Modernity and Modernism lecture 1

• John Ruskin (1890-1900)

- art historian wrote about weather the works of modernism was better than classical writings 

-anti modernist - thought modernism had lost something essential 

-to him modern meant of their time (isn't this what contemporary means??)

• Paris 1900s

-original centre of modernity (before it was replaced by NYC in the 50s)

-Cities starting to form at the time - everyone squashed together but none really knows each other - shift from village life (alienation) - urbanisation 

-Humans shifting rules of nature - high speed travel - electric lighting (can control dun rise and sun set) - more confusing and dizzying 

-Secularisation happening at the time (turning away from religion toward reason)

-Impulsive sweeping away the old and bringing the new - i.e. the eiffel tower (giant iron structure - rep industry)

-Cities becoming the epicentre go life!!

• Haussman 1850s

-Employed to redesign the streets of Paris - i.e. The Grand Boulevard 

-Moved 'dangerous' things to the outskirts so that the centre is gentrified causing a split between the classes - upper in centre

• Psychology coming in to being

-Starting to study the brain and the effect of the modern world on it

• This social alienation and trappings of modern life is represented in lots of paintings - i.e. by Seurat- people appear like faceless robots painted in a mechanical anti - expressive way (pointillism)

Modernism is an attempt to distill all of these ideas and rapid developments visually - not just describing it but describing the experience of it -A PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT (making things better) - modernism is a range of styles that sprang from modernity 

• The advent of photography threatens art

-starts to become more about psychology - slowly more abstract and about deconstruction - moves in a new direction 

Colour Theory (Part 2)

Subjective Colour

Spectral colour is not a physical thing. It is evoked by a single wavelength (when it is reflected off a surface).

Chromatic Value = hue + tone = saturation

Johannes Itten came up with a series of 7 contrasts (describe problems we can face when working with colour) (cumulative contrasts):

1. Contrast of Tone - Monochromatic - differentiation (the purest form of this is our rods working out if something is light or dark)
2. Contrast of Hue - Not just if it is light or dark but what colour it is - what colour you recognise a set of wavelengths as (cone cells) - some colours jump forward more than others because of their hue (i.e. yellow comes forward on black and goes back on white)
3. Contrast in Saturation - how much hue a colour has (how bright a colour is)
4. Contrast of Extension - the amount of a certain colour on a colour fiend and how that reacts with the rest of the colour.. ?? - optical balance (balancing colour and using it as a device to draw focus to certain elements of the image - i.e making focus light bright colour in a pool of dark colours so it comes forward
5. Contrast of Temperature - the psychologically warmer colours - reds, orange. cooler colours - blues and greens. (when you look at cold to warm swatches optical mixing happens. - gradients appear that don't exist
6. Complementary Contrast - formed by sitting complementaries next to each other - make each other appear brighter - becomes really difficult to look at because it is so bright
7. Simultaneous Contrast - when all of these things are happening - when one colour changes how another looks - huge contrast - both are impossible to look at. 

Before this lecture I thought that complementaries looked really good together and I have now learned that they are unharmonious and just difficult to look at together. The only way to use them harmoniously is if they are muted versions of the primaries or if one is just an accent colour.

Colour Theory (part 1) Lecture

• Colour is infinite and dependent on whats around it (effects how we see colour)

• Spectral colour is a single wavelength in the visible spectrum (we see some wavelengths as the same - same colour)

• All light is made up of all the colours vibrating at different wavelengths

• We see colour when white light reflects off a surface (separates into colours)

• A white surface reflects lights (takes on colour of light). A black surface absorbs light (doesn’t take on colour properties of light - remains black) - blue paper plus red light = purple

• The sky has no colour- perceive it as blue because of the reflection of white light off all the particle

• At the back of the retina in the eye = rods - pick up black and white info / cones pick up colour (different types pick up different colours)

• A combination of red orange and green wavelengths of light make us see yellow. Does yellow actually exist?

• The only colours that we actually see are red green and blue - others are combinations

• How do you know that what you perceive as red is the same as what the person next to you sees as red? 

• Josef Albes and Johannes Itten - wrote theories about colour - studied principles (thought it was key to being a practitioner) - maybe checkout their books - Colour and Colour Studies

• Red, blue, yellow - primaries. mix two to make secondaries (i.e. red plus yellow = orange)

• Complementaries - chromatic opposites (i.e. blue and orange, green and red, yellow and purple)

• Mix complementaries (all three primaries) and you get a neutral (brown or grey depending on levels of each colour) - add white to this and you get a grey (optically cancelling out each others wavelengths)

• So basically colour of light is different from colour of media..

• Light colour mode - red, green, blue (RGB mode on a screen) - additive (white on a screen is made by mixing all primaries) 

• Media colour mode - cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK in physical pigment) - subtractive

• The primaries for one colour mode provide the secondaries for another - based on the same optical principles

• Chromatic value (colour) = hue + tone = saturation

• Tonal value is based on a colour's luminance (how much light it reflects) - as you mix more pigments into it it reflects less light 

• Tint = how much white you add to something (not becoming brighter but you are adding more light to it)

• Saturation - how pure a colour is - change its tint or tone to make it less saturated 

Overall, today's colour theory lecture was not particularly helpful to me because it was all stuff that I have already learnt in my History of Art, Biology and Painting alevels. However, it did bring things together nicely. One thing that I didn't already know was how the colours mixed in CMYK mode. This is something that I have always wondered.