my inspiration story
Zao Wou Ki
MEMBER OF THE CURRENT OF LYRIC ABSTRACTION (1920 - 2013)
Artistic conversation between Jean d'Ormesson, Mathieu Ricard and Yehan Le Toumelin
C' à vous
(avec un moment hors du temps )
When Balzac talks to us about artistic creation…!
(EXCERPT FROM THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE - PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, HUMAN COMEDY)
The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it!
You are not a vile copyist, but a poet! cried the old man, interrupting Porbus with a despotic gesture.
Otherwise, a sculptor would be released from all his work by molding a woman! Well, try to mold your mistress’s hand and put it in front of you, you will find a horrible corpse without any resemblance, and you will be forced to go find the chisel of the man who, without copying it exactly, t ‘will represent its movement and life.
We have to grasp the spirit, the soul, the physiognomy of things and beings.
The effects ! The effects !
But they are the accidents of life, not life. A hand, since I took this example, a hand does not only hold onto the body, it expresses and continues a thought that must be grasped and returned.
Neither the painter, nor the sculptor, nor the poet, should separate the effect from the cause, which are invincibly one inside the other! The real struggle is here! Many painters instinctively triumph without knowing this theme of art.
You draw a woman, but you can’t see her! This is not the way to force the arcanum of nature.
Your hand reproduces, without you thinking about it, the model you copied from your master.
You do not descend enough into the intimacy of the form, you do not pursue it enough love and perseverance in its twists and turns.
Beauty is a severe and difficult thing which cannot be reached in this way; you have to wait for your hours, spy on it, squeeze it and embrace it tightly to force it to surrender.
My pantheon ...
THE FORCE OF HERCULES SEGHERS (1590 – 1637)
Dutch engraver and painter, Turner's master, Nicolas de Stael
THE LIGHT OF REMBRANDT (1606- 1667)
TURNER'S ORIGINALITY (1775- 1851)
JOHAN AUGUST STRINDBERG'S FOUGUE (1849 – 1912)
THE SENSITIVITY OF CHAGALL (1885, 1987)
KANDINSKY'S FREEDOM (1866 – 1944)
THE VITALITY OF HANS HARTUNG (1904 – 1992)
THE DEPTH OF NICOLAS DE STAËL
(1913- 1955)
THE DYNAMISM OF GERHARDT RICHTER (1932 - )
THE FRESHNESS OF JOAN MITCHELL (1925- 1992)
FABIENNE VERDIER'S EXISTENTIAL RESEARCH (1962 - )
The theory of complementary colors seen by Delacroix, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat
Question of the day: ”why does the painter choose such or such color”?
When I realized that many brilliant painters of the 19th and 20th centuries were using the theory of complementary colors for their canvases, I felt like I had an important artistic key!
But what does the theory of complementary colors consist of? After the question of the day, this is the second Wikipedia 🙂
Developed in the 18th century and first disseminated among artists, it was popularized by Goethe’s Treatise on Colors and verified by the experiments of Michel-Eugène Chevreul.
Two complementary colors are arranged on either side of the center on a diameter of the color disk. In the color diagram, the line joining them passes through the white point. Therefore, red is complementary to green, yellow to purple and blue to orange!
Let's give the floor to Delacroix, great master of painters from the end of the XIXth and XXth centuries.
Delacroix, L'Entrée des croisés à Constantinople, 1840
Harmony, Delacroix, did not hear it like most other painters (…). Delacroix, always kept the spice in the agreement, he pursued unity in the mutual penetration of opposites. Bringing together, for example, all the facets of green, all the variants of red, he broke them, entangled them one in the other, spared them weakened echoes or redoubled violence, he composed them in a biting harmony for the memory, caressing for the eye.
Seeing diametrically opposed colors, oranges and blues, purples and yellows, prepared on the spot with its decoration, you would have said two armies ready to clash, to destroy each other. But under the master’s hand, these hostile tones, finding mysterious analogies in each other, reconciled in the fray and soon formed a fraternal fanfare. (evoking the painting of the Entrance of the Crusaders into Constantinople by Delacroix, 1840)
Charles Blanc, The artists of my time.
To you, Dear Mr. Van Gogh!
The room is blood red and muted yellow, a green billiard table in the middle, 4 lemon yellow lamps with orange and green radiance. It is everywhere a fight and an antithesis of the most different greens and reds, in the characters of little sleeper thugs, in the empty and sad room, of purple and blue.
The blood red and yellow green of billiards, for example, contrast with the small tender Louis XV green of the counter, where there is a rose bouquet (September 8, 1888, III)
Vincent Van Gogh, le Café de Nuit, 1888
This time my bedroom quite simply, only the color here has to do the thing and by simplifying giving a bigger style to things, be suggestive here of rest or sleep in general. Finally, the sight of the painting must rest the head or the imagination.
The walls are a pale purple. The floor is red checkered.
The wood of the bed and the chairs are fresh butter yellow, the sheets and pillows a very light lime green.
The scarlet red blanket. The green window.
The orange dressing table, the blue bowl.
The lilac doors.
And that’s it – nothing in this shuttered room
Vincent Van Gogh, la Chambre à coucher, 1889
Let us listen to Paul Gauguin, tell us the importance for him of introducing a third color in the duality of the complements.
Paul Gauguin, Parau Api, 1892
Van Gogh, infuenced by neo-impressionist research, always proceeded by great oppositions of tone on a complementary yellow, on purple, etc. While later, based on my advice and teaching, he proceeded quite differently. He made yellow suns on a yellow background, etc., learned orchestration in a pure tone by all derivatives of that tone.
The elementary colors, because of their power, are generally placed in the main parts of the painting; and, as these colors have no affinities with each other, they enhance each other by contrast.
To make the combination of elementary colors harmonious, a third color must be included. For example, if you put a red next to a blue, you will modify these colors by adding yellow; then red will turn slightly orange, a complementary color to blue; and the blue will take on a greenish tint, a complementary color to the red. If it is purple and orange, we will load the color violet with blue, etc. We can therefore tune all the colors by modifying them in the feeling of their harmonious opponent, in such a way that they appear neither harsh nor too full in tone.
D. Sutter, Philosophie des beaux arts, op.cit, P. 269
Paul Signac, disciple of the theory of complementary colors and follower of the law of simultaneous contrasts ...
Two adjacent colors influence each other mutually, each imposing on the other its own complement, green a purple, red a blue green, yellow an ultramarine, purple a greenish yellow, orange a cyan blue: contrast of colors .
The clearer becomes clearer; the darker, the darker: contrast of tones.
This contrast is the regulator of the contrast of tones: with the difference in tones increases the influence, by choice of complementary ones, of the brightest region on the darkest, while the opposite action decreases, and, for a powerful contrast of tones, such as that of shadows to lights, is almost abolished.
- Fénéon “Paul Signac”, The Men of Today “.
