The ancient Egyptians and Greeks have experienced great joy of colorful forms. In China, already in ancient times there were many excellent artists. One of the emperors of the Han dynasty in the 80 years before our era arranged entire warehouses, museums collected his paintings, bowed before their beauty and colorfulness.
In the era of the Tang (618-907) in China, a wall painting and painting on wood, are extremely bright. At the same time opened new yellow, red, green and blue glaze for ceramics. In the era of Sun (90-1279) sense of color has become extremely sophisticated. Color in painting has acquired a wide variety of shades and with his help sought to achieve naturalistic. In the ceramics with the use of colored glazes many previously unknown beauty, like the beauty of the color of sea water or moonlight.
In Europe, remained brightly colored polychrome Roman and Byzantine mosaics of the first millennium of the Christian era. The art of mosaics based on osobomom respect to the possibilities of color, because each color plot consists of a set of point particles, and tsvnt each of them requires a careful selection. Ravenna Artists V-VI centuries were able to create different effects using of complementary colors. Thus, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is enveloped by an amazing atmosphere of gray. This impression is achieved due to the fact that the blue mosaic wall highlights ingerera orange light coming from the narrow windows of alabaster, painted in this color. Orange and blue - additional colors, mixing them gives gray.
Visitor of the tomb of all time is under the influence of different streams of light that alternately highlight it blue, then orange, the more so that the walls reflect it under a continuously varying angle. And it is this game creates the impression of floating gray color.
In the miniatures of the Irish monks VIII-IX centuries, we find a very diverse and sophisticated color palette. Striking by its brightness the pages on which a variety of colors are given with the same aperture. Achieved here scenic effects of the combination of cold and warm tones do not occur until the Impressionists and Van Gogh. Some lists of "Kellsskoy book on the logic of her color and the organic rhythm of the lines are great and pure as Bach's fugues.
Elegance and exquisite intelligence of these "abstract" miniature got its monumental continued in medieval stained glass windows. What at first in the manufacture of colored glass used only a small number of colors (because of this it produces several primitive impression), explains the possibility of the technique of making glass at that time. But even so, those who once saw the windows of Chartres Cathedral in changing lighting conditions, especially when the setting sun breaks out a large round window, turning in a magnificent finale, he will never forget the divine beauty of this moment. Artists Romance and rannegoticheskoy eras in their murals, easel paintings and used the symbolic language of color. To this end, they sought to apply certain, no sophisticated tone, seeking a simple and clear understanding of the symbolic colors and not carried away by searching multiple colors and color variations. The same problem was subject and form.
Painters Giotto and the Sienese school were the first who tried to individualize the human figure in shape and color, thereby ushering in a movement that has led in Europe, XV-XVII centuries. to the emergence of artists of many bright personalities. Brothers Hubert and Jan van Eiki in the first half of the XV century began to create paintings, compositional framework which determined the actual color images of people and objects. With these tones, through their fading and brightness, lighting, and opacity sound pattern more realistically approached similar.
Color becomes a means of transmission of natural things. In 1432 came Ghent Altarpiece, and in 1434 Jan van Eyck has created the first in the era of Gothic portrait - a double portrait of Arnolfini. Piero della Francesca (1410-1492) wrote to the people, sharply distinct shapes Mapping expressive colors, using complementary colors, which provide pictures of the picturesque balance. Rare colors themselves were typical of the frescoes of Piero della Francesca. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) refused colorful. He based his paintings on thin tonal transitions. His "St. Jerome" and "Adoration of the Magi" wholly written only sepia tones ranging from light to dark.
Titian (1477-1576) in his early works had uniform color plane in isolation from one another. Then he began to seek their association, moving gradually cool colors in warm, bright in the dark, washed in bright. The best example of such modulation is probably "La Belle" in the Palatine Gallery in Florence. The color characteristics of his later paintings they formed the basis of one of the main tone in its various shades. And as an example of such an approach - a picture of the Coronation of Thorns ", located in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
El Greco (1545-1614) was a pupil of Titian. He suffered his study of the principles of multi-tone pictures on the large, expressive canvases of his paintings. The peculiar, often stunning color coloring El Greco has ceased to be the actual color of objects and transformed into an abstract, expressive and psychological means to express the theme of the work. That is why El Greco is considered the father of non-objective painting. Color, organizing a purely pictorial polyphony paintings, has lost its value subject category.
Century earlier Grunewald (1475-1528) solved the same problems. While El Greco has always, in a characteristic manner, connects the chromatic colors black and gray tones, Grunewald contrasted one color to another. Of the so-called objectively existing color substance he could find a color for each motif paintings. Izenheymsky altar in all its parts demonstrates a variety of color characteristics, color effects and color expression, which is true can speak of him as a universal intellectual color compositions. "Annunciation", "Chorus of Angels", "Crucifixion" and "Resurrection" is a picture quite different from one another as a drawing, and in color. For the sake of artistic truth Grunewald even donated a decorative unity of the altar. Order to remain truthful and objective, he put himself above the rules of scholasticism. In his art psychologically expressive power of color, its symbolic and spiritual nature and the possibility of transmission of realistic truth, ie color in all its three components of exposure alloyed together in the name of semantic depth, work.
Rembrandt (1606-1669) considered to be the painter of light and shade. Though Leonardo, and Titian, El Greco and enjoy the contrasts of light and shadow as expressive means of Rembrandt it happened quite differently. He felt the color as a solid matter. Using transparent shades of gray and blue or yellow and red, pictorial matter, he created the most profound impact strength, the mother living their own amazing spiritual life. Using a mixture of tempera and oil paints, he achieved a texture, which produced an unusually suggestive effect. In Rembrandt became materialized color of light energy, full of tension, and pure color of light, just as vysverkivayut precious stones out of the darkness of their frames.
El Greco and Rembrandt bring us into the very center of the color problems Baroque. In extremely tense composition of baroque architecture of the space is constructed, rhythmically dynamic. This trend is subject and color. It loses its substantive significance and becomes an abstract way ritmizirovaniya color space and ultimately used to enhance the illusion of space.
Work of the Viennese artist Maulberga (1724-1796) clearly demonstrate the principles of Baroque works with color.
In painting, the era of Empire and Classical color schemes in fact limited to the use of black, white and gray color, which were enlivened by several moderately chromatic colors.
Such a realistic, restrained style of painting has been superseded by Romanticism. Start the Romantic movement in art is identified with the work of British artists, with the names of Turner (1775-1 851) and Constable (1776-1837).
In Germany, the largest representatives of romanticism were Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) and Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810). Artists of this direction the use of color, primarily as a means of emotional impact that can convey "mood" of landscape. In Constable's paintings, for example, there is a uniform green color, since he created it from the smallest of gradual transitions from light to dark, from cold to warm, from the tonal faded to bright.
As a result, the surface color impression of the living and the mysterious. Turner created several non-objective color compositions that suggest his first "abstractionist" among European artists.
Delacroix (1798-1863), while in London, saw the works of Constable and Turner, the color scheme that made him so impressive that on returning to Paris he rewrote some of his work in the same spirit, and it caused a sensation at the Paris Salon 1820 year. The problems of color and its laws Delacroix actively engaged in his life. Can safely say that by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the color of his act and began to bring the essence of general interest.
In 1810, Philipp Otto Runge published his theory of color, using color ball as the coordinating system. The same was published in 1810 and major work on Goethe's color, and in 1816 appeared a treatise Schopenhauer's "Vision and color." Chemist and director of the Paris factory tapestry M Chevrel (1786-1889) published in 1839 his work "On the law of simultaneous contrast of colors and the choice of colored objects. This work provided the scientific basis and neoimpressionisticheskoy Impressionist painting.
Through a deeper study of the nature of the Impressionists came to an entirely new system of transfer of color. Study of the sunlight changes the natural colors of objects, as well as light in the atmosphere of natural environment enriched impressionists new scientific knowledge. Claude Monet (1840-1926) so diligently studied this phenomenon, which was forced to change the linen every hour to fix the color-changing reflections of the landscape and truthfully convey the movement of the sun and the corresponding changes of sunlight and its reflections. The best illustration of this method were his "Cathedrals", situated in Paris.
Neoimpressionisty broke the color on the surface of specific color points. They argued that each pigmentarnoe mixing destroys the force of color. Points of pure color should be mixed only in the eyes of the viewer. Chevrel book "The Science of Color" rendered them invaluable assistance in thinking about the expansion of color.
Building on the achievements of Impressionism, Cezanne (1839-1906) logically come to their new system for constructing a color paintings. He wanted to make of impressionism something "solid", which was to form the basis of color and formal patterns of his paintings. Hoping to come to a new rhythmic and formal construction, Cezanne used the pointillist technique developed for the separation of color modulation of the entire surface of the paintings. Under the modulation of color he understood it transitions from cold to warm, from light to dark or dull (deaf) to luminous. Obeying this principle, of the entire picture plane, it reached their new sound, impressive in its vitality.
Titian and Rembrandt have used color modulations only when the image of individuals and human figures. Cezanne also worked through the whole picture in its formal, rhythmic and chromatic unity. In his still life "Apples and oranges" is a new unity is extremely obvious. Cezanne sought to recreate nature on a higher level. For this he mainly used the effects of contrasts of cold and warm tones, giving a light airy feeling. Cezanne, Bonnard and after him, painted entirely built on the contrast of cold and warm tones.
Henri Matisse (1869-1 954) refused to color modulations and turned to an impressively simple and bright color planes, placing them in the subjective sensibilities of equilibrium with respect to each other. However, Braque, Derain, Vlaminck, he belonged to the Parisian group of "wild".
Cubists Picasso, Braque and Gris used to identify the color of light and shadow. First of all they were interested in form, transforming the objects into abstract geometric-cal figures and seeking their impressions of volume with tonal gradation.
Expressionists Munch, Kirchner, Heckel, Nolde and the artists group "Der Blaue Reiter (Kandinsky, Marc, Macke, Klee) again tried to return the painting of her psychological and spiritual content. The purpose of their creation was the desire to express the color and shape of their inner spiritual experience.
Kandinsky began writing non-figurative painting around 1908. He argued that each color has its inherent spiritual and expressive value that can send higher emotional distress, without resorting to the image of real objects. In Stuttgart Adolf Heltselya formed around a group of young artists who attended his lectures on color theory, based on the discoveries of Goethe, Schopenhauer and Bezold.
Between 1912 and 1917 in various parts of Europe, completely independently of each other working artists, whose works could be together under the general notion of "concrete art". Among them were Kupka, Delaunay, Malevich, Itten, Arp, Mondrian, and Vantongerlo. In their non-figurative paintings, mostly geometric shapes and pure spectral colors were actually operating as objects. Intellectually conscious shape and color becomes a means of creating a clear order in the picturesque constructions.
Later Mondrian made a further step forward. He, like Giri, used pure yellow, red and blue as a constructive material, paintings, where the shape and color to create the effect of static equilibrium. He seeks neither to latent expressiveness, nor to the intellectual symbolism, but in real, optically distinguishable specific harmonic constructions.
Surrealists Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and others to use color as a means to implement its picturesque "unreal images."
As tashistov, they were "illegal" in terms of color and form. The development of chemistry of paints, fashion and color pictures caused a broad general interest in color, with a sense of color, many people much refine. However, the contemporary interest in color is almost entirely visual material in nature and ignores the meaning and spiritual experiences. This is superficial, external game with metaphysical powers. The color of the radiated power, energy, act upon us positively or negatively, regardless because we are conscious of it or not. The old masters who created the stained glass windows, use color to create ethereal, mystical atmosphere and meditations of the congregation, moving them into the world of spiritual reality. Color, indeed, must be experienced not only visually, but psychologically and symbolically. Nature of color can be studied from different perspectives.
- All this from
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