ARTH 385 Colour: Theory and Application in the Visual Arts

• Thursdays, 15:00-17:30
• EV-1-615
• Instructor: Ernestine Daubner

From ancient times to the present, color has been studied by a diverse group of philosophers, poets and scientists as well as by artists, art historians and theorists.  For this reason, the study of color necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. In this course, we will examine the links between Newtonian color physics and art practice; we will assess how physiological color studies relate to the ocularcentric basis of modernist art; and we will study how traditional and contemporary philosophical positions inform or coincide with color practice.

This multi-faceted study of color theory and practice will center on specific themes and problems:  the changing perceptions of the relationship between color and light; the significance of the color-line debate in terms of larger societal and cultural issues; the correlation between the quest to understand the ontological nature of color and the changing perception of the human subject.

These issues will prompt us to examine examples of paintings from the Renaissance to the present.  We will, for example, study the color practices of Giotto, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian and Gentileschi, of Rubens and Poussin.  We will proceed by examining how color science influenced the paintings of Turner and Delacroix, of early Modernists such as Monet, Seurat, Matisse, Sonia and Robert Delaunay as well as Late Modernists such as Josef Albers, Hans Hofmann, Barnett Newman and Helen Frankenthaler.  This study will also include a study of the significance of Canadian colorists such as Alfred Pellan, Jack Bush, Guido Molinari, Claude Tousignant and Yves Gaucher.  We will also assess how certain contemporary art practice and theory dismantle traditional notions of color as a universal and objective phenomenon.