In his book entitled “Petit livre des couleurs” (The small book on colors), Michel Pastoureau tells us civilisations throughout their history, have contemplated colors as “a reflection of mentality evolution”.
There were times when certain colors were rejected like blue in Antiquity or in the Middle Ages.
“Green” was long considered an incarnation of evil or malign values. Even today, it is considered as a bad omen in the entertainment world.
To paint with colors is to ignore all these preconceived ideas, these boxes that are uncalled for.
Let’s get rid of a priori…
Color is an “existential” mode of expression. Some will say that it is an opinion.
The French schools of fine arts of Pont Aven or Barbizon have shown that codes associated to colors are those that we define for them. They are influenced by our own interpretation composed of impressions, travels and encounters… Feeling things with the tips of our fingers to perceive even the smallest of sensations. If I wanted to depict the past, I might use blues on one painting and resort to sepia, brown and soft orange on another one.
Nothing is immobile, frozen. All is set in motion.
And if what Pastoureau says holds true, “all is dictated by unwritten codification held in secret by colors themselves”. Every civilisation, each time period creates its own code. Abolishing them frees the beholder from archetypes.
“Colors carry taboos and prejudices insidiously instilled on us with hidden meanings that influence our environment, our behavior, our language and our imagination”.
Like pink for baby girls and blue for boys. But it has not always been this way.
To work with color is to dare free oneself from ambivalences, to play and juggle with them as we wish…
D.K.