In the realm of art, color is king. Color is what makes an immediate and direct appeal to the eye; it is the most sensual element in art. Cave paintings dating back to more than 30,000 years ago show traces of red, as if red had been a symbolic color of the tribe even before it became the color of art. This gives red a primacy over all other colors, something that has endured to the modern age. Blue came much later, first by the Egyptians around four thousand years ago, then by the Greeks who used lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones to make deep blue pigments for their paintings. Since then, blue never looked back, becoming the color that symbolizes emotional extremes – faith, hope, and peace on the one hand, and distance, sadness and depression on the other hand.
In modern art – the focus of today’s post – red and blue have again proved to be the most important colors. Piet Modrian’s abstract compositions are essentially grids demarcated by black lines on white backgrounds. What gives them their individuality is the disposition and colors of the rectangles within the geometric scheme. Ideally you have a little red, yellow and blue. You can do without the yellow, but a Mondrian without a touch of red or blue will somehow look less like a Mondrian.
Similarly, a work by Joan Miro, Marc Chagall or Henri Matisse needs a preponderance of blue. “Blue,” said Miro, “is the color of my dreams.” It is also the dominant color of some of the most iconic paintings by Chagall and Matisse.
This famous painting by the Fauvist painter, Henri Matisse depicts five figures inspired by classical Greek sculptures joining hand in a wild whirling dance. Their simplified forms are accentuated by a palette of just three colors: red for the bodies, blue for the sky and green for the hills. With this innovation, Matisse elevates the abstract relationship between shapes and color into one of paramount importance.
Pablo Picasso‘s most appealing pictures are those executed when he was at his most colorful (in the 1930s). Again it is hard to imagine a Picasso masterpiece from that period that does not primarily feature red and blue, helped out by a bit of yellow and green.
The Latvian-born American abstract painter, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is best-known for his Color Field pictures that feature roughly rectangular blocks of washed colors of red, blue, green and occasionally yellow.
Rothko considered color to an instrument that served a greater purpose – to convey emotions too deep for words. “I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, despair, doom and so on – and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate those basic human emotions.” he once said.
In 1953, when No. 2, Green, Red and Blue was made, Rothko was still using lighter tones, but as more years passed and Rothko’s mental health increasingly declined, his Color Fields were constituted by somber blacks, reds, deep blues, and grays. This can be seen in the next painting, No. 14, executed in 1960.
At almost nine-feet square, No. 14 is a large painting. It consists of a huge swath of reddish paint on top, taking up about two thirds of the space, with a rectangle of rich, brooding, dark cobalt blue below, both of these shapes floating dreamily on a muddy purple background. With this work, Rothko follows a trajectory traceable to Vincent Van Gogh in which he infuses his canvas with the color emotions of a painter’s intense, tortured, angst.
