Is it merely serendipitous good fortune
that there is a major exhibition on Colour at the National Gallery as well as
screenings of A History of Art in Three Colours just as I begin Part 3 of the
Art of Photography – Colour? Or is
colour constantly explored in this way but I’ve never noticed before because
I’ve not really been looking out for it.
It does seem a bit weird, to be honest - perhaps fortunate
nevertheless.
I have found colour incredibly
difficult to grapple with. The theory in
a way may as well be a maths problem (not my forte) for all the sense it makes
to me at the moment. Why should green
and red be complimentary just because someone put them on the opposite sides of
a circle? They seem in my mind to clash
dreadfully but of course I must be wrong and if I think about Christmas time,
certainly here in Northern Europe, the base colours of the commercial Christmas
palate seems to be red and green which is always extremely nostalgic, warming
and inviting (although for some I believe the time itself rather than the colours are alienating, depressing and even
horrific, Christmas being one of the worst times for suicide although of course
that may just be apocryphal). Nevertheless I’m at times utterly confused and had to reread the following several times, go back and
look at the colour circle plus the definition of complimentary colours to make
sure I’d not got it completely wrong;
‘I have tried to express the terrible
passions of humanity by means of red and green…( )...Everywhere there is a
clash of the most disparate reds and greens…”[1]
Vincent Van Gough said about his
painting The Night Café. Having looked at the painting more closely, however, I begin to
see that it is the yellow in the painting that is a contrasting colour to red but a similar colour to green if I’m
understanding things correctly, which seems to give the painting a sense of unease
rather than the red and green. Lots of conflicting energy between the various colours.
I hoped that by visiting the Colour
exhibition I would feel less confused and frankly at times bewildered by the whole
colour aspect of things. But although I
enjoyed looking at some of the paintings I didn’t feel any the wiser when I
came out.
It was however fascinating to learn at the
exhibition and when I watched some of the History of Art in 3 Colours about
just how important colour has been over the centuries. (I most enjoyed learning about Yves Klein in the BBC 4 documentary and
his obsession with blue, although that was far beyond the time that the
exhibition was looking at.)
The art was European and spanned the years
from the early Renaissance up to the Impressionists. The two things I enjoyed seeing the most was
Turners paint box which was a wonderful object to actually look at and Monet’s Lavercourt under Snow (1878 – 1871). It seemed to me that you could feel the icy
cold. I
read that the Impressionists frequently used ‘half shadows tinted with the complimentary
(opposite) colour of the highlights’[2]. I tried this in Lightroom on a landscape I’d
taken to see if I could give it an Impressionist feel – it didn’t work but I
will have another go when I have photographed something suitable.
I do feel that although colour has been a challenge something of what I am learning is sinking in, if only that one can achieve specific effects by thinking of colours and how they work together or don't. I give more advice about choosing colours to my clients - all gleaned and borrowed (very honesty I might add!) from the Internet and it has without a doubt had an impact on the potential for more satisfying commercial family orientated images - the sort that people will want to pay me to take.
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