Color and its Effects on Emotion

Color has been used in art to manipulate our feelings and push forth an emotional response from works of art for centuries.  Whether we are speaking of the old cave paintings of our ancestor or the beautiful works of art that line famous buildings though out the world.  Our assignment this week was to explore this phenomenon of color and its effects on how a painting is perceived and what emotions are almost implied.  There are two videos that I observed and a website that really shows the way colors are mixed in both additive and subtractive qualities.  The links for the videos and color tool are as follows:

•  Elements of Art
• Color
• Feelings: Emotion and Art

The Elements of Art site has some really neat visual aids for showing the user how color changes based on how it is mixed and contrasted.  There are a plethora of tools on the side bar that can really show you the way mixing paints or pigments varies by comparison to light.  You will at least gain some perspective from this site if you are not well versed in the art of color mixing.

Emotions tie into the color of art in so many ways.  The intensity or saturation of a contrasting color can add a warm feeling to a painting but it also holds the ability to add a darkness to a piece.  The color harmonies or color schemes used on pieces can give you a bold and aggressive feeling with the use of warm colors used in analogous pieces with a consistent yellow to yellow-orange to orange and touching on red.  That same work redone on the opposite side of the color wheel would have a completely different emotional presence; you would no longer feel warm and bold at the very least.

I think what is most interesting on the theory of color is how there is actually more than one!  This was unknown to me.  I was under the impression that there was one law that explained the hows and the whys of all things color.  Our text book says "Different theorists have constructed different color wheels, but the once shown here is fairly standard." (Getlein, Living With Art, pg.89)  Honestly I thought the only variations where how many wedges you wished to include to show the colors mix into different hues.

In the Color video I was surprised on how many times the artist changed her mind on the color scheme.  She had kept the general concept though out the pieces conception but her idea of cool and warm colors was really personal to her.  I thought her final work was a little dark for the actual scene that she was painting.  I had to go back 2 times to see her work in the original site to get a feel for the colors she was trying to incorporate.  Her emotional tie to the work displayed in the church and her need to keep those colors integrated I think really forced her to rework that painting so many times because she was not getting the emotional connection herself.  If I were to not know what her color inspiration was, I would have guessed she saw this scene at dusk when the sun was very low and she wanted capture that moment.

The Feelings video developed more around the history of the times of art and how the pieces of their time used color to emphasis the emotion of the scene.  They showed us how the pre Renaissance era used bright colors and life like paintings to show the growth of knowledge.  Moving into the Enlightenment era when these same principles where used to depict the righteousness of God.  The use of color here was shown on two sides.  Where you saw brightly colored handsome people you were assured of nobility or perceived a divine quality.  On the other side where the colors were dark and kept to the earth tones we could feel the lower class being portrayed and the sinners being judged.  The use of color to divide good and evil was as common theme and even the use of bright detail and hazy dark backgrounds where used to show and emanate the feeling of depth.