“Dead head”

Color names

Lüpertz, Poet, 1997

It’s happened to me more than once: going to my art material supplier and meeting some costumers are totally taken aback by the names of some colors their teachers tell them to buy.

And well, if you think about it, some names are quite weird. Cadmium red, Titanium White or Zinc White remind us of chemical elements. But what about “Caput mortuum”? And “Mars Black”? Isn’t Mars the red planet? Or “Payne’s Grey”... who’s Payne? Or where?

Yellow’s Contradictions

The color of light (according to Goethe), of the sun, of Autumn… but also the color of envy and betrayal… These are yellow’s contradictions.

In those cultures in which sun is part of their divinity, gods are represented by this color, they were even imagined blonde in Ancient Greece! It’s also the color of the Chinese Emperors, Sun’s descendents, just as European Kings dressed in purple, a quite expensive pigment. So did those in Orient, but dressing in saffron, another rather inaccessible pigment. In Asia, yellow also represents happiness and wisdom, which is why Buddhist Monks dress in yellow. Also, the Yellow River (Huang He) owes its color to the amount of mud it carries, which makes it the river of fertility.

In most countries, post services use yellow for their logos, that’s because Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor’s Coat of Arms was yellow and since then its use spread all over the rest of countries. Consequently, this color is used by messengers in general.

Van Gogh, The yellow house,
1888

Due to its brightness, it’s connected with optimism and happiness, why else would you think Smileys are yellow? In Tour de France, the top cyclist is given a yellow jersey so he can be distinguished from the distance; also in the first televised editions of Wimbledon, the tennis balls used were yellow so they would be more visible than the formerly used white ones. In soccer, just like in traffic lights, a yellow would mean ‘warning’. A yellow flag shown from a ship would mean ‘plague’, ‘disease’ or ‘quarintine’. Those yellow traffic signs with black letters or symbols are those that must be seen and followed from the distance, same happens with the signals that warn about poisons, explosives and radioactivity.

Toulouse-Lautrec, In the room
of the Rue des Moulins, 1894

But a yellow not obtained from saffron, but from reseda seems dirty, dimly lit and isn’t resistant to washes. In Middle Age it represented shame, betrayal, envy, jealousy, selfishness, greed and it was used by the prostitutes, glambers, jews, single mothers and witches of the time. Judas would be painted in yellow for his betrayal. Toulouse-Lautrec also painted the prostitute’s skins yellow. In XII century, jews were told to wear yellow hats: it’s not a matter of luck that centuries later, nazis would make them wear the Star of David’s of the same color.

Giotto, Judas Kiss, 1302

Since it has always been related to Devil and sins (due to sulfur's color), it’s not a liturgical color for the Catholic Church.  In theatre, it was always considered a bad luck giving color. (It’s said that because Molière died while playing his role in The Imaginary Invalid and being dressed in yellow.)

And it was also usually rejected in fashion for its negative connotations, not in Asia, though; and it’s for the East’s influence that yellow appears for first time in European fashion in XVIII century. Even though it’s sometimes seen now in Winter catwalks, it’s usually just worn during summer, when sun brights the most!

(What about Beatles’ Yellow Submarine? And Tony Orlando’s ‘Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree’?)[1]

Sources: Welsch,N.-Liebmann, C.Chr. Farben. München, Elsevier V.2004;

Heller, E. Wie Farben auf Gefühl und Verstand wirken. München, Droemer V., 2000;

personal notes.
Translation: Lorenzo Vigo

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[1] Listen to these songs through these links: The Beatles and Tony Orlando.

Rhapsody in Blue

(Rhapsody in blue, G. Gershwin)[1]

Blue is the favorite color of the majority of human beings, without sex, age or culture distinctions. It has no negative connotations and it’s accepted in all circumstances, but the one of food. (You can read this post about it.)

Picasso, The old blind gitarist,
1903

If red is the color that approaches, blue is the color that takes us to the horizon, to the distance. That’s why it also represents melancholy, the nostalgia found in the American slaves’ “blues”. Picasso starts his “Blue Period” when he suffers the death and the absence of his friend Casagemas.

If red is the synonym of heat, blue is the one of cold: walls and window frames tend to be painted blue in places with hot climates. Also frozen and cleaning products are sold in blue packages.

Our planet looks blue from the outer space! It’s also linked with the spiritual and divinity, with the eternity, for being the sky’s and the sea’s color. It used to be exclusive for pharaohs and the French Kings, which is why it’s said that the noble are blue blood.  Dreams, fantasies, the intellectual, lasting values and confidence are also related to this color. ‘Deep blue’ was a chess playing machine. The United Nation’s World Peacekeeping Body are the Blue Berets. And the artists of the group ‘The Blue Rider’ (Kandinksy, Marc…) painted blue horses to obtain the essence and spirit of the animal. 

Marc, The little blue horses, 1911

We have already talked about Yves Klein. (Here's the post.)

Virgin Mary used to wear a blue veil in Middle Age representations. But since it was the most expensive pigment, it was kept only for the most important figure, which is why also Christ was mostly painted in blue, instead of the Virgin being the one. After the Lourdes apparition (1858), the Virgin Mary is commonly represented wearing a blue dress and a white veil.

January, Très Riches Heures du
 Duc de Berry, 1411

The ultramarin blue, which receives its name from being imported from Afghanistan, was so so expensive that artists had to stipulate how much of it they would use. 1 kg (Slightly over 2 pounds) of this pigment might cost nowadays 18000€ (around $22700 or £14000). It was later substituted by the indigo blue, which is much cheaper, but also much less bright. It’s worth mentioning that the ultramarin blue found in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry still shines like it did in the XV century.

In 1834, it was achieved to produce it in a laboratory, and it’s now quite affordable. It appears now in the executive’s suits, in work clothing, in pilot’s uniforms and in our everday jeans, which formerly appeared as hard work pants for the American miners.

How many songs are inspired by sky’s or sea’s blue?

And why are Smurfs also blue?

Welsch, N.-Liebmann, C.Chr. Farben. München, Elsevier V.2004;

Heller, E. Wie Farben auf Gefühl und Verstand wirken. München, Droemer V., 2000;

personal notes.
Translation: Lorenzo Vigo

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[1] If you want to listen to it, click here.

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Fire red, passion red...

Red is the color par excellence:  it’s the first kids recognise and name, it attracts us since we are young. In all cultures, it’s related to fire, and, therefore, to heat and light and to blood, life, fertility and sacrifice. Each culture adds also their own positive or negative connotations: bravery, love, hate, agression, sin or war. It’s also the color that represents all passions (good and bad ones), shame, shyness and anger. Hearts are painted in red and red roses are a love symbol.

Hot water is represented by the color red and the matches’ tips are also red.

This color is also used by the Catholic Church for all the festivities related to the Holy Spirit (such as whit Sunday and confirmations) but also to the Passion (like palm Sunday and good Friday) and to the martyr Saints, because of the spilt blood... That’s also why Christ is wearing red in all the representations from Middle Age.

Blood also explains why red is the color of war. And it also explains the name of the red planet, Mars, which is also the Roman god of war. Several armies wear red uniforms, such as the Pontifical Swiss Guard and the Buckingham Palace’s.

It was quite expensive to dye clothes red, so it always was considered as a power and high status symbol. Only noble or wealthy people were allowed to wear red clothes. Similarly, nowadays we keep red carpets for celebrities, kings and political figures. Cardinals dress in red, and so does Santa Claus (in memory of Saint Nicholas of Myra, bishop, in the times in wich bishops dressed in red instead of nowadays’ purple).

 Let’s take Van Eyck’s ‘The Arnolfini Portrait’ as example. They aren’t a noble family: they are bourgeois traders, they shouldn’t wear red. They could, anyways, have red bed clothes and, if that was the case, they had to show it in the portrait! What’s more, it was thought that red bed clothes enhanced fertility and assured well born babies. (We can see that Miss Arnolfini had been pregnant for a while already) It was thought that it shooed demons: during Middle Age, not baptised babies were covered by red sheets. Demons were also represented by red and redhead women were condemned to the stake for being witches.

To prevent illnesses, it was usual to carry red amulets, like corals or red hands. Philip Prosper was very ill when born and Velázquez painted a portrait of him being 2 years old, with his amulets and red clothes. And in the well known Little Red Riding Hood tale, she wears a red hood to shoo the forest’s danger.

It’s also the brightest color, which is mainly why it’s used in advertisements, in exam corrections, in sale announcements and in signs showing danger, like traffic signs or soccer’s red cards.

Matisse, Red Room
1908

In painting, red zones are the most outstanding ones, which is why there are not many paintings with red backgrounds. In those that do have a red background, there is no perspective, like Matisse’s.

And of course, it’s not the proper color to keep unnoticed in a party!

cristinadelrosso.com // cristinadelrosso.artproject@gmail.com 

Sources: Welsh,N.-Liebmann, C.Chr. Farben. München, Elsevier V.2004

Heller, E. Wie Farben auf Gefühl und Verstand wirken. München, Droemer V., 2000

Translation: Lorenzo Vigo

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A color is not only a color...

Colors aren’t only reflected light getting into our eyes: they influence our mood, they also have different meanings determined by cultural, psychological and subjective factors… fron now on, we’ll analyse each one of these.

We tend to paint our room’s walls with cold and light colors to improve our rest. Take the opposite example, if we painted our room red, we’d find it more difficult to fall asleep… Hot water is represented by the color red; cold one by blue.  In anatomy’s ilustrations, arteries are colored red while veins are blue. Same happens with traffic signs.

Try this: use blue food coloring on rice or cookies. I bet people will feel reluctant to have a taste of them. Why does this happen? Because blue isn’t originary from the products we usually use for meals and that makes us suspicious.

Most of these facts are a result of the characteristics of each color (black equals darkness, for example), but also of the psychological connotations and symbolisms of each culture and its traditions (while in West black means death and night, in the East, white is used for funerals).

Cimabue, Virgin
enthroned with Angels,
1270

The choice of colors in art, fashion and design, isn’t done randomly and mostly is determined by the influence of the subjective dimension of color.

In the Middle Ages, when almost everybody was illiterate, faith and religion was spread through images and colors were set in a symbolic way so that we could identify the figures in it easily. Virgin Mary used to wear a red dress and a blue cape, sky will always be blue and Heaven and Paradise green. Red was also used for martyrs and blood. Kings wore purple…, etc. Later, artists will try to represent the color’s object (which is named ‘local color’) but the symbolic use of color will often appear throughout the history of Art (Van Gogh, Gauguin, Munch…)

Soon, we will analyse the effects and subjective connotations of the color red.

Next week we will talk about the Jacques-Louis David’s painting The dead of Marat.

cristinadelrosso.com // cristinadelrosso.artproject@gmail.com

Sources: Nerdinger, W., Elemente künstlerischer Gestaltung. München, Martin Lurz, 1986

Welsch, N.-Liebmann,C.Chr., Farben, München, Elsevier, 2004

Translation: Lorenzo Vigo
Picture of blue rice: Cristina del Rosso

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What's a color? (2nd part)

Except for those artists who work with lights, cinema or in digital art, we use colors as reflected light, especially painters.

The theories around this theme first appear with Aristotle. The two most important ones are the one by Newton (Opticks, 1704) and the one by Goethe (Theory of colours, 1810). The rest of theories come from these two and focus on the color organisation through the chromatic circle and on the issue about the color perception. The nowadays’ theories mostly consist in studies about the color’s tridimensionality, a property useful in cinema and computing, apart from the compatibility between the reproduction systems.

Goethe’s ideas are influential when it comes to color perception: colors interact and they never find themselves isolated. Also, he adds that colors aren’t only related to phsyical and physiological factors, but also cultural and psychological ones.

The organization or systematization of colors isn’t easy at all and the several proposals offered by the researches are quite different. We have here the one presented by J. Itten, composed by 12 colors. You can find the primary colors in the centre (those are red, yellow and blue) and also the result of mixing these colors, which we call secondary colors. The center is surrounded by a ring, where we find the different graduations between the secondary colors.

The colors that are together are analogous. In this display, the tertiary are missing (mixture of 2 complementary colors) and the quaternary colors (mixture of 2 tertiary colors). Also the values are missing, which aren’t colors, just the proportion of white and black.

Color itself has 4 dimensions. Let’s take red as an example:

1) the tone: the pure color, what makes us recognise that that color is red;

2) the intensity or saturation: they can be vivid, brilliant or pale (bourdeaux is a slightly saturated red);

3) the value: how much brightness or darkness it has (a light red - a dark red)

4) the temperature: blue, green and violet are cold colors, while red, yellow and orange are the warm ones. But if a red color is near to blue, adquiring a violet tone, we can say it’s a ‘cold red’, while if it’s closer to yellow, it will turn into an orange, and we would say it’s a ‘warm red’.

In the next post about colors, we will learn about their psychological and cultural dimensions. Why do we use black for ceremonies and funerals? Why is yellow a symbol of bad luck?

cristinadelrosso.com // cristinadelrosso.artproject@gmail.com

Thanks to Web Dog por la fuente Pencilled.

Source:  Welsch-Liebmann, Farben,2004; Nerdinger, W.: Elemente künstlerischer Gestaltung, 1986;  Itten J. Kunst der Farbe 1989; personal notes

Picture: Wikipedia

Translated by Lorenzo Vigo

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What's a color? (1st part)

What’s a color? (1st part)

We live surrounded by colors. We can see them on flowers, in the rainbow, on the screens, on mode trends… but what are they?

The color is a result of the light hitting matter. That’s what those physicians that work in Optic tell us. And that that light, through our eyes, raises an alarm in our brain.

Newton confirmed that light is the source of all colors, his merit was causing a rainbow and converting it in white light. Light is a type of energy that moves in transversal waves, which go from 390 to 760 nanometers. For example, the waves that cause red measure between 680 and 760 nanometers, while those of violet from 390 to 450 nanometers. Human eye doesn’t perceive anything beyond that range of waves: neither the ultraviolet light nor the infrared radiation nor X-rays.

Colors are part of the light and in light all colors are hidden. Who uses the light-colors? We’ve got them in all the screens we use every day: the one of the TV, of the PC, phones and tablets… But that’s only one aspect of this phenomena.

There is this called “reflection”-“absortion” of light, which consists in pigments reflecting or absorbing light in different manners depending on their molecular structure, for instance: white pigments reflect all the white light, red reflects the wave range that corresponds to red and absorbs the rest, while black absorbs them all, reflecting no light. We can differentiate up to 200 different tones, 26 grades of saturation and up to 500 grades of luminosity.

The eyes are the organs through which we experience color. Without them, there is no color. The light activates the “cones”, which are color photoreceptor cells found in the eye’s fovea, which send the information to the brain through the optical nerves. Each eye sends an image to the brain, that’s why we can still see with only one of them.

These 2 images can be processed in different ways. A recently born baby has only a blurred sight, but promptly, by comparisions, repetitions and associations,  the baby will start to interpret little by little the world around, and a bit later, to name all those colorful sensations.

To be continued next week.

cristinadelrosso.com // cristinadelrosso.artproject@gmail.com

Thanks to: Web Dog for Pencilled font .

Picture and translation: Lorenzo Vigo

Source: Welsch-Liebmann, Farben, 2004; Nerdinger, W.: Elemente künstlerischer Gestaltung, 1986

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