Sunday, September 14, 2008

Readings on Light and Color --response by Danielle Breslin-Romano

One of my favorite quotes is by Georgia O'Keefe: "I found that I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn't say any other way...things I had no words for."  I find this quote especially interesting and applicable to the readings.  O'Keefe states that there is something color can say that cannot be expressed in words, yet the three authors we read are attempting to use words to describe color.

Livingstone gives us a more scientific explanation, starting with an explanation of light.  I found the history of different opinions of what exactly light was and how we perceived it to be very interesting.  Livingstone then goes into color, and the scientific explanation of how we see it, as well as different things like interference and diffraction.  She describes how the eye works, all about rods and cones.  Yet despite all of this scientific explanation, it still seems that there is a mystery about color that cannot be "explained," only experienced.

Arnheim gives us a wide-spread discussion of many facets of color.  He discusses color theory, but not the kind familiar to me (an artist's color theory).  The generative primaries and generative complementaries are such that I have never heard of before.  He also discusses, as Livingstone does, the inconsistency of color and how colors can "change" depending on their surroundings.  He writes, "In no reliable sense can we speak of color 'as it really is;' it is always determined by its context" (345).  I agree with this statement very much.  I think color is something that is always changing.  As an artist, you experiment with color.  The color that you see in the jar of paint usually does not appear exactly the same when you put it on the canvas because the colors around it affect it.  Also, certain colors will jump forward and others will go back.  I greatly enjoyed the experiment in the Livingstone book of the blue dots on the orange background, (although I thought the background to be more of a yellow-green than orange--yet another example of how difficult it is to talk about color because it is different for everyone).

Arnheim even says, "No one will be sure that his neighbor sees a particular color exactly the same way he himself does" (330).  That idea is especially intriguing to me as a painter who likes very much to use color.  I spend a lot of time mixing colors and experimenting with how different colors interact on the canvas.  When I complete a piece, I expect others to see the colors in my painting the same way I see the colors in my painting.  However, I cannot be sure that this is so; in fact, no one may see the painting the same way I see it.  This is interesting when thinking about the masters' paintings.  Even though we may not all see them in the same way, there is still a universal agreement that certain works of art are especially striking.  So what is it that makes them so?  Is it the colors, which are so fickle--they change in different lighting, fade in the sun and over time, and are incosistent--or is it the shapes?

Arnheim seems to place a lot of weight on shapes over colors.  He talks about an experiment with children in which the children were asked which the red square was more like, a blue square or a red circle?  He states, "As culture begins to train the children in practical skills, which rely on shape much more heavily than on color, they turn increasingly to shape as the decisive means of identification" (335).  I do not know if I agree with that statement.  Yes, I do think that society places a lot of emphasis on shape, but I think there is just as much emphasis on color.  Think about when you are asked to describe a person.  You do not only say words like, "tall" and "skinny," but you say, "blonde," "blue eyes," "pale skin."  Yet another example in when asked to identify a house.  Most people choose a color, like the "blue shutters," to distinguish their home among the others.  Think even of the name, "The Purple Door," used to identify the office of Operations and Facilities here at SLC.  Perhaps I am biased because color is such an important part of my life, but I would dare to say that society places an equal emphasis on color as on shape.

The section of the Arnheim reading that I found most interesting was the section on "Reactions to Color," because I thought that started to address the mysterious power of color.  He says, "We have not even a hypothesis to offer about the kind of physiological process that might account for the influence of color" (368).  He discusses some experiments that showed physical responses to color.  I know from personal experience the affect that color can have on your body physically.  Last year I took the year off because I was sick with a constant debilitating migraine.  During that period, there were certain colors that I could not bear to look at or wear.  Seeing or wearing those colors (the biggest offenders were orange, red, and yellow) would make my headache spike even more.

Out of all the readings, the one that I thought communicated the magic of color the most was Oliver Sack's "The Case of the Colorblind Painter."  Describing was a world without color must be like helped communicate how important and how wonderful color really is.  I can't imagine living in a world of gray scales, like Mr. I.  As he stated, color is a constant of this world, and if there is enough light, we see color.  That is part of how we identify something.  I think this makes an argument for the importance of color along with shape.  Although Mr. I did not have trouble seeing shapes, he did have trouble identifying objects in the beginning because of their lack of color.  Now, even the gray scale tint of one object would change depending on the light.  He lived in "a world whose lights and darks fluctuated with the wavelengths of illumination, in striking contrast to the relative stability, the constancy, of the color world he had previously known" (Sacks 21).  Here is an example of not only how brilliant color is and how much we would miss it, but how important it is in our daily functioning and how it is something that we take for granted.

I enjoyed all of the readings' different approaches on explaining/discussing color, but agree with Georgia O'Keefe that you can say things with color that cannot be said in words.

11 comments:

Madeline said...

"O'Keefe states that there is something color can say that cannot be expressed in words, yet the three authors we read are attempting to use words to describe color."

Very good point! I wrote in response to Sonia's post that I had doubts about Arnheim's ability to condense all of art's appeal into simple explanations of hue, contrast, and brightness. Arnheim himself wrote in his introduction that "[l]anguage cannot do the job directly [of explaining qualities in a work of art] because it is no direct avenue for sensory contact with reality; it serves only to name what we have seen or heard or thought." My opinion is that Arnheim trusted words too much in his chapter on color to explain why certain art works are appealing, without acknowledging those that might defy his rules or present a case too complex for explanation.

I found Livingstone's chapters very useful because they explained the science of vision without making too outrageous an attempt to explain the intricacies of art solely through what we know about visual perception. Instead, the chapters laid a firm foundation for future conversations that might attempt to combine science, psychology, and art into some understanding of what art says to us and about us. I appreciated her theories on how evolution might have produced the human visual system.

I agree with you that Arnheim puts a lot - perhaps too much - weight on the importance of shapes over colors. Sacks' colorblind painter is perhaps the best example of how vital color is to our perception of the world. I was watching a black and white movie last night and wondered briefly at the techniques the filmmakers had to use in order to make certain objects - like a gun lying in a field of grass - visible to viewers who did not have the aid of color to help distinguish them. A movie that was made to be seen in color but is viewed in black and white is very different than one that was made to be seen in black and white and is shown in black and white. The latter accounts for the difficulty human beings have in perceiving even the most familiar objects in a meaningful way if they are deprived of their color.

Unknown said...

I was most interested in Arnheim's discussion of color. I agree with Danielle in that he gives a pretty wide view of color and how it is perceived. It is very intriguing to me that the person next to you might not see the colors in the same way that you do. This makes me wonder about making dances. I wonder if someone might see the bodies in space in the same way that I do. The choreographer might intend something entirely different than what an audience member sees or experiences. Color and light can also play a large part in the making of a dance. The use of light or in some cases, the non-use effects the viewer's experience of the movement.
Georgia O'Keefe's statement about being able to say certain things with colors and shapes that she couldn't otherwise say also interested me. I find that there are many things that I cannot say or describe verbally. These things can sometimes only be describe through choreography bodies in space and when you add in color, (costumes), and light the picture is complete. The same movement performed under different circumstances could be perceived in a whole new way.

Marcella said...

This reading reminded me of Joseph Albers’ “Interaction of Color”. Much of the art I have studied since I was a teenager regarded luminosity as more important than color. Similar to what Arnheim wrote on page 345. He pointed out that “in European paintings of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the light is more important that the color”. One professor I had, an artist himself, had his class copy any well known painting of our choosing using pencil and charcoal. Most of the copies were spectacular which made me also wonder if it were the light and not the color that made a painting special. This notion stuck with me for some time until I took an oil painting course here. The first few weeks of class were devoted to color theory based upon Albers’ approach. Learning about and then applying what I learned in that course changed my art forever, as well as my seeing of color. The “optical illusions” that occur when colors meet gave me an even deeper understanding of luminosity. Albers’ points out that “what happens between colors” cause them to “present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbors and changing conditions.” Arnheim pointed this out too when he mentioned “the color of a tablecloth may modulate in nuances composed of dozens of hues without relinquishing its basic whiteness”. That is what I meant about my seeing of color will never be the same after I took that painting course. One assignment was an entire white painting of nothing but white objects on a white tablecloth with a white background. The purpose was to push our sense of recognizing hue, luminosity, and form and recreate that on our canvas. The objective was to see and capture the color in objects that were white (without color). This exercise opened up huge discussions on the “whiteness” of the objects, the interaction of one form of white against another and how everyone saw the still life differently from their vantage points. I never new there could be so much color in white objects!

lily said...

I was also really interested in how color can communicate in ways that language cannot. As with O’Keefe’s comments I think that Sacks highlights this with Mr. I’s understanding that there are “perceptual qualities for which ordinary experience, ordinary language had no equivalent (p. 11).” In addition, Sacks points out how Mr. I’s life experiences and temperament also contributed to his experience of color. From our blog responses, it is clear that each of us depends more upon different powers of perception and mediums of representation: form, color, dance, etc. What is so fascinating about Mr. I is how he was forced to re-conceive his world using a new system and ultimately could not imagine returning to the old system of color. I think this really points both to human adaptability. It also speaks to Arnheim’s point that color only exists within a context, as Mr. I's understanding of color was so closely related to his life and work experience. This context is determined not only by perception as a physical act. It is determined by memory and imagination, integrative processes of association, expectation, desire, meaning making, and inner concepts of color. Sacks shows how this occurs on the the neural level.
I think that what is common is the basic need to use our perception to construct a coherent, complete world. This is a crucial part of Gestalt theory. Just as Mr. I was challenged by his visual impairment, we are constantly challenged by artistic movements that seem to shake our coherent constructions of the world or create dissonance. These upheavals require us to change our world view, either as a culture or an individual.

Anonymous said...

What struck me most after finishing the readings is how important color is in helping us identify and distinguish what we see --- both in life and in art. I thought back to Sacks' accounts of Mr. I running through stop-lights, confusing Mustard and Mayonnaise and fretting over the blur of colored TV. I thought of Livingstone's Monet demonstration and how in the color reproduction of his Impression Sunrise a red-orange sun "pulsates" against a blue-gray sky while in the black and white version the sun is barely defined. The whole subject and composition of the painting is thrown off. (By the way, in response to the Arnheim shapes vs. colors discussion this is an instance where the sharply defined, circle of the sun can't even be perceived unless it is seen in color) Lastly I thought about the role color plays in our ability to deal with practical challenges like, detecting fruit in the leaves of a tree. This was a minor point that Livingstone made briefly in discussing the benefits of three cone pigments but it stuck with me as a tangible example of the significance of color.

Because I've seen black and white photos and movies and never doubted that I was seeing as much as I would had they been in color, I think I assumed that it is was "luminance" or "value" that was most important to my vision. I thought it was the lightness of darkness of an object that helped me most in distinguishing it from other objects.

With this new understanding in mind, I was shocked to read in Arnheim about art history teachers using exclusively black and white slides. How would a student appreciate a painting like Impression Sunrise or other impressionist pieces where so much communicated in varying colors rather than varying values?

Jessica Ziskind said...

Mr. I’s abrupt shift from a life rich with color and verve to one bleak, dark and uninspiring was a devastating transition for him. As an artist myself, although in the medium of photography, I know the importance of color when it comes to communicating the emotionality and tone of a work. With its absence, the work of art must almost overcompensate with powerful subject matter because it does not have color to arouse a response from viewers. As a student of photography, I have had experience in shooting both color and black and white film. Part of me can empathize with Mr. I when I am working away in the black and white darkroom for six hours at a time, hidden from the colors and luminosity of the outside world. Yet I find solace in the fact that I can escape from this black and white space simply by opening a door, something that Mr. I could not do.

On a separate note, I agree with you when you said that that Arnheim perhaps placed too much emphasis on shape. While it is true that both shape and color play an integral role in the way we view the world, I personally tend to relate more with color. Colors often trigger memories of my childhood and past experiences that I have had. I will always associate a certain shade of red, for example, with the toy wagon I got for my fifth birthday. Arnheim seems to disagree with Danielle and me, however, and even goes as far as to compare shape with the traditional virtues of the male sex and color with the “temptations of the female.” Charles Blanc wrote that “the union of design (shape) and color is necessary to beget painting just as is the union of man and woman to beget mankind, but design (shape) must maintain preponderance over color. Otherwise painting speeds to its ruin: it will fall through color just as mankind fell through Eve.” This is a strong statement, and I wonder whether or not I will come to agree with it as I read further on in the book or end up keeping my original allegiance to color.

Lindsey said...

To me the combination of all of these readings is much like our own perception of art and color: the sum is greater than its parts. Together Arnheim, Livingston, and Sacks presented three different yet intersecting presentations of the nature and importance of color.

The reading I found the most useful was Livingston’s. This may be because it was a scientific and unbiased look at what exactly color is and how we experience it. This unfettered exploration of color was a great foundation for the next two readings.
In Arnheim I found myself being alternately frustrated and fascinated with his suppositions. His statement that the “passivity of the observer and immediacy of experience are more typical for color responses whereas active control characterizes the perception of shape” I thought was very interesting. Like others, I thought Arnheim placed too much emphasis on the importance of shape. The experience of color is both a subjective and empirical process and to translate the two into a scientific or artistic dialogue is no easy task. Arnheim, in my opinion, does not always succeed at this but makes a valiant attempt to do so.

The case of Jonathan I. however I thought did do a good job of demonstrating the tangible intersection of the two worlds. As a professional artist he was in a unique position to help explain the differences in his vision in terms of the world and art. This in turn helped shed light on the way people normally perceive artworks.

Kit Golan said...

In Danielle's post, she mentions that “I greatly enjoyed the experiment in the Livingstone book of the blue dots on the orange background, (although I thought the background to be more of a yellow-green than orange--yet another example of how difficult it is to talk about color because it is different for everyone).” What I find interesting is that when I looked at this picture initially, I too was struck by the fact that it looked much more like a golden yellow than orange background to me, and I wondered if my perceptions of color were different from others.

I'm intrigued now, by the notion that both Danielle and I have similar enough experience with the color orange to recognize that page 44 was not orange (to us), but different enough experiences with yellow to describe the same paper as “yellow-green” versus “golden yellow”. Based on what Livingstone (chapter 3) and Arnheim (p.334) had to say about the effect of lighting on perception of color, I wonder whether Danielle and I would have described the color more similarly if we both viewed it under the same kind of lighting (or perhaps even the same exact lighting).

I was talking with my roommate (an artist) about colors, and she mentioned that some painters spend their whole lives experimenting with color combinations while others never quite “get it” when it comes to using the right colors for a photo realistic painting. Arnheim says, “As Manfred Richter has pointed out, if two colors that look alike are made up of different spectral components, they may yield different results when combined subtractively with the same third color” (342). I wonder whether knowledge of the spectral make-up of colors would aid artists in combining colors with more predictable results.

I was struck by is that Arnheim mentions on page 333 that “the four dimensions of color we can distinguish with confidence are redness, blueness, yellowness, and the gray scale” and I realized that those colors roughly correspond with the way some color printers using, using “cyan,” “magenta,” “yellow,” and “black” (CMYK) to create every color needed. I wonder how these two facts relate.

On page 35, Livingstone provides different appearances of the visible light spectrum. Since I have no color-blindness, I see it as she intended, but I wonder how someone who was color blind would see the spectrums – would the “normal” one look like one of the “missing cone” ones? (any colorblind members of this class want to share?)

Young sought an explanation for the three primary colors in the constitution of man (Livingstone, p.28), and found this to corresponded to the three kinds of cones that humans have. I find it interesting that the reason there are “three primary colors” is because of human physiology and human description. I'm interested in the way that language and perception are connected.

On page 341-342 of Arnheim, he discusses the difference between additive colors versus subtractive colors. I'm a little confused in this area about the differences between addition and subtraction when it comes to colors. I get that one involves cyan, magenta and yellow and the other involves red, blue and green, but I don't know why one is addition and the other is subtraction. How can we tell if colors were combined additively or subtractively?

Zac Singer said...

As I work primarily in black and white, both in drawing and printmaking it has been extremely interesting to read about color, both in the texts and everyone's comments.

I agree with the assertion that it is very difficult to break down the response of individuals to artwork into a highly codified scientific system and thus feel somewhat weary of Arnheim's approach.

I also find the debate between color and shape to be extremely interesting, agian coming from the perspective of working in black and white. In my work I generally rely very little on the Grey scale or color and nearly always on shape and line and how value and depth can be conveyed with line. I guess this would fall into the realm of shape as I am creating contours in order to convey the content.
In addition, I feel that I am drawn to monochromatic works. Again this reading has encouraged me to question this and what if any "bottom up" elements cause this attraction.

Kristen Gull said...

In response to the Case Study of Mr. I, I also couldn't imagine my life without colors.

I found it intriguing how much we may take color for granted. I expect and love color, and I would be terribly saddened and depressed without color. I very much have thought of it as an external quality, not as a dimension of my perception of reality. However, I am excited to learn all about our different perceptions.

I found it extra depressing to learn that his vision wasn't surreal and romantic like black-and-white films-- but then again, as we have read, that was his perception. Perhaps someone else could see it in another way, in a romantic way? But if I could no longer see color, I would definitely feel like I was missing out on a huge part of being alive.

I also thought it was interesting that black and white food seemed disgusting. I could only imagine how unreal it would seem to dig into a gray, lifeless turkey instead of a roasted, brown turkey on Thanksgiving. It's interesting that his sense of smell didn't make up for it. It just goes to show you how delicately intricate our brains are and how reliant we are on those everyday, complex functions.

Kristen Gull said...
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