Modernity & Modernism 1/2

Wednesday 22nd February 

Modernity and Modernism 1/2

• John Ruskin 1819-1900: Art historian, book called modern painting- debate between old and new paintings, he drew the conclusion that old paintings were better
• favoured pre-Raphaelites: rejecting modern art styles and moving back to earlier styles 

• Paris 1900, epicentre of modernity 
• urbanisation, people condensed in small areas rather than scattered across the country, shift from village or rural town life, social alienation 
• life not dominated by natural things like sunlight and sunset, but schedules and production rotas 
• world time also becomes standardised, people wanting to move between countries via train etc
• telephone invented, people can communicate across countries and cities
• electric light invented and popularised so people no longer have to live by the sun rising and setting
• world becomes more easy to navigate and move through, but also more confusing 
• 1750- mid 20th century (1950) = MODERNITY
• process of rationality and reason- enlightenment period in late 18th C when scientific/ philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds 
• less religious thinking, more human
• the city becomes the epicentre of life and everything else seems secondary 
• aggressively pushing out the old and bringing in the new

• HAUSSMANISATION- Paris 1850’s on A new Paris
• old Paris architecture of narrow streets and run down housing is ripped out and Haussman a city architect redesigns Paris
• large boulevards in favour of modern streets to accommodate modern life, easier for police to control, a form of social control
• centre of Paris becomes gentrified, exclusive and only for the rich
• outskirts are the for the excluded and marginalised
• Caillebotte- Jeune Homme and A Balcony- being condensed but not really knowing who you live next to, being condensed, new society shifts brings affluence but makes us less human and less connected 
• ALSO the birth of PHYSCOLOGICAL SCIENCE, Sigmund Freud a rapid change in pace of life and wanting to understand the human mind
• The FLANEUR’S- walking slowly through the city in their best clothes, with modern pets and showing off how modern and finely dressed they were, a new form of social behaviour
• Seurat- Isle de la Grande Jatte 1886- pointillisme was radical because it was removing the art form of painting from making an image, removing the personality and uniqueness and expression 
• SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS 
• Degas- Absinthe Drinker 1876- drinking away the days troubles with people in a public place but also being fundamentally alone- compositionally affected by the advent of photography, cropped at either side to show just a portion of a scene
• Manet- Bar at the Folies Bergere- new forms of leisure, less high and low art, also sexuality becomes a pass time, women sexuality becomes a commodity and form of entertainment 
• Kaiserpanorama- collective place to go and view images of sunsets or landscapes etc, semi-collective but also individualised, similar to the way we now connect on the internet? 

ANTIMODERNIST: Max Nordau- Degeneration 1892

• predicted that by the end of the 20th century we’d probably see a generation who will read dozens of square yards of newspapers a day, constantly on the phone thinking about the other continents of the world, on trains or planes for half their lives and trying to find ease in a city filled with millions of other people
• Lumiere Brothers films were so radical people were scared of them, didn't understand them
• modernist things seem a bit weird or hard to understand now but they capture the feelings of the time
• “modernism emerges out of the subjective responses to the experience of modernity”
• photography invented helps to capture the modern world more objectively, and threatens to make art redundant 
• art has to become more abstract and less representational in order to stay relevant
• can be about phycology, the mind, new black and white aesthetic, movement 
• Giacomo Balla- Girl Running on a Balcony, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash 1912 = responses to the experiences of modernity
• The last page of James Joyce ‘Ulysses’ Modernist and all only about a feeling 

Colour Theory Lecture Two

Cop Lecture- Colour Theory:

Subjective Colour- Colour and Contrast (part 2)

• Johannes Itten- The Art Of Colour
• Josef Albers- Interaction Of Colour
• CAN GET THESE BOTH FROM LIBRARY
• not colour- chromatic value (hue, tone, saturation)
• the complimentary of a primary colour, is made up of the two other primary colours e.g. red is complimented by green, which is made up of blue and yellow
• series of contrasts: 
• contrast of tone- monochromatic, the colour values that come from this, the key idea of this is differentiation 
• contrast of hue- the juxtaposing of different hues, the greater the distance between hues of a colour wheel, the greater the contrast
• contrast of saturation- formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values and their relative saturations
• contrast of extension- formed by assigning proportional field sizes in relation to the visual weight of a colour. Also known as the contrast of proportion
• contrast of temparature- juxtaposing hues that could be considered warm or cool
• colours can optically change before our eyes when compared and set next to others
• complimentary contrast- formed by juxtaposing complementary colours from a colour wheel, opposite colours
• simultaneous contrast- when all these contrast principles work together, formed when boundaries between colours perpetually vibrate (optical dissonance) 
• this can be done so that colours appear harmonious together, or it can make the vibrating sensation
• colours placed on a neutral background can contextually alter the colour around it to appear more complimentary to it and therefore help it to stand out. e.g. yellow stripes on a grey background, the grey stripes can appear violet
• whatever you put next to a chosen colour will start to effect how both colours are read
• after image- how our eyes perceive colour and the effect this has, also the memory our eyes have for these colours (when you look at something and when you look away its still there)

Colour Theory Lecture 1

COP Lecture: Colour Theory

Systematic Colour (part 1)- An Introduction to Colour Theory

• colour is dependent on what is around it
• isolated colour is always surrounded by other things that will change how we interpret that colour
• it is changeable
• three areas: physical, physiological and phycological
• physical: 
• spectral colour is a colour that is evoked by a single wavelength of light within a visible spectrum
• a single wavelength, or narrow band of wavelengths generates monochromatic light
• every wavelength of light is perceived as a spectral colour in a continuous spectrum
• the colours of similar or sufficiently close wavelengths are often indistinguishable by the human eye
• colour is based on the principles of light
• light is white, and all light is made up of all the colours we can possibly see, the only way we can see them is when they hit our eyes and refract
• our perception of any colour is based on the eye receiving light that has been reflected from a surface or an object, it could be part of our eye but more commonly is objects around us
• even when we have a base colour, because we perceive colour throughout reflected light, the amount of light, the colour of the surface itself and how absorbent the base colour is can all affect what we perceive 
• the eye contains two kinds of receptors:
• Rods- convey shades of black, white and grey
• Cones- allow the brain to perceive colour
• There are 3 types of cones: 
• Type 1: is sensitive to red and orange light
• Type 2: sensitive to green light
• Type 3- sensitive to blue
• When a single cone is stimulated the brain receives the corresponding colour
• if both our green and red orange cones are stimulated we see yellow 
• due to physiological response, the ye can be fooled into seeing the full range of colours

Systematic colour:

• LOOK AT TERMS ON PRESENTATION
• Josef Albers and Johannes Itten - the art of colour
• colour design workbook- library
• colour - pigment- media: 
• primaries: red blue and yellow
• primaries can be mixed to make secondaries 
• primaries can be mixed to make tersharies 
• complimentary colours- the chromatic opposite of one colour 
• mixing complimentary colours makes merky greys (e.g they cancel out each others wavelengths and neutralise) THESE ARE CALLED NEUTRALS
• primary colours cant be made by mixing any other colours

Spectral Colour:

• the eye cannot differentiate between spectral yellow and some combination of red and green
• the same accounts for our perception of cyan, magenta 
• COLOUR MODES: 
• 1 colour mode is RGB: this one relates to light where primaries are red green and blue and can been seen on photoshop, TV on screen etc
• 2nd colour mode is CMYK: this one is cyan, magenta, yellow and black and is used for printed work, relates to pigment
• subtractive colour: (YMC- ink) by mixing all colours together you get a pure black or an absence of colour
• additive colour: (RGB- light) if you mix all colours together you end up with white or white light 

Dimensions of Colour:

• chromatic value= hue, tone and saturation 
• hue: the colour itself, the response we have to it, the way we describe how we recognise the colour 
• luminance or tonal values: how vivid is it, how much light does it reflect, the varying shades of a colour made by making them duller or lighter
• adding more light to something creates a tint
• saturation is how much of a colour we can see, and how vivid it is, can also be desaturated, can also be affected by moving through a hue, shade or tint

- Colour is contextual