Value and Subtractive Color Exploration

Color wheels and value scales are always good exercises. Knowing how to mix colors certainly isn't one of my strong points. I originally didn't read the assignment very carefully, and thought that I already had the correct paint colors--blue, red, and yellow. I had to run to the art store to grab cyan and magenta after I realized my mistake. I never remember that cyan and magenta are the "true" primary colors you use in order to mix all the other colors. Seeing the results, though, you can tell that they made much better secondary colors--especially the green. Both my scanner and my camera didn't do a great job of capturing the value scale--the last few boxes all look fairly white. When I tried to go darker it made the middle values look the same, so I went back to how it was.

Typically, I enjoy drawing over painting. In this controlled exercise, however, painting was more fun. As I had to buy new paint and paintbrushes anyway, I may try to paint more often. I always kind of groan at the idea of mixing colors, but maybe now it will seem easier. I kind of wish I had drawn my scale in charcoal rather than pencil, as the graphite was so shiny on the black side and faint on the other, it was hard to take a picture of. Charcoal seems easier to go from very dark to very light, with many gradations in between.

The most important discovery I had was how you really can mix the paints to get a pretty good black. I know that many painters shun using blacks that come from a tube, and always mix their own from other colors, since it's so rare to see actual blacks in nature. I had to play with my mixture a little bit to get it looking black-ish, but the end result turned out pretty well. It's not the deepest, darkest black, but that's probably a good thing.

As stated above, the most important thing I learned from the videos would be the superiority of cyan and magenta over blue and red. When the "historic" primaries were used (blue, red, and yellow), the orange, purple, and green all seemed too dark. As seen in the video and in my picture, the "real" primaries created much better secondaries. Would the "red" that was created from magenta and yellow make a better orange if mixed with the yellow than the "historic" primary red did?

The Otis College video about creating a value step scale seemed a little too complex for the simplicity of the exercise. It seems like teaching someone to sharpen their pencil with an exacto knife should be in a more advanced how-to video. Also, he was covering up his shaded in boxes with a piece of paper, so as not to smudge them. It seems like that would make the project more difficult, as you wouldn't be able to compare the square you're working on to the one you just finished. I preferred the color wheel video, which was more about the heart of the matter, not about trying to be funny or overly complicated.

Photography Reflection Journal

The time I had outside and taking photos was very enjoyable. It was fun coming upon scenes that would fit different elements and principles. The only outdoor scene I had that was preplanned was the willow tree for movement--I thought the arching bend of the willow tree, where the cascading leaves practically reach the roots, allowed the eye to move nicely around the photo. It was interesting how some elements kept popping up in nature, whereas others were harder to find. Textures, for instance, were very easy to come by. While you would think color would be easy, I kept putting it off, trying to find a really interesting example of color, and ended up putting it off too long and having to use something at home (the analogous drawing pads). While color was of course everywhere, I was having trouble finding interesting color schemes that showed up well on the camera. That was one problem I was having--some of the details I was trying to capture weren't showing up very well with my digital camera. This was especially true for my flower-related photos.

I wasn't sure if we were allowed to take photos of artworks that are good examples of a particular element. The sculpture for proportion was too good to pass up, however, so I hope that's okay. It seemed better than just taking a photo of a painting. My favorite would probably be my image for line. I like how the lines of the brick follow inorganic shapes, and are layered on top with some nice descending organic lines. Harmony and variety probably caused me the most trouble. I wasn't sure how exaggerated the "sameness" and "differentness" should be for my examples of those principles. Harmony, especially, ended up being a pattern that was filled with the same geometrical shapes and colors. The sameness is such an extreme that it might verge on boring. My variety, on the other hand, was perhaps not different enough. It was one of the examples of the flowers being overpowered by the green that surrounds them more than I expected.

In hindsight, I wish more of my photographs had been more "meaningful." At the time, I was charmed by the nice day and was focused on capturing the different elements, but not all of them are as artful as I would like. As I said, I like the line, and rhythm, value, and form have their merits. I wish the composition was a bit better in my space, for I'm noticing now that it's a little crooked, and that is such an interesting space. I'd like to try this project again sometime, and look more into creating beautiful photographs that at the same time (perhaps subtly) possess these elements and principles.

My slide show can be found at: http://s1208.photobucket.com/albums/cc370/higginrc01/?albumview=slideshow
Or here:

Color as Emotion

Color is an element of art that has seen its purpose change over the centuries. It is no longer simply used to mirror reality. Now, it also is used to convey emotions. While how we interpret color is highly subjective, there are some universal guidelines. "Cool" colors, for instance, tend to have a soothing effect. They are calming. Cool colors tend to be shades of blues. Reds, on the other hand, are "warm" colors, which are more energetic and dramatic. The intensity of a color, too, affects our emotional response to it. The purer the color, the higher the intensity, and the more vibrant it will appear. These colors are lively. Adding value to a work, the relative lightness or darkness, will make the work appear more dramatic, and could also make it feel more mysterious and eerie. Monochromatic colors, which are composed of variations of the same color, will appear much more soothing than complimentary colors, which are opposite on the color wheel. Complimentary colors will increase the intensity of each other, and can sometimes almost hurt to look at them.

The aspect of color that interests me the most would have to be the idea of optical color mixture. While I'm not a huge fan of Seurat in general, I am fascinated by the science behind his style of painting, which is pointalism. Seurat does not use brushstrokes, but instead paints thousands of tiny dots onto his canvases. He does not mix his colors on his palette, but instead paints different colors right next to each other, and lets the viewer's mind do the work. The color of the dot radiates away from itself, and alters the dots around it. When standing back, they mix in the mind. I like how it gives Seurat's work a shimmering quality. It gives his paintings a lightness that might not exist if painted with brush strokes. It is almost reminiscent of the sand mandalas we were learning about: it feels like one breath could blow the entire painting away. It gives his A Sunday on La Grande Jatte some much needed frivolity, what with its blocks of color actually being formed by several different colors, sometimes on the opposite end of the color wheel.

In the Color video, the thing that made the biggest impact on me would be how "wrong" June Redfern's painting initially seemed. I like her use of vibrant colors in her other works, but seeing as she was trying to capture the colors of Venice, it just seemed off, and she didn't like it herself. It was too much of a highly saturated red next to a highly saturated blue: it radiated in a way that didn't fit the soothing Venice scene. When I imagine Venice, I imagine more or a terra cotta color: a light, brownish red, that feels old, not the fire-red she was using. The blue felt more like something in a stormy ocean than the still water that that surrounded the buildings of Venice. In the end, however, she did tone down her painting. The end piece, with its softer colors was much more tranquil. The red now has a lot more yellow and orange in it, which makes the work much more analagous than complimentary. The water is almost clear. These colors do not fight for the eye's attention like complimentary colors do.  Redfern refers to Venice as outdoors, but feeling like indoors. I think she means that there should be a feeling of comfort. In the end, she does indeed convey that feeling. 

In the Feelings: Emotions and Art video, I was more drawn to Francisco Goya. Personally, it seemed to me he used color more effectively  than Jacques-Louis David, though in fairness it's probably easier to convey the dark, shameful aspects of human nature in color than the more noble ones. Especially in Saturn Devouring his Children, Goya paints chillingly and hauntingly. The background is a black void. Out of the shadows emerges a monstrous thing--an act of calculated insanity. Saturn is red-tinged, and the painting is monochromatic. The area of the most vibrant red is the blood leaking from the decapitated child, which is now reduced to a Thing. The deprivation of the scene is emphasized by the contrasting whiteness of Saturn's wide eyes. Value is at work here, as in many Goya paintings. The shading of Saturn's body reminds one of something vile that just emerged from a dark corner. When I first saw this painting, I couldn't get it out of my head. I can't imagine having it painted on the wall of my house, where the white eyes would glow at me in the night. I almost wish David had painted it, as he was a first-hand witness to the horrors that went on during the French Revolution. As Saturn eats his own children, France killed its own citizens. It was Goya who was privy to the inner, subconscious horrors of humanity, however. Through color he captured what most wish to be kept hidden. 
 

The Brain: Where Science Meets Art and Aesthetics

Scientists are discovering more evidence every day that our conscious actions are being controlled by our subconscious. As it turns out, though it's not terribly surprising, our emotional responses we feel toward pieces of art are controlled in much the same way. Long before the technology of brain mapping existed, however, philosophers were puzzling over what makes art Art, and what role beauty played.

The trend in the philosophy of Aesthetics (which is the study of the nature of Art and Beauty and how our senses react and respond to them) has been from a very tight definition of what constitutes art to a very loose one. It has also moved from valuing beauty above all else to all but dismissing it entirely. As the video Aesthetics: Philosophy of the Arts demonstrates, questions concerning the nature or art reached as far back as the fifth century BCE in Athens, the time and place of Plato. For him, art was deplorable, and only Beauty mattered. An image, he believed, was an imperfect idea of the real thing, and artists were merely aping, unsuccessfully, the Ideal version of the thing. Beauty, on the other hand, can only be contemplated as the real thing, not just a "copy of a copy," as Plato referred to art. In order to appear beautiful, it has to be conveying its own true nature of Beauty.

Aristotle, however, defended art as something that aroused strong emotions, and promoted good citizenship. From there, Neoclassical Aesthetics in the Renaissance developed the concept of "aesthetic disinterestedness," which meant that in order for a work of art to be appreciated as a work of art, it must cease to be seen for its practical use. People, like the Earl of Sharpsburg, spoke of how only those with historical and contextual knowledge and a fine sensibility could appreciate the Aesthetics of art. Kant put forth that humans were attracted to it because it did not bend to natural or social laws, and the judgment of what is art or beautiful is not rule-bound or universal, and that art can only be created by the "Genius artist," not mere skilled craftspeople. In the 19th century, Hegel asserted that art had reached an end--with Romanticism, art had reached its most spiritual and emotional while still imitating nature.

By declaring that art had gone as far as it could in that regard, art became more and more abstract and conceptual, with the Impressionists beginning this trend. Shopenhauer believed music, the most abstract form of art of all, to also be the highest form of art. By the 20th century, philosophers like Weitz were stating that to define art was impossible, for their were "no necessary and sufficient conditions" that could make something art. Instead of trying to determine what is and isn't art, one's time was better spent determining the concepts and meanings behind artwork, which is what the Conceptualists would focus on. Dewey's belief of art as closely tied to societal rather than personal feelings is probably still how many artists work today. No longer is the viewer just an observer, but he or she also informs the work of its meaning.

In CARTA: Neurobiology Neurology and Art and Aesthetics, two men of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux and Vilayanur Ramachandran, try to explain art and aesthetics in scientific terms. With the evolution of human beings, art became more refined at the same time that the human brain was getting bigger. There are, in fact, Darwinian reasons behind our appreciation of certain art elements. "Grouping" appeals to us so much, for instance, because it was used as a way of detecting potential predators. The neurological connection to the appeal of the "rules" of art is evident in the mapping of human brains, where the brain is clearly more stimulated and active for art that is, for instance, symmetrical, than art that is not. The evolutionary reason behind this would be that, in nature, symmetrical things would probably either be a potential mate, predator, or prey. Therefore, our brains are jolted into alertness when symmetry is presented. These theories almost feel disheartening. They appear to be proof for the belief that art can be scientifically created by just following certain principles of design, as Dow believed.

As I stated in the chapter two discussion, the philosopher's theory that I believe is currently the most important is Morris Weitz, the 20th century philosopher who believed that when people were asking "what is art?" they were asking the wrong question. A specific theory and definition about art cannot be done. He states in The Role of Theory in Aesthetics that "If we actually look and see what it is that we call 'art,' we will find no common properties" and that "Aesthetic theory is a logically vain attempt to define what cannot be defined...to conceive the concept of art as closed when its very use demands its openness." It is better, according to him, to instead explore the functioning of this open concept of art. Art is not what is dead, as Hegel declared, but the ability to define what can and can't be art is.

Changeux and Ramachandran's lectures were very intriguing. Changeux was admittedly hard to understand, both because of his heavy accent and the scientific vocabulary he was using. Both lecturers explained how different parts of the brain are stimulated by "underlying principles" of Aesthetics, and this is proof of a neurological connection. What I found interesting about Ramachandran's lecture was his explanation of the Peak Shift principle. He explains that people crave art that does not just depict reality, but depicts a hyper-reality--a reality that's more "real" than reality itself. This phenomenon occurs in nature--a baby bird will peck at the red dot on the mother bird's beak in order to be fed. When presented with the option of pecking the mother's beak or a stick that has an even bigger red dot on it, the baby bird will chose the stick instead, even though it does not resemble a beak or bird at all. This is because the abstract version of the beak still has the characteristic that matters most to the bird, only exaggerated. In the bird's mind, it is the mother load of all beaks. This is why people appreciate abstract art--it still retains the qualities of things familiar to us, just minus the superfluous information.

What I found most interesting about Changeux was not his compare-and-contrast brain maps. Instead, it was something he said about how, during the processing of the visual image through the limbic system to the prefrontal cortex (I could be getting this wrong), an "evocation of stored images and emotions" takes place, and this yields a subjective experience. Changeux is admitting that not everything about art can be determined through the instincts our brains have developed over thousands of years. In the end, it is still about the individual's personal experience that determines how they perceive and react to a work of art.

These videos added more of a context to the topics that have been covered in the textbook readings. We have learned about the major themes that can be found in art, and these videos help us understand why those themes are appealing to us.  From the textbook we learned about the tools we need in order to understand the meanings of art--such as form, content, context, and iconography--tools that we utilize consciously. From the videos, on the other hand, we learn about how we react to art subconsciously. By understanding both our conscious and subconscious means of interpreting art, we can better understand why we feel a certain way about a particular piece of art or movement.

I almost wish the first film could have been an assigned reading instead of a video. I would have rather read about the evolving philosophy of Aesthetics, because many names and theories were mentioned very quickly without going into much detail. It was hard to keep up and keep them straight, and fully understand what was meant. Because Aesthetics was not very fully explained in the textbook, however, it was nice to at least of an abbreviated history of the philosophy. The video gave more of a context for the themes and movements we learned about in the book, such as Romanticism. After all, art movements were shaped by the current prevailing opinion on what constitutes art, and vice versa. The second film explained why artworks such as Rathnasambhava, the Transcendent Buddha of the South are so appealing to the eye, through techniques like symmetry. Or how it does not matter that Susan Rothenberg's Maggie's Ponytail is not realistic, because it utilizes the Peak Shift principle and still depicts the essence of a ponytail. In the end, the videos and text explain the simple fact that there are many reasons one comes to make an artwork, and there are many ways of interpreting it. Some of these methods are biological and universal, and some of them are unique to the individual. Hopefully, there will always be at least a little mystery behind what makes a person fall in love with a work of art.

Blog No. One

1. Creating the Gmail account and setting up the blog was fairly simple, though I kind of wish I didn't have to have another gmail account, not that it's a big deal.

2. I expect to gain a more comprehensive view of the art world and its movements. I expect to learn how to more thoughtfully express my views and opinions, and learn how to have an intelligent conversation about artwork. Hopefully I retain the vast majority of what I learn so I can pass it on to future art students.

3. This is my first online course, and I kind of wish I was taking more this semester, as my class times are rather spread out. It seems like it will be a lot of hard work, of course, and a good amount of readings, which is what I'm most nervous about, as I'm a pretty slow reader!