Day three
The
college library had a well-thumbed copy of Itten’s ‘The Elements of Colour’.
The students were introduced to this as a ‘bible’ that they should take out and
learn from. Sometimes we would start the day in the lecture theatre looking at
colour, often using the examples Itten used himself. The advantage was that
students could get to see that although we were working with colour using basic
abstract shapes, it could be applied to figurative work just as easily. This
allowed me to spend some time focused on my own interest, the Isenheim Altarpiece
by Matthias Grünewald; there are
passages of colour in that image that I have never been able to get over, it
contains colour ideas I still use to this day. Looking at pictures of other art
with foundation students was rarely about historical fact, (this did depend who
was doing the looking, if it was Glynn, this was different, but he was dealing
with art history and contextual studies) you could think from the way the
images were talked about that they were painted yesterday. This was art
appreciation rather than art history. There was no sociological or anthropological
unpicking of the images, simply looking at them and talking about form and
colour. Meaning was restricted to how ‘life’ and ‘energy’ was given and
maintained. These paintings were seen as repositories of visual wonder, their
worth being that they were constructed to be seen ‘in the moment of now’, their
form being such that it eradicated the past tense. We would look at Georges de
La Tour to examine contrast of saturation. De La
Tour often had a sharp bright light moment in his work and large passages
of dark neutrals. There would be much debate over his work as to whether or not
the artist was relying on tone or colour to give energy to the image. Gradually
we would work our way through examples of Itten’s seven contrasts, of hue,
temperature, saturation, tone, extension as well as complementary and
simultaneous contrast. Often finishing with Pontormo’s Visitation, an image of
reds and greens being pushed together to create an electric moment of immanence
which would of course be spoken of as the artist recreating in colour the
moment of immaculate conception.
Back in the
studio we returned to mixing chromatic greys. Using the complementary mixing
systems from the day before a series of grey surfaces were made and left over
dinner to dry so that they could be cut into pieces. In the meantime the bags
of colours were re-examined for ranges of colour and sorted in different ways.
For instance we might look at saturation or tonal value.
The
afternoon was spent making a combination of collaged and painted responses to
Itten’s colour structures. These would range from a simple placing of a neutral
into a field of a warm and then placing the exact same neutral into a similar
sized field of cool colour in order to effect a temperature change, to very
painterly approaches, often looking at colour expansion. How much of a
particular yellow on a soft pink-white was needed before it said ‘yellow’ and
how much of the same yellow was needed when it was pushed up next to a light
green? This same yellow would then go up against a dark violet and it might
find itself reduced to a very thin line. It was important that these structures
were ‘organic’ and ‘found’ because colour needed to breath and needed to be
watched carefully. It was seen as a fickle beast that could easily become
dormant if you didn’t constantly keep kicking it back into life.
All of the
seven contrasts would be played with, but individual students might spend much
more time on one than another. There might be reference to different shapes
having different energies, such as the square being stable and at rest, the
triangle more spiritual or intellectual and the circle being in motion, but it
was argued it would be the forms between forms, those shapes that were neither one nor
the other that would be the ones to look for, as these had far more chance of
maintaining a life energy.
Again at the
end of the session there would be a ‘crit’ different staff pointing out various
things working in different ways. Colin would be looking for subtle tonal
variations, in particular he loved to find students exploring the mustard shades
within yellow, or the lilac tints of violet. Gavin was fascinated by proportion
and extension and Patrick just seemed to love greens. I was pretty happy with
most things, I was like a kid in a toyshop and probably if asked would say my
main enjoyment was putting the slide show together. I have always been fascinated
by how the same issues come up over and over again. I still have a tingle of
recognition when I look at a drawing from 30,000 years ago and know that
somehow, ‘I was there!’
(See also the
posts ‘Discords at 8 o’clock’ and ‘The hawk and the
handsaw’)
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