Relationship between science, colour and art

The relationships between different colours was first experimented with by the French chemist Michel Chevreul (1786-1889), who was hired by the Gobelin Tapestry factory to investigate the fading of thread in their tapestries. Chevreul proved that the fading was not fading at all, instead it “appeared faded” due to simultaneous contrast between neighbouring coloured threads, as documented in his 1839 book, “De la Loi du Contraste Simultané des Couleurs”.
German scientist, writer, philosopher and artist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (the last and most brilliant champion and exponent of the ancient ideal of Cultural Internationalism), was interested in the relationship between colours and their opposites. In this case, he was interested in the “visible colour of the shadow”. By 1800, Goethe had already identified colour interaction, simultaneous contrast and complementary colours, which he logically named “completing” colours. Both have the same neuro-physiologic basis of retinal fatigue.
Goethe also attributes other properties to colours. He suggested colour addressing both itself to the eye and the feelings – or human emotions. He lists “plus” colours, such as yellow conveying “action, light, force, warmth” and other qualities, as it excites a warm and an agreeable impression on the eye. Even today, we would not quarrel with that idea. The “minus” colours, such as blue, equate with shadow, weakness, coldness, melancholy, and so forth.
Artists have always explored the effects of juxtaposing complementary colours, even without understanding it in neuro-physiological terms. Few artists have dramatically used complementary colours as has Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Moreover, and perhaps under the stimulus of Goethe in 1910-11, Franz Marc painted his dog, seen through a prism, and recorded seeing “coloured fringes” at the junctions of light and dark.
Impressionists’ interest in colour and light is influenced in part, by the research of scientists like Michel Chevreul. Specifically, the idea that an object of any given colour will cast a shadow “tinged” with that of its complementary colour and “tinting” neighbouring colours in the same manner, this influenced the art of the Impressionists. However, the theory was already known to earlier painters, such as Eugène Delacroix, whose colour palette visibly brightened after visiting North Africa in 1832, and was inspired by African subjects, and the classical dignity of “living antiquity”.
Sir Isaac Newton’s ideas about colour, for example, inspire a modern series of paintings by the Czech pioneer of abstract art and graphic artist Frantisek Kupka (1971-1957), whose work evoked machine age power and energy. Claude Monet’s paintings of “Haystacks” played a crucial role in the emergence of Modern Art which inspired Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944). In 1896, Wassily Kandinsky sees Monet’s “Haystacks” in a touring exhibition in St Petersburg, Russia, which have a great impact on Kandinsky’s artistic abstract development. Saying: “The painting showed itself to me in all its fantasy and all its enchantment. Deep within me the first doubt arose about the importance of the object as a necessary element in a picture.”
In 1910, only 14 years later, Kandinsky was among the first modern European artists to paint a completely non-representational abstract painting based on colour relationships.
In Zimbabwe, indigenous artists who have experimented with colour relationships include the late Charles Carlos Fernando, the late Hillary Kashiri, Henry Thompson, Steven Williams, Chiko Chazunguza, Thakor Patel, Paul Wade, Marshall Baron and lately Freddy Tauro and David Chinyama.

l Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a Doctorate in Business Administration) (DBA), in Arts and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies.