In the future, every color will be world-famous for 15 minutes

I couldn’t resist twisting Andy Warhol’s quote after seeing the first museum survey exhibition of the work he produced during his final years. It was worth taking the train to Fort Worth during my brief stay in Dallas to see "Andy Warhol: The Last Decade" at the Modern Art Museum.

If truth be told, I was more motivated to see the Ando-designed Museum – a cluster of floating pavilions - than the Warhol exhibit. The experience turned out to be a clash of the colorless world of Ando’s concrete and steel structures and the riotous colors of Warhol’s canvases and prints. A powerful juxtaposition of geniuses and color theory!

Prior to seeing this exhibit, I had always thought of Warhol (1928–1987) as an artist with a crayola coloring-book approach to color. Any color would work as long as it was a raw primary or secondary color. The image – Marilyn Monroe, Mao, or shoes – was the focus. In fact, we recognize his position in art history as the man who transformed soup cans and other icons of pop culture into true art.

Now we have this exhibit ... and it exposes his mastery of color and techniques on a scale that you have to see to believe. For example, “Christ 112 Times /Detail of The Last Supper” is an acrylic with silkscreen ink on canvas the size of a bus. 112 small panels of Jesus’ face (from “The Last Supper”) in yellow on black fill the painting. Yellow and black!

On a smaller scale, his series of “Shadows” panels (about 4’ x 6’ each) contain a single geometric colored shape that seems to glow from within. They actually rivaled the mystical quality of the Rothko painting in the permanent collection below the Warhol exhibit.

By the way, during the last decade of his life, Warhol created more artwork - and on a vastly larger scale - than during any other phase of his 40-year career. This exhibit was a rare opportunity to view 55 works that had never been seen together for the first time.

It seems that his color sensitivity was making history in a way that Andy may not have realized. But then again, maybe he did. As it turns out, he was a closet Catholic and - perhaps in the same sense that he was a master of puns - he loved to play with color as much as the object during his last years.

Video - Warhol Exhibit

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Note: The exhibit travels to the Baltimore Museum of Art, October 17, 2010–January 9, 2011.

There’s More Than Love at the Heart of Red

"Monkey Butt Red" and "Flaming Fuchsia" made the news recently - at least in the automotive industry. These are the names of colors created by Toyota and Dodge for the debut of their elite sports cars. Consider the possibility that these colors and their names were intended to generate a lot of press.

In the spirit of Valentines Day, the colors red and fuchsia (aka magenta, hot pink) generated considerable excitement in other arenas in the past year. Here’s some recent news about these two loving colors:

1. Scientists found that red seems to improve attention to detail while blue sparks creativity.
Source

2. Marine biologists discovered that a lot of fish in the sea glow a fluorescent red. This is startling news because scientists believed that fish don’t see red very well or not at all because red light does not penetrate below a depth of 30 feet. Why develop a skill that you will never be able to use?
Source

3. Red is the #1 color in advertising design.
Source

4. Companies see red over rights to the color magenta.
Source

5. When 877 members of USA TODAY's CEO panel took an online personality color test, they were three times more likely to favor magenta than the public at large, three times less likely to select red, and 3 times less likely to choose yellow.
Source

6. India's "pink panties" revolution for freedom from Indian women's sexual prisons begins.
Source

This Valentine's Day, think about your red. What does the color mean to you? Remember that color is like sex. It's mysterious. It's unknowable. No two people see the same thing. No two people feel the same thing.

Shattering a Colorblind View of the Past

For nearly two centuries, scholars have been arguing that beige and white were not the true colors of antiquity. The Parthenon in Athens and the Forum in Rome might have been almost gaudy. Unfortunately, such ideas have never influenced Hollywood or many experts. For example, in "Gladiator," when Russell Crowe strides down the streets of ancient Rome, circa A.D. 180, he's backed up by the proper complement of white marble. In almost every view of the past, textbooks included, the ancient world comes off as monochrome.

A flood of recent exhibitions has put color back into the vocabulary of antiquity. Last year, "Gods in Color" in Boston and "The Color of Life" exhibition at the Getty featured multi-colored sculptural masterpieces from the Greek and Roman eras.

However, not all scholars are pleased. Of note, Fabio Barry, an art historian at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, is not overly fond of the Prima Porta sculpture's colored reconstruction. "Can you imagine the family-values, back-to-basics, republican emperor Augustus . . . represented by something that looks like a cross-dresser trying to hail a taxi?" raves Barry, an expert on the history of marble. He insists that the Romans cherished the whiteness of fine marble as an important symbol of light and purity.

On the other hand, Getty Curator Kenneth Lapatin "For the Greeks it was all about mimesis," says, using the Greek word for realistic imitation. Beauty depended on it.

A week ago, scientists revealed something else that shatters our preconceived notions about the drab and dinghy colors of an even more distant past. A team of British and Chinese scientists found evidence that a dinosaur that lived about 125 million years ago had a feathered mohawk with orange-brown bristly feathers around its tail. By examining and comparing tiny structures (melanins) in the feathers, they found the color associated with red-brown. Source

While this colorful development in the lost world of dinosaurs is quite exciting, it will still be left up to our imaginations to create the colors of popular dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus rex - at least for now.

As for antiquity, we also need help visualizing and accepting a colored world of architecture and sculpture.

Perhaps this century will colorize the past in amazing ways.

Color Karma for the Next Decade

Where will color go in 2010? What about the next decade? Will we be under the influence of trends or will the timeless powers of color rule? I’m sure you’ll agree that it will be both - and it all depends on many factors. The good thing about trends is that they inject new life into the color wheel. Yes, but what goes around comes around again and that’s my first take on color karma for the next decade.

Several trends gurus proclaim that mauve is back. It’s a subtle shifty hue that a painter described as “the color of a dead prostitute’s lips.” With that aside, here’s how I remember this color’s popularity in the past: The interiors of homes, offices, and even hospitals were drenched in mauve – and it was usually combined with teal (a blue-green). This new color combination was a sophisticated switch from the organic avocado and harvest gold hues that dominated the previous decade. Note: Pantone has declared that turquoise is the color for 2010.

Consider this: The mauving of America in the 80s followed the avocado refrigerator days of the 70s. Do the math:

Yellow-green / avocado: 1970s + 30 years = 2000 - through the decade
(Note: Shortly before the year 2000 yellow-greens became the cutting edge color for products and advertising.)

Mauve: 1980s + 30 years = 2010 - ?

In retrospect, it seems that one or two colors emerge as the most powerful new trends and this trend lasts about a decade. Also, after a color has dropped off the radar for at least 20 years, it’s a good time to resurrect it.

However, we live in a different world today. It’s so complex that no one dares to proclaim that any single color has the staying power for a decade. Alas! Those who dare to predict trends limit it to one year – as is the case with the recent proclamation by Pantone and others.

Time will tell.

In conclusion, I can now disclose my most recent project. The next generation of Xerox printers has debuted. I was part of an international team that came up with one color (the accent color for the front panel) for all the printers, from the small business models to the huge production machines. Guess what? It’s a classical color that was tweaked with subtle undertones for the next decade.

A word of advice for all aspiring colorists: Build a foundation in timeless color concepts. And have fun!

Push the color red as far as it can go?

One of my unfulfilled dreams as a colorist has been to pack as many colors as possible into a painting that breaks the barrier of “it’s too pretty to be considered as serious art.”

When I was working on my M.F.A., the "anti-aesthetic" ruled. The art that was sanctioned by the intelligentsia was far from lovely. Matisse’s famous philosophy - that a painting should be like a comfortable armchair - was taboo. There was no going back to the luxurious color harmonies of Matisse and Monet in the French impressionist era or the lush abstractions of deKooning or Rothko in the mid-twentieth century.

Maybe it was a good thing that I turned away from painting fifteen years ago, because until a few days ago, I didn’t think it was possible to create an image on a canvas with juicy oil paints - an image with more colors that one could imagine occupying the picture plane or just one lush or screaming color in a way that it had never existed before. Finally, I didn't believe that this genre of colorful imagery could meet the high standards of the fine arts world today.

I met an artist last week whose paintings embody every goal, every dream any artist, any colorist could wish for. She is Chris Chou, a Guggenheim Fellow 2007 - and that means she is indeed taken seriously by artists and art historians internationally.

Here’s what Chris says about red “I paint the color of red. I want to push red as far as it can go.”

At this point, words fail. See what she did with red and every color of the spectrum at her website - http://aredstudio.blogspot.com/

Here comes trouble: Paint matching apps for the iPhone

Its' supposed to solve the dilemma of winding up with all those cans of paint in colors that are too bold, too dingy, or not quite right. Both Benjamin Moore's Ben Color Capture and Sherwin-Williams' ColorSnap applications for the iPhone work the same way: Take a picture with your iPhone, zoom in on an area of color that you want to match in paint. Click “match” and the application gives you a range of paint options just like a real paint strip from their catalogue (either Moore or Sherwin). On the plus side, it shows the color’s nearest neighbors, in both lighter and darker shades.

However, you’re still in for hours of hard work. After you buy a quart of paint (or a gallon if the color is unavailable in quart sizes) you have to try it in the room. It’s best to test the color in several areas of the room - one area in bright light and one in the shade. Look at it at night and in the daytime as well. Chances are that the color isn’t what you expected. Paint chips are very tricky, regardless of whether you selected the color in the store or with this app. So, now it’s back to the paint store with the other color options generated by the iPhone app.

It does seem to solve one problem: Color samples in the paint stores are usually affected by store lighting and always look different when they’re on a wall in your home. On the other hand, the lighting issue on the iPhone is also problematic. Too little light, and your color image ends up dull, faded, or too dark; too much, and your colors end up washed out or too pale.

Will these apps save you hours and hours of agony? Not really. They have a long way to go before they can take a very clear color-accurate picture of whatever it is that inspires you - and adjust for all the variables between a photograph and a can of paint.

It will make it easier in one way: Beginning a task is usually the biggest challenge.

I’ll make it even easier by giving my blog fans a copy of “Color Tips” - a set of pages of tips for using colors schemes and layouts for your home (from my recent publication, Color Matters for the Home). For the next two weeks, you can download it for free. Click here.

Liar, Liar, the Color Wheel is on Fire

Does the web provide an open door for "color experts" to dish out bad advice? Maybe in the dark days before the web, the color wheel was on fire but no one could see it. Whatever the case may be - and on the heels of last week’s Benjamin Moore report - there’s a new one.

The latest bad advice is based on the assumption that the "old rules" about how to use and combine colors are out the window. Here’s the exact quote from an interior design professional:

"This marvelous freedom is facilitated by people finding out this simple color truth: ‘The more colors you have the more colors work.'"

That couldn’t be further from the truth because the biggest mistake amateurs and professionals make is using too many colors. It’s a recipe for disaster unless you’re a very gifted color designer.

As is the case with music, there are formal principles about color harmony that have evolved over thousands of years. Breaking or bending a few rules can be exciting and refreshing. However, there is always an underlying logic in all innovative work.

Aside from art and design theories, here's a basic fact about how the brain works: If there's too much visual information, if there are too many colors, the brain can't organize it all. As is the case with other sensory input such as sounds, the brain becomes overloaded and shuts down.

To encourage people to toss the whole color wheel into a design is heresy - and even more so because this can result in very costly mistakes by homeowners who are spending a lot of time and money on design projects.

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For more information, see Color Logic.

Hues that cry for freedom

Green is the color that is still at the forefront of demonstrations in Iran and across the world in protest of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial victory in June's presidential elections.

This is not the first time that color has been the symbol of a revolution. A trip around the color wheel reveals other significant examples of how protesters in repressed countries are using color to get their message across.

The Yellow Revolution (aka People Power Revolution)
Philippines, 1986
After a controversial (and tainted) vote that led to Marcos' reelection, demonstrators wore yellow ribbons, the favorite color of opposition leader Corazon Aquino. Ferdinand Marcos’ government was overthrown and Aquino became the first female Asian leader.

Thailand, 2009
Thailand's election commission has approved a new political party set up by the "Yellow Shirt" protest movement which blockaded Bangkok's airports last year.

Orange Revolution
Ukraine, 2004-05
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in a fraudulent election, and supporters of his opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, crowded the streets wearing orange, the color of his campaign. After two months of demonstrations, Yushchenko, who won the new election eventually called for by the Ukranian Supreme Court.

Blue Revolution
Kuwait, 2005
No regime change took place, but protesters carrying blue signs helped secure women’s right to vote.

Also worth noting:
In Georgia's Rose Revolution (2003) and Kyrgyzstan's Tulip Revolution (2005), it was flowers, not colors, that became the symbol of the opposition.

A Close Encounter with Yellow

I usually don’t write about my personal experiences with color but a recent encounter with a startling yellow dress is worth the space on this blog. In fact, the dress was such a bright yellow that I felt like kids might try to ride me to school. Okay, it’s a cliche, but school bus yellow is a color that can really be too overwhelming for my fair coloring. Soft creamy banana yellow is okay, but not mango yellow.

The story of my unexpected experience with this color is quite typical of any wardrobe crises. The day before my scheduled color seminar for a group of bankers, I found myself at a loss for what to wear. Those extra pounds from all the great food in Pakistan ruled out most of my usual outfits and the options were a drab avocado blazer or a little black dress.

After three hours of shopping, I found it! A bright yellow shirtwaist dress. This would break all my rules about “my best colors.” I wondered if maybe I was so close to color that I couldn’t see my colors - my personal colors - objectively. How humbling to admit that it was time to get help. After getting positive feedback from the salesperson, random customers, and later the personal shopper at the store, I bought it.

I will never regret it. Of course, the obvious resulted. It was an instant identification of the color consultant speaker - and even before the introduction. It also helped make one of the points in the lecture: Pure yellow has the highest visibility of any color of the spectrum. (Which is why most fire trucks and emergency vehicles in the US are now yellow.)

This is not the end of the story because the most amazing things happened after the lecture. Although I was exhausted, I had to make several stops on the way home - a grocery store, a car wash, and the post office. During my brief encounters with cashiers and clerks, I was stunned by how abnormally friendly they were. It wasn’t me - I was lifeless and probably didn’t have any energy left over to smile - it was that color that overwhelmed people with happiness.

Happy, happy, joy, joy for yellow. Just for the record, it’s Pantone 1225C

Dyeing for Color

Restoring Color to Dead Lawns of Abandoned Homes

Foreclosed homes with dead, brown lawns can be found in just about every neighborhood these days. Apparently a business in California is waving a magic wand of green paint over the lawns and dressing up the properties. The water-based paint is chemical free and includes flower-based pigments.

Green Canary, a San Jose-area company, says that a typical front lawn can be painted for under-200 dollars and is guaranteed for six months. Amazing!

Source
Restoring Color to Dead Lawns of Abandoned Homes



From Drab to Fab on the Floor

If grey concrete is as unappealing as a dead brown lawn, color can come to the rescue again. Concrete stains will transform that basement or patio floor or even the driveway. In this case, the transparent stains create a more natural mottled appearance. In other words, it’s not a solid coat of paint.

Where the Oceans Meet the Mountains

It’s green but it seems blue. Or does it? The Storm King Wavefield is a permanent installation by Maya Lin in Mountainville, N.Y. Seven parallel rows of rolling, swelling peaks on 11 acres were inspired by the forms of midocean waves but echo the mountains and hills around them. It’s made of natural materials: dirt and grass.

This evocative landscape of mountains and waves - greenness and blueness - raises a linguistic fact about color. Many languages do not have separate terms for blue and green. For example, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and Chinese have color terms that cover both. Also, the Japanese word for blue (ao) is used for colors that English speakers would refer to as green, such as the traffic light for “go.”

Sources
Storm King WaveField- Where the Oceans Meet the Mountains

Distinguishing blue from green in language

The Evolution of Color Symbolism

Our responses to color are inherited and learned. My experiences in Pakistan reconfirmed the reality of both universal color symbolism (timeless) and all the other kinds of meanings that evolve over time (religious, geographic, political, gender-based, etc.)

A perfect example is evolution of the yellow. If we turn back the clock to the Stone Age at any place on earth, yellow was and still is the color of flowers – typically flowers that bloom in the Spring. In Pakistan, the yellow mustard blossom is and was the color of Spring. Regardless of demographic parameters, the color represents the joy experienced at the onset of Spring after a long winter. Yellow is symbolic of happiness.

Using Pakistan as an example of how a color retains its timeless symbolism today, the city of Lahore marks the beginning of Spring with the Basant (which means yellow in Hindi) Festival.
This carnival is an orgy of kite-flying, rooftop soirees, garden parties and much more. The festival peaks with an all-night flood-lit kite-flying marathon. The kites come in different sizes as well - some have to be transported on the roofs of cars, others are small enough to be carried on bicycles. Yellow is the predominant color.

Of historical note: In pre-partition India, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs all celebrated Basant. Yellow clothes were worn; men wore yellow turbans and women yellow dupattas and saris.

Of political note: The government of Pakistan banned kite-flying in 2006 after ruling that the sport has become increasingly deadly. The government lifted the ban for the Basant Festival this year.

For scholarly debate (and of psychological note for those who disagree with the fact that the symbolism of a color may contain meanings that are universal):
An overwhelming majority of the 80,000 people (from all over the world) who have taken the Global Color Survey at Color Matters reply that yellow is the color of happiness. We must bear in mind that geographic, gender-based, political, national, cultural, religious and other meanings co-exist with the timeless and universal symbolism of a color. These other sources can be powerful sources for a broad analysis of a color. However, any argument for the precedence of other symbolic content can be problematic (and self-serving) if it dismisses the existence of symbolism based on the global experience of a color as it existed long before these other meanings evolved. The timeless and universal meaning provides the critical foundation for a complete analysis of a color.

This is the last commentary about the colors of Pakistan. In conclusion, I’ve created two special pages:

The Colors of Pakistan
(The timeless and timely symbolism of blue, green, yellow, red, and brown)

Letters to America
"We are not terrorists!" (and more)

You can also find the past blogs about Pakistan (February-March) in an expanded form with new graphics at the new Color Matters in Pakistan page.

The Colors of Political Protest in Pakistan

What does it feel like to be a young adult in Pakistan? Is the country really the way the media presents it with themes of terrorism, religious extremism, oppression of women, or any other volatile topic that attracts attention? Some artwork from the Visual Communications students at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore tells a different story.

During my last week in Lahore, several design students submitted artwork that reflects their experiences about the current state of affairs in their homeland. One of them was a floor sculpture – a large map of Pakistan (8 x 3 feet / 2.5 x 1 meters), covered with green hands, reaching upwards. (The color of the flag of Pakistan is green.) The piece is a true testimony to the search for peace and stability in Pakistan.

Another compelling political statement was a photographic image of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) that American drones are bombing. “Hellwood” (in bold white letters evocative of the world famous "Hollywood Sign”) was placed on top of the camouflage-colored mountains. Ali Haider, whose ancestors are from Afghanistan, came up with the concept and Janaka, an exchange student from Sri Lanka, did the graphic work. This image presents another view – that of the tragedy of daily life - in this region . Although there may be pockets of militancy and religious extremism in the remote tribal areas, there are 21,000,000 people (none of whom have connection to terrorists) who are simply struggling to survive in this mountainous area, appropriately labeled “Hellwood.”

Perhaps these students can realistically present the colors of the peace we all seek.

LINK to a page with more comments and all the images.

Color: Bringing the World Closer Together

During the past decade on the Internet, I’ve realized that color is an experience that we all share regardless of politics, religion, geography, age, or gender. Over 6 billion people are on the planet – and we are all immersed in a color soaked world.

The miracle of color is that it is a universal experience – one that can be the basis for reaching out to one another and sharing our commonalities. We’re all looking at the same stars at night. We all marvel at the colors of the rainbow.

For the next five weeks, I will be in Pakistan. I will be visiting the country and teaching color at several educational institutions (as a volunteer). This blog will be dedicated to “Color Matters in Pakistan” for weeks that follow.

Asalam and Aloha,
Jill Morton
Honolulu, Hawaii

Some links:
Alif Laima
(A book bus library in Lahore)

Tech Lahore
(a blog about the technology industry in Lahore, and in Pakistan)

Pakistan Web Directory