Monochrome palate cleansing and a plate-ful of colour

Colour pattern plate, hand-painted china, based on a 19th original by Müller & Hennig, Dresden

I have veered away from colour a little and spent the last few months curating an exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery of monochrome etching by a contemporary of Whistler: Robert Goff - An Etcher in the Wake of Whistler. Leafing through and comparing hundreds of copper plate etching has made me quite sensitive to different shades of sepia and how the colour of paper used affects the overall appearance of an etching. Dealing with these prints was also a bit of a palate cleanser and whetted by appetite for writing up my doctoral thesis on the use of colour in Brighton's Royal Pavilion. The process of curating this exhibition was not without colourful incidences though. The first set of promotional photographs taken by the University of Sussex were very nice I thought (see example below). However, there was a second photoshoot where we tried to add a splash of colour into the photographs and it was suggested I should wear a colourful top and large jewellery. I can't show these pictures yet as they will be used elsewhere first, but I found myself chuckling at the thought of having to upstage the etchings. 




Symphony in black and sepia



'Temperament rose' colour circle
by Goethe and Schiller, 1799

Meanwhile, I have entered the final stages of editing the anthology Languages of Colour and will soon have to start talking to printers. The fabulous cover art by David J Markham, a new interpretation of Goethe and Schiller's Temperamenten-Rose, will be shown here first.

2012 started very colourful for me with an unexpected and very generous belated Christmas present that deserves mentioning here. I had had my eye on the porcelain plate with colour samples, seen at the top of this blog post, for a while. It is a reproduction of a 19th century ceramic paints sample plate, available from the oh-so-wonderful-and-high-quality-but-pricey-things retailer Manufactum. The colours are scientifically arranged colours made by Müller & Hennig, a Dresden china paint firm whose products were used by the Meissen china factory. The shades are numbered but, according to Manufactum, the key to this colours and numbers code has been lost. When I have a bit of time I might try and research this particular arrangement. The plate is a thing of beauty and sits on my desk (under a monochrome Goff etching) and I hope it will keep me going in the next few months when I will be writing the thesis. It is hand-painted, which of course means the pigments are not mixed into the clay or under a glaze, so liable to scratching, but the colours won't fade.

I have seen a couple of original colour sample plates from the 19th and early 20th century. There is at least one in the V&A (Stoke-on-Trent, 1900, see below) and a couple of years ago I saw one by Staffordshire chemist and colour manufacturer Robert Gordon Emery at an antiques fair. The price tag was in the region of £2000 and it appears to have found a buyer. When created these plates for not meant to be mass-produced and sold, they were merely colour charts for internal use and promotional purposes. I am of course coveting an original sample plate, but for now the Manufactum reproduction will do very nicely indeed.

Staffordshire potteries colour sample plate
Signed, inscribed and dated:
Robert Emery, Cobridge, Stoke on Trent, 1919

Plate of white earthenware, painted with samples of enamel colours numbered in gold, glazed by W.J. Furnival, made in Stoke-on-trent, 1900. V&A

Probably best not to put any of these in the dishwasher.

John Piper in Kent and Sussex and Charles Lock Eastlake at the National Gallery

John Piper: Brighton Pavilion, 1938

I have just returned from an intensive 3-week trip around the country, visiting over 30 historic country houses. I found good examples for the use of silver in interior decoration and some exciting colour samples in lesser known John Nash buildings. Of this more in a little while.

This post is just to draw attention to two colour-related exhibitions I must not miss and would like to recommend. They neatly span the 19th and 20th century. I have not been to either of them but will go soon.

The National Gallery, London, has put on an exhibition celebrating the life and work of its first Director, Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), who translated the didactic part of Goethe's Zur Farbenlehre into English, published in 1840 as Theory of Colours .  He was a friend of Turner, whose heavily annotated copy of Eastlake's translation I have mentioned before, and later corresponded with Arthur Schopenhauer, discussing colour theory.
 Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery

27 July – 30 October 2011

Admission free

Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865)

  

At the marvellous Towner Gallery in Eastbourne you can currently see John Piper in Kent and Sussex, which should be a feast for the eyes.

John Piper in Kent & Sussex

2 July – 25 September 2011

Masterpieces and hidden treasures tell story of John Piper’s love of the local landscape.

On my tour of historic country houses I didn't get to see much 20th century and contemporary art, but two small John Piper drawings at Chatsworth were one of the highlights on the trip for me. I love the way Piper interprets architectural colour in his collages and paintings. His palette is strong, with stark contrasts, and more often than not juxtaposed with a dark, threatening sky or background. His depictions of bombed out building during and after the war are particularly moving, with bright primary colours oozing out of darkness and destruction.



John Piper's baptistry window at Coventry Cathedral

He was later chosen by Sir Basil Spence (architect of my Alma Mater the University of Sussex) to design the large stained glass Baptistry window in Spence's new Coventry Cathedral.



Here at Sussex University he made a long rectangular tapestry for Spence's Meeting House (a particular interest of mine). His love for abstract colour design doesn't work quite as well in this particular tapestry (a much better example can be found at Chichester Cathedral) but he nicely mirrored the colour scheme of the surrounding glass in this circular building.

Interior of Basil Spence's Meeting House chapel at the University of Sussex, 1966 

The tapestry is currently being cleaned, while the Meeting House is undergoing major restoration.

Colour theory before James Clerk Maxwell

I haven't posted anything new on the blog for a while because I wanted to draw attention to the Languages of Colour project (see previous post). I have had very good poems, stories, non-fiction pieces and art work submitted. If I get enough funding for including everything I would like to include in good picture quality it should be a very nice little volume on colour. I shall be away for most of July, so the deadline can be extended to the end of July, should anyone like to submit any work after the end of June.



J.C. Maxwell's spectrum

 In other news, I am delighted that my work on Mary Gartside, the only known pre-20th century female colour theorist, is getting another outing. I have been invited to give a talk on colour theory at King's College London as part of a lecture series on James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist and colour theorist from the later 19th century. In 1861, when he was Professor at King's College London, he published the first of his papers on electromagnetism, and as part of his work on understanding colour, demonstrated the first colour photograph. My talk will focus on the 100-odd years before Maxwell, with a focus on Gartside:

Colour Theory before Maxwell

Date: Tue, 31 May 13.00 - 14.00
Audience: All welcome
A talk by Ms Alexandra Loske, University of Sussex
Details here: http://atm.kcl.ac.uk/event/2011/05/31/colour-theory-maxwell


Mary Gartside: Crimson, 1805



This talk aims to give a brief overview of theories on colour in the 18th and early 19th century. In the mid to late 18th century the influence of Newton’s 1704 publication Opticks dominates critical writings on colour. With the Romantic movement and the foundation of more organised cultural institutions such as the Royal Academy the notion of colour theory changes, culminating in extensive works by authors such as George Field in England and Goethe in Germany; the latter proving highly influential on the British art scene in the mid-19th century. I will take a closer look at one early 19th century colour theorist, Mary Gartside, who is an exemplary link between several English theorists and Goethe. Her story might explain and confirm certain trends in critical thinking and developments in colour theory in early 19th century Europe. The talk will be accompanied by numerous visualisations of colour theory, i.e. examples of colour charts, circles, spheres and stars from the original publications.

"Languages of Colour" - Call for submissions: poetry, prose, non-fiction and art work

Dear all, I am preparing a small publication related to my doctoral research. If you are a writer, artist, art historian or scientist and feeling creative have a look at this:

The Frogmore Press is inviting submissions on the subject of COLOUR in art, poetry, literature and science. Successful submissions will be published in a volume with the working title Languages of Colour, with publication provisionally scheduled for autumn/winter 2011. The editor will be Alexandra Loske.


Mary Gartside: Coloured blot 'Crimson', 1805, etching and watercolour.
Photograph by Dominic Tschudin, The Colour Reference Library,
Royal College of Art, London

The Frogmore Press predominantly publishes poetry, short pieces of prose and literary reviews. This special volume intends to branch out into non-fiction, art history and the sciences. The volume will be illustrated.

We are inviting poems, very short pieces of prose, short reviews of classic works on colour, particular artists or works of art. Submissions may include images and may have been previously published, subject to copyright clearance. Translations are also welcome.

Maximum word length per submission: 1500; the shorter, the better.
We are particular interested in visual artists submitting graphic work to illustrate the volume.

For more information please email: Alexbythesea@hotmail.com

Deadline for submissions: 31 July 2011

Submissions should be sent with a s.a.e. to:

The Frogmore Press
Re: Colour
21 Mildmay Road
Lewes
East Sussex
BN7 1PJ

The Beauty of Newton and Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon'

Part 3 of the BBC4 series The Beauty of Diagrams focused on Newton's prism. It is available on BB I-Player for another 25 days: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wbn7y

I was interviewed/quizzed by the BBC for this months ago, but early 19th century colour theory landed on the cutting room floor. Not surprising, given that this is only a half-hour programme.

I am always grateful for experts who can explain something complicated to the layperson, so I recommend spending half an hour of your life watching this. Being a TV programme it obviously benefits from great visuals. It was exciting to see Newton's original sketch of his first experiment (experimentum crucis), later fictitiously elaborated on in many an 18thc and 19th century print. Note that in this first experiment Newton identifies not 7 but 5 refracted colours:

Image from: John Faurel, ed., et al. Let Newton Be? A new perspective on his life and works
OUP, 1988, pg 87

I knew from my interview that the producers were keen to include artists who have been inspired by Newton's diagram and was very excited to see Storm Thorgerson, album cover artist extraordinaire, featuring in it. The focus was, of course, his iconic cover for Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon (as with New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies, I sadly do not own an original vinyl copy...), which, incidentally, featured as a marker for 1973 in yesterday's part of TV adaptation of William Boyd's Any Human Heart. Much has been said about Thorgerson's cover, but here it was given a new twist. Thorgenson has produced numerous versions of the image and commented that it deserved continuous and re-newed interpretation. You can see many of these on his website (click here). The one which impressed me most was a stained-glass version of it, which was used as a cover for the 30th anniversary edition from 2003. Logical, appropriate and very effective to translate this image into glass and let the light shine through it. I want one, despite the fact it only features 6 of Newton's colours. Indigo tends to get the chop:

Storm Thorgerson's stained glass window of Dark Side of the Moon

Thorgerson made me chuckle by declaring that most people in the 21st century would probably associate prisms with Pink Floyd rather than Isaac Newton. He might have a temporary point.

See also: http://colourlightandshade.blogspot.com/2010/01/power-corruption-and-lies-new-order-of.html

What connects Kandinsky and Turner? A love for Goethe's colour theory

   

Kandinksy: Cossacks,  1910-11, Tate:
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=7815

The world outside is covered in a white blanket, so I thought I could provide a splash of colour in blogland. I gave a lecture on Expressionism yesterday and naturally couldn't resist references to the particular interest the Blue Rider group members had in colour and colour theory. There is an abundance of writing by various Blue Riders on colour, and Kandinsky considered Goethe's Theory of Colours an extremely important book (as did Schopenhauer, incidentally). Unlike Turner, who travelled with a copy of Goethe's Theory of Colours in the 1840s and annotated it heavily, he didn't name a painting directly after the treatise, but numerous of his works clearly deal with colour theory in general. Here is one of his most famous works, Cossacks, which even features a very un-Newtonian rainbow. It hangs in Tate Britain, London, where you can also see Turner's Light and Shade(Goethe's Theory). 

Turner: Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory), 1943
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=14788
 



Kandinsky incorporated Goethe's Theory in his lectures at Bauhaus School and many drawings exist that give evidence of his fascination with colour theory.



Sketch concerning colour theory  by Kandinsky, 1913



A scholarly book has been written by Barabara Hentschel  on the connection between these two intellectual giants: Kandinsky and Goethe: Über das Geistige in der Kunst in der Tradition Goethescher Naturwissenschaft, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Berlin, 2000.   

"I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave" - Derek Jarman's BLUE

As part of CineCity 2010, Brighton's own film festival (one of the patron's being 'the other man in black' Nick Cave), there will be a screening of Derek Jarman's last film, BLUE, with a live soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner and a narration by by poet and musician Black Sifichi.

The performance will take place on World Aids Day, 1st December, 6.30 p.m. at the wonderful Duke of York's Picture House.
More details on this event here on the CineCity website, some copied here:

BLUE, Jarman’s most personal and experimental film was made just a year before his death in 1994 from AIDS. By this stage treatments for the virus made him see everything through a blue haze, prolonging his life but destroying his eyesight. Though his final work, the idea of a film inspired by Yves Klein and the colour blue was something Jarman had explored throughout his career.


The viewer is immersed in a field of blue light, pure cobalt blue, to fully focus on the soundtrack as Jarman free associates around the artistic, philosophical and metaphysical meanings of blue — sky, water, flowers, a boy named Blue, sadness, the infinite — connecting them to his life and body of work.

As the blueness of the screen seems to pulse, the evocative sound collage from longtime musical collaborator Simon Fisher Turner — gongs, Berlin techno, footsteps walking on a windswept pebble beach — transports us through the daydreams and reflections of a dying man. The sound design provides the film’s narrative, its pictures and its emotional core. The ending is a beautifully pitched meditation on life’s swift passing:

… 
Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud
And be scattered like
Mist that is chased by the
Rays of the sun
For our time is the passing of a shadow
And our lives will run like
Sparks through the stubble
I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave.

See also one of my older posts: http://colourlightandshade.blogspot.com/2010/05/stig-evans-true-colours.html

Jarman's last book was also on the subject of colour, and written around the time the film was made, entitled CHROMA. It is a kaleidoscopic, intelligent and fractured essay on colour(s), highly subjective and resembling an elaborate notebook or a pre-cursor of a blog. I found this fitting quote in it, which might partly explain the film BLUE:

"I've placed no colour photos in this book, as that would be a futile attempt to imprison them. [...] I prefer that the colours should float and take flight in your minds."