archives)
Kandinsky was highly involved with the Futurist painters seeking new designs to magnify
the new technology and movement of society in the 1910s. Summer Landscape is one of
Kandinskys earlier work in exploring the use of color to capture motion. Later works would
delve deeper into the realm of abstraction as Vassily Kandinsky tried to use color to express the
experience of music and spirituality.
Looking at Summer Landscape, the first thing noticed is the flat planes of color that reflect
back to the later painting style of Czanne. This painting is early for Kandinsky at a time he was

just learning to use color to enhance the viewers perception. His brushstrokes are bold, without
heeding precision. The brightness of colors in the shadow give a sense of energy to the image
implying movement to the stagnant subject. Houses appear to cling to the steep edge of the hill
connected by a salmon colored road. The scene, washed in a yellow light, gives the feel of late
evening.
Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1960, oil on canvas, 69 in. x 50 1/8 in. (175.26 cm x 127.33 cm), San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
Images composed of large fields of color is Mark Rothkos trademark. His lack of any
recognizable subject matter has categorized his work among the Abstract Expression movement.
Other artwork of the same period emphasized form, flatness, and aesthetics. Rothko grouped
colors together in different combinations to evoke an emotional response from the viewer.
Experimentation of different colors, the absence of any recognizable subject more complex than
the solid shape of colors challenge the viewer to try and grasp the paintings meaning
Three shapes of clearly defined color reside on a gray background. They sit so close, yet not
touching, thus creating tension by the slight separation. The reds somehow seem to aggressively
overshadow the white lingering below. Brush strokes are evident, leaving hints to how the colors
came to reside on the painting and allowing the eye to see just a bit of personality in each block.
The top lighter red gives way to traces of the gray below where the colors were mixed by the
brush showing some transparency. The larger red is less blended with even and faint brush
strokes conveying a sense of sternness in the depths of red, and the white seems to be a tainted
experience as the viewer notices the gray mingling among the white.
Barnett Newman, The Wild, 1950, Oil on canvas, 7' 11 3/4" x 1 5/8" (243 x 4.1 cm), The
Museum of Modern Art: Painting and Sculpture
Another Abstract Expressionist of the 1950s, Barnett Newman experiment with the
definition of painting by creating large paintings without a frame. Following the aesthetic
tastes of the other Abstract Expressionist painters, Newmans work contained no representation
figures, only panels of dark blues or reds broken up by stripes that he referred to as zips. The
Zips became the focus of the paintings. Canvases of such a large scale cause viewers to
emotionally interact with their perception of scale when standing next to one of the paintings.
The emotional atmosphere of a gallery room was affected by such a vast spread of dark hues.
A canvas almost eight feet tall and only two inches wide and mounted without a frame could
almost be considered a sculpture, rather than a painting. The Wild consists of one very long,
messy, red zip edged by dark blue that runs from the top to the very bottom of the linear vertical
canvas. The singular red line is the sole subject of the painting and takes up all but the very edge
of the canvas boldly commanding the attention of the intimidated viewer by its height.
Giacomo Balla, Street Light, 1909, oil on canvas, 68 3/4 x 45 1/4" (174.7 x 114.7 cm), Museum of
Modern Art: Painting and Sculpture
Also a Futurist painter, Giacomo Balla made use of color in a similarly to Kandinsky by
using bright hues to convey a feeling of energy and visual movement broken up by brushstrokes.
In Street Light, Balla is mesmerized by the technology of early electric street lights that used an

electrical arc between two carbon rods to produce light much brighter than any gas powered
street lamp.
The subject matter of the painting is a simple street lamp with light radiating from the center
of the lamp and a crescent moon diminished in the background. The painting becomes
remarkable because of the way that Balla has broken up the radiating light into different colors of
light in his brush strokes much in the way the eye sees an after image when exposed to a bright
light for too long. He has divided the most intense light into sections of white wedge-shaped
brushstrokes from the dimmer light of red by a layered gradation of white, yellow, orange, and
reds.
Dan Flavin, Untitled, 1977, pink, green, blue, and yellow fluorescent light, 8' square across
the corner, Contemporary Art (Larry Qualls Archive)
Perhaps the best example of color existing without form is accomplished in the sculptures of
Dan Flavin. Using flourecent lights as his medium, Flavin creates an experience of color in the
room as the light radiates off of his arrangement of light bulbs. At the time of the Minimalist art
movement, flourevent lighting was an industrial innovation allowing for efficient lighting in
large buildings. The bulbs were culturally associated with mass production and supermarkets, but
with the ability to create almost any hue of light; Flavin found them to be an excellent source of
color.
This sculpture was displayed in the corner of the room, with a grid of three yellow lights
arranged horizontally below three pink lights against the back of six vertical blue lights facing
the opposite direction. This caused the corner to be filled with a blue light while the blue bulbs
were unseen by the viewer. This blue served as a visual background to the arrangement of pink
and yellow lights facing the viewer. The entire room glowed with a mixture of the different
colors on the walls and ceiling of the gallery. Any viewer is engulfed in the experience of color
that far surpasses the simple grid of light bulbs.
Rationale
The variety of paintings and sculpture in this exhibition demonstrate a range of ways color
had been used Color was a unifying element of art through the modern art movements as artists
explored new solutions to representational painting and questioned what a color could do in the
limitless space of abstraction. The pieces come from an array of different movements and
different artists and all exhibit a strong and intentional use of color
The earlier paintings used color to break down the subject form into individual color planes.
Next color moved into more abstract experimental forms searching for new solutions as an
alternative to representational painting. Movement after movement faced the question of how the
art could step out of the confines of form and focus on the significance of color. These
movements have traveled along side of science as they study how color is seen and interpreted.