That's really good, JLN. I still leaves open a subjective critical judgement of who is determined to be a colorist and who is not. I gave an example on the colorist thread of Titian to Pontormo. I can't even find the term in any major textbooks in the index or glossary. Scanning those artists mentioned in the Janson and Arnason books, two major college textbooks that I still have, I couldn't find it used at all.
Here's Wikipedia's defintion:
A colorist is an artist who colors comic art reading it for production as a comic book. Colorists often work in transparent media such as watercolors or airbrush, but modernly colorists often turn to computer assisted tools such as Adobe Photoshop. Comic coloring has been taken to new levels through the efforts of artists such as Brian Haberlin.
And the New American Dictionary:
1. A painter skilled in achieving special effects with color. 2. A hairdresser who specializes in dyeing hair.
Special effects. Special effects? We're now in the realm of Hollywood movies.
What a coincidence, LW. I was looking at a reproduction of Pontormo's "The Visitation" the other night and wondered if his fantastic palette in this painting qualified him as a "colorist." I asked myself if the colors in this painting were of greater importance than its drawing, composition and meaning.
LW.....Wikipedia's definition is closest to what I understand colorism to be.....colouring a tonal drawing or monochromatic underpainting with paint exquisitely. On a simple level, its like a child
colouring in a colouring book picture.....
sorry, I keep repeating myself!
shepaints I really don't agree with that definition - I think colourists have an much more involved approach than that. Colours are not used merely to be colourful but to create mood, vibrate against each other, enhance the glow of each other - a soft greeny grey making a rose pink glow etc. I wrote more on the colourist thread.
that sounds like the basis of a tonal painters painting.
Vivien, I think if I keep repeating this, I will
convince myself. My definition does includes using
colour exquisitely....
Hopefully, some illumination will arrive.....
I turn myself on with colors, but I do not have the technical expertise of a "colorist." Most of my color effects are accidental. They happen and I accept them or "correct" them. I just cannot anticipate with accuracy how a color or combination of colors will look until I actually put them on the paper or canvas--and I hate to do preparatory work: no patience with that. But I cannot wait to see how Vivien's "soft greeny gray [makes] a rose pink glow". I've at least got the spirit, if not the ability, of a colorist.
Vivien, I can really connect with what you say about a colorist's interests' involving mood, vibration, and enhancement--the evolution of subtle effects. Perhaps, the designation of "colorist" applies only to artists who habitually emphasize this transcendant use of color.
I think back to Lightwizard's mention of David Hockney. Here is an artist most definitely skilled in the use of color. However, what seems most highly emphasized in a great deal of Hockney's work--both in painting and photographic collage--is structure, especially structure that comes alive through his concentration on combining multiple perspectives. When the largest excitement in a Hockney seems to come from his use of perspective, do we still call him a colorist? It makes sense for me to refer to him as such only in those works in which he gives pre-eminent attention to the subtler effects of color.
None of my art professors and to my knowledge no art critic or historian has ever used the term to exclusively describe an artist's work -- it's only been used to describe the artist's work as skillfully using an extensive color pallette regardless of technique or style. Trying to redefine what it actually means may be entertaining mental gymnastics but I think the term should be avoided as suspiciously trite artspeak.
Yes, I want to avoid artspeak at all costs, but mental gymnastics helps keep us young.
Well, some turn somersaults in the brain to make their point and I think they get a bit dizzy. I'm astonished nobody called me on my obvious artspeak definition but I guess the bait was sniffed out. I think the horse has died on this one.
By gymnastics for the mind, I was not referring to stretching the truth or jumping to conclusions. (this has no reference to anything anyone has said here
)
I'm certainly not here to rewrite the art history textbooks nor to bemoan that the Yale dictionary ignores some of the over used terminologies of journalistic writers. Call them mental blackflips which fall to the floor
splat!
Flogged I believe, but interesting.
The question just occurred to me: How do we classify the so-called "color-field" painters, e.g., Clifford Still, Newman, Rothko, Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Sam Francis? Can they be considered colorists by any definition of the term?
JLN, Of the "color-field" painters you mention, I connect most powerfully with Rothko. Safe to assume that some of his great appeal for me has to do with his use of color! Most of his canvases "vibrate" for me in an arresting way, partly because of the interplay among the hues. Although I have seen Rothkos in which there is, for me, an immediate visceral appeal from some of the individual colors, more typically, a vibration I perceive induces, in me, an exhilarating meditative state. There's a lot of subtlety at work in Rothko, and some of it extends beyond color. Perhaps, his kind of absorption and finesse with color would allow us to call him a colorist, but I agree with Lightwizard that people are not apt to concur on just which specific artists are capital-C colorists. In fact, I'm becoming less inclined to use "colorist" as a defining noun; I am beginning to feel more comfortable with a phrase such as "Painter X has great skill as a colorist, as seen in Work Y"--meaning that he or she may show a variety of skills in various parts of his/her oeuvre , but, of this particular work, Y, the most highly-developed aspect is the color.
Another problem with the noun Colorist is that it seems to be confining. For example, I can call Rothko a Colorist, but the word is only part of what he's about. To term an artist a Colorist seems a summation, and, Rothko is much more than an artist who has exceptional talent with color. For instance, his compositional geometry is very important--even when considered exclusive of the colors--and it's so complex a topic, for me, that I'm not sure how to begin talking about it.
Miklos, a few minutes ago I would have iinsisted that Abers and perhaps Rothko are colorists. I would have reserved the label for painters, like Albers, who seem to be interested only in making statements about color, virtually ignoring content, composition, or drama. But I can see that composition IS a part of Albers' and Rothko's works (even Rothko's later works). Your last post gives good reason to refrain from using the label. I agree that it is "confining"; it unfairly reduces the painter to a single aspect--no matter how important that aspect--of his work. Color is only part of what they're about.
--edited on 1-7
I'd agree with that Miklos - I would tend to use it in that way rather than as a label like cubist.
