colourists/colourism - define and discuss?

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jln suggested a thread on this topic and I think it's a great idea - he doesn't like creating topics - he says it's too much like school essays!

so ... here goes - a discussion started on the modernist thread about the definitions of a colourist painter (you've got the proper English spelling as I started it too Very Happy

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I'll copy and paste the first points made:

Lightwizard said: Matisse is likely the most famous colorist. It's not just being unafraid of color but balancing the chroma on the picture plane. It become a significant part of the composition as a visceral excitement to the eye. As far as the use of color as dominating the painting, I'll take De Kooning any day.

Portal Star said: I wouldn't go so far as to call matisse a colorist. He, a fauvist, mostly used paint straight out of the tube.

a colorist is someone who has sensitivity to color and color handling in their work, and you can't get very much specificity when you don't make the colors yourself.

Color was important in his work, but he wasn't a colorist.

Vivien said: I absolutely agree with your definition and reservations Portal.

jln said: Good, Portal Star. I wouldn't disagree with Lightwizard's proposition, but I like that you have qualified it. He now has a stimulus for "refining" or elaborating his position--if he will. I have little to say in this regard. I consider myself on this point to be in the pedagogical stage. I'm hoping to develop a clear position after seeing what the more advanced among us have to say.

any further comments?

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I think being a colourist painter is about a lot more than simply using beautiful colours and balancing them in the composition - to me a colourist painter is one who uses colour in a special way, so that colours vibrate and play off each other or shadows are full of subtle colours, there is a really special element to the way in which they use colour.

Matisse uses colour in a very pleasing way but as Portal said, uses them bright and neat rather than mixing any subtle colours at all.

Gwen John is more of a colourist to me.

defintion for online dictionary: COLORIST TRADITION: In the history of art, there is an imaginary line of development moving from early colorists like the Venetian painters, who ostensibly placed more emphasis on color than on line, design, or concept, to later colorists like the Impressionsists, some of whom went so far in stressing colour over drawing and composition that their works appear quite amorphous, like veils of colored light. Of course, this is an over-generalization. The Venetians, for example, were fully capable of complicated composition and conceptual sophistication, but the notion is that their greatest contribution in general was a new attitude to the priority of color and light, as is the case for the Impressionists, who were also fully capable of, say, conceptual allegory when they wanted to be. The distinction seems to have arisen from old sources like Vasari's Lives of the Artists, in which Northern Italian colore was identified as fundamentally different in nature from Roman disegno (drawing or design). That distinction, by the way, is why there so much controversy during the late 20th-century cleaning of the Sistine Chapel, when Michelangelo's colors were revealed to be quite bright. The conservative opinion was that this could not be right, since he was renowned for disegno, not colore. In any case, his work remains different in nature since even with bright colors, it remains a matter of brightly tinted drawings, whereas Venetian painting clearly functions a different way visually. Nowadays, to say that an artist works in the "colorist tradition" is to say only that he or she produces work which could occupy a point on that imaginary line. http://www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/c_list.html

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article:

It was Gertrude Stein who claimed to have brought them together:
"Hitherto, Matisse had never heard of Picasso and Picasso had never heard of Matisse," confided the American writer to her diary. She was wrong. Although Gertrude and her brother, Leo, did take Henri Matisse to Pablo Picasso's studio some time in March 1906, the two men were so famous they could hardly not have known of each other.Anyway, Gertrude's attempt at artistic match-making was not exactly a wild success. Matisse took one look at the dun-coloured portrait the Spaniard was painting of Ms Stein and sniffed a mordant French sniff. Picasso, for his part, took in his rival's deeply un-Bohemian collar and tie and sniffed right back.
As the wonderful new exhibition at Tate Modem shows, the Matisse-Picasso marriage was not destined to be made in heaven. For nearly three centuries, French art had divided into two warring camps. On one side were those painters and critics who insisted that the skill of any artist lay in his handling of colour (or, to give it its Renaissance Italian tag, colore ). Ranged against them were those other critics and artists who maintained, contrariwise but with equal heat, that drawing and drawing alone (disegno) was the thing that mattered in art.

full article link

Oxford Dictionary
colourist
(US colorist)

noun an artist or designer who uses colour in a special or skilful way.

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I could easily buy that of the classical to romantic period in painting, Michaelangelo is the dominant name -- the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling revealed is vividly colored palette. However, I still would not refer to him as a colorist. Many of the impressionists were bonafied colorists, especially Seurat (okay, post-impressionist) who used color in an early scientific study of pixalization.

The Fauves, particularly Matisse, made color the dominant purpose of their art. The compositions worked because of the interplay of color, not for it's linear delineation of form or articulation of light. They are, of course, almost married to the Expressionist even though Expressionism seemed to deal more with emoting basic feelings, it is in subject matter rather than for color. However, artists like Max Ernst and George Grosz still came very close to using color as a dominant effect.

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Colorism, incidentally, is more frequently applied to race difference rather than any art movement.

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Lightwizard wrote:

I could easily buy that of the classical to romantic period in painting, Michaelangelo is the dominant name -- the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling revealed is vividly colored palette. However, I still would not refer to him as a colorist. Many of the impressionists were bonofied colorists, especially Seurat (okay, post-impressionist) who used color in an early scientific study of pixalization.

The Fauves, particularly Matisse, made color the dominant purpose of their art. The compositions worked because of the interplay of color, not for it's linear delineation of form or articulation of light. They are, of course, almost married to the Expressionist even though Expressionism seemed to deal more with emoting basic feelings, it is in subject matter rather than for color. However, artists like Max Ernst and George Grosz still came very close to using color as a dominant effect.

I think that color makes up the compisition in fauvist art - big contrasting blocks of color. But I don't see any sensitivity to color. In fauvism there is a reckless disregard of color. They are (intentionally) halphhazardly chozen in most of his works, being bright and glaring and flat giving importance to shape over space. This is especially true of his later work and paper cut outs. Color is absolutely dominant, but it's not given importance.

When you say colorist (addition of ist to color) it makes me think of someone who specifically deals in color. Like Tintoretto, Gwen John (thank you, Viv), or my teacher who calls himself a colorist, Dan Sutherland. I think that a painter whose colors are specifically tailored to produce some kind of effect - a painter who takes great care in choosing and dealing with color - would be called a colorist.

And, as farmerman pointed out, we aren't talking black and white paintings vs. color here. Nearly all artists work with the spectrum, but it is those for which color is paid so much attention to that I reserve the word colorist.

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I disagree that the greatest Fauve painters had a disregard and lack of sensitivity for color. That's a judgement call, not whether the dominant element of the image is working with color. Derain, Dufy, Rouault, likely even Kirchner and Marc could be called colorists. These artists are representative of where color is paid attention to so I'm not clear or your definition.

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Lightwizard wrote:

Colorism, incidentally, is more frequently applied to race difference rather than any art movement.

yes, I found that when I googled colorism - it isn't an English term so it surpised me - but I take it that it is a US term. We tend to simply say racism or colour predjudice

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Portal Star wrote:

I think that color makes up the compisition in fauvist art - big contrasting blocks of color. But I don't see any sensitivity to color. In fauvism there is a reckless disregard of color. They are (intentionally) halphhazardly chozen in most of his works, being bright and glaring and flat giving importance to shape over space. This is especially true of his later work and paper cut outs. Color is absolutely dominant, but it's not given importance.

When you say colorist (addition of ist to color) it makes me think of someone who specifically deals in color. Like Tintoretto, Gwen John (thank you, Viv), or my teacher who calls himself a colorist, Dan Sutherland. I think that a painter whose colors are specifically tailored to produce some kind of effect - a painter who takes great care in choosing and dealing with color - would be called a colorist.

And, as farmerman pointed out, we aren't talking black and white paintings vs. color here. Nearly all artists work with the spectrum, but it is those for which color is paid so much attention to that I reserve the word colorist.

I totally agree with your definition of a colourist painter Portal - this is exactly how I understand it and how painters I know regard it. A colourist painter has a much finer regard for colour, sees the subtle variations of colour within what they are painting, uses warm and cool variations in interesting ways - a non colourist painter is more tonal (as Michelangelo - bright colours yes, subtlety -no) It isn't simply about using lots of bright colour without great thought.

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as the one who actually posed this question in merely a "sttudiert' manner, I think Im being totally dissed. Have fun among yourselves. . Have a nice New year

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I don't find an artist like Derain using a lot of bright colors without any thought. Ditto all the other fauve painters. Sounds more like the art critics of the early 20th century -- come to the party, it's 2005. Happy New Year!

http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/cjackson/derain/derain1.jpg

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Vivian, I made the term colorism up, as a bridge between the word colorist and colorific, a guy who used to post on abuzz and here, I think, on a2k a few times. He is a painter who lives just north of new york city.

(Never trust a word-player...)

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I dunno Osso - I'm sure I've been in discussions with other painters about colourism/colourists!

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Ah, well, there you go, then.

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farmerman wrote:

as the one who actually posed this question in merely a "sttudiert' manner, I think Im being totally dissed. Have fun among yourselves. . Have a nice New year

not at all - argue your corner! I for one value your input

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Farmer, I dont think anyone is dissing you,
it is just a befuddling question....I sure appreciate
your comments and wish you all a Happy New Year....

For some reason I keep thinking that the term colourist refers to one who uses colour to tint a monochromatic type of underpainting or drawing....but I cant find any references as such.........Here is what I found re: Titian as he worked during his later years.....

"More and more, Titian was being possessed by the medium in which he worked. Unstead of pursuing form, he now surrenderred himself almost wholly to the color and texture of the paint. Light and shadow, once used to heighten the illusion of reality, now became valuable for themselves alone, as interplays of colour. Brushstrokes that had formerly been smoothed away were now left to ripple the surface of the canvas, lending tension and excitement ot the painting. For at least 3 centuries painters were to embrace these innovations of Titian's last years.........

Titian's last paintings surmount his physical weaknesses and even make use of them. As a colorist, he turned naturally to color to create form when he could no longer depend upon the steadiness of his line....."

Time Life ....

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You beat me to it -- I was on the brink of mentioned Titian's later work where he did rely less on line drawing for establishing forms (and, of course, later artists did it obviously on purpose). Whether all art historians would proclaim him a colorist when assessing his entire career, I doubt it -- his portraiture, the bulk of his work, was almost always subdued in color:

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/t/titian/red_cap.jpg

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"As a colorist, he (Titian) turned naturally to color to create form when he could no longer depend upon the steadiness of his line....."

LW.....I think the implication here is that the colorist DID depend on
a monochromatic base to establish tone and value....but Titian
(as a colourist) broke the rules and began to explore colour as a means of creating tones and value....

well, that's what I thunk anyhow......

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well, dagnabbit, I remember learning about tone and chroma and hue and value way back when and ... forget what I knew. Somehow I doubt that by present definitions color added can affect tone, which I seem to remember is stratified by either amounts of black, or white, I forget which.

But that is one gorgeous Titian painting.

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I read the statement that Titian becoming a colorist was because he could no longer depend on his skill in drawing and began to depend on color forms to communicate his imagery.

"Man in a Red Hat" is likely my favorite Titian portrait. Not a very good reproduction but on the VOOM satellite Gallery Channel, the half-hour on Titian had a hidef pic that was breathtaking. Closet thing to seeing it in a museum.

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colourists/colourism - define and discuss?

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