Color Theory in Modern Art
Color theory has given artists insight into their craft for centuries. During the Renaissance and throughout 17th and 18th century, the fundamentals of color theory helped artists skillfully render the observable world. However, as the era of Modern art emerged, artists began to use color theory to diverge from reality and experiment with visual perception.
History
While our knowledge of color has been evolving since ancient times, scientist Sir Isaac Newton laid the foundation for modern color theory when he developed the color wheel in the 1660s. Newton understood that various mixtures of light made color visible to the human eye. The three colors that could not be made by mixing--red, yellow, and blue--became known as primary colors. Newton drew a circular diagram, now called the color wheel, to showed how primary colors mix to create secondary colors and how secondary colors mix to create tertiary colors.
Around 1810, writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe enhanced Newton's theories by studying the perceptual effects of color. He divided colors into the "plus side" and the "minus side." "Plus" colors, such as red and orange, generated feelings of warmth while "minus" color, such as blue and green, generated feelings of coldness.
Early Application
Artists quickly adopted Newton's color wheel as a guide for their own art making. Prominent 18th-century painters like Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Antoine Watteau, who mainly depicted epic historical scenes or regal portraiture, used color theory to render skin, cloth and nature as convincingly as possible. In the 19th century, when Romanticism emerged, artists became more interested in color's emotional impact. By the time Modernism arrived at the turn of the 20th century, color theory in art had become less a tool for accuracy and more a vehicle for innovation.
Advancements
As artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee began using color to represent feelings and movements rather than reality, a new approach to color theory emerged. Swiss theorist Johann Itten explored "successive contrast," a phenomenon in which our brains create complimentary afterimages of the colors we observe. For instance, someone who looked at red would have a green afterimage.
By showing that people instinctively respond to color harmony and discord, Itten suggested that color can create dynamic perceptual experiences even if it isn't used to represent anything.
Modern Application
Modern artists became notorious for using color as the subject of their paintings. Kandinsky painted colorful circular patterns while Josef Albers painted squares of colors inside of each other in order to explore how we perceive light and hues. When Color Field painting became popular, artists like Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko would fill large canvasses with single colors.
Significance
The Modern approach to color theory emphasizes the complexity of our perception of light. Modern artists' work suggested that color could affect both mood and behavior. This laid the foundation for postmodern and contemporary artists who would continue the exploration, using neon, LED screens, film and other media to further experiment with perception.
