9.07.2009

My LIfe in Color

I have been obsessively looking at these two images for the last few days, and today I realized they are exactly the same color palette, only in different proportion.





I would like to live in either one, but especially the second image, which looks like what I imagine my father's summers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, looked like as a kid. The first image is a piece of a Vuillard painting. If suddenly all of the colors in the world were reduced to those in these two pictures, I think I wouldn't mind. It reminds me of something my Great Aunt Bernadine told me once, a lesson from a man she studied under, the colorist Joseph Albers:



That all color is nothing more than proportion, that the relation of things in scale is more important than any single element. I think she told me this when I was twelve, and though I've forgotten whatever stupid math I was studying that year, this more useful lesson has stayed.

4 comments:

jessi said...

this is a really great post and it is really cool that your great aunt studied under Joseph Albers !

Anonymous said...

Imagine a world without color. That would suck.

-Zane of ontario honey

Anonymous said...

You should have mentionned somewhere that the artwork on top is «Edouard VUILLARD (1868-1940) : Les jardins publics - les deux écoliers». I know Google allows us to find such information, but it would have been nice... Maybe you presumed everybody knew it?... I did'nt.

Nick Heywood said...

Oh, dear old Anonymous,

Well, I'm glad you found it. I mentioned the artist and didn't think, given the intent of my piece, that the title was important. The great thing about blogs, which are basically journals, is that you can choose exactly what to include -- and I urge you to get your own blog and apply your suggestions there.

Best,
Nick

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Thanks for commenting on Nick Haus! I look forward to seeing what you have to say. Unfortunately, I had to stop taking Anonymous comments -- too much spam, too much vituperative. Come out from behind the curtain, ye nasty Anonymous! Everyone else, please, I love to hear from you.

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