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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
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  4. Color Theory
  5. Artists and Color

Color Theory: Artists and Color

  • Color Theory
  • Artists and Color
  • Paint & Pigments
  • Dartmouth College Color
  • Art & Architecture Research Guide

Visual Arts Librarian

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Laura Graveline
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Sherman Art Library & Art Special Collection
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Subjects: Art History & Studio Art
  • Artists on color
  • Color of the universe
  • Chromaphilia by Stella Paul
    Call Number: N7432.7 .P38 2017
    ISBN: 9780714873510
    Publication Date: 2017
    Unlock the secrets of colour - learn how and why it has been used in art over the centuries This vibrant and compelling book uses 240 artworks as case studies to tell the story of ten individual colours or colour groups. It explores the history and meaning of each colour in art, highlighting fascinating tales of discovery and artistic passion, and offering easily accessible explanations of the science and theory behind specific colours. From Isaac Newton's optics to impressionist theory, from the dynamics of Josef Albers to the contemporary metaphysics of Olafur Eliasson, this book shows how colour paints our world.

 

 
  • Chromophobia by David Batchelor
    Call Number: N7432.7 .B3 2000
    ISBN: 1861890745
    Publication Date: 2000-09-01
    The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse - a fear of corruption or contamination through color - lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge color, either by making it the property of some "foreign body" - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic. Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Writers have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century. David Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analyzing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at color as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville's "great white whale", Huxley's reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier's "journey to the East", Batchelor also discusses the use of color in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art.
  • Claude Monet's Gardens at Giverny by Jean-Pierre Gilson (Photographer); Dominique Lobstein
    Call Number: ND553.M7 G5613 2013
    ISBN: 9781419709609
    Publication Date: 2013-09-03
    Water lilies, reflecting ponds, a Japanese footbridge, and blankets of glorious flowers: Nothing evokes Claude Monet’s Impressionist paintings quite like images from his gardens at Giverny, about 50 miles northwest of Paris. Monet discovered a profound source of artistic renewal in these gardens, a motif that appears in hundreds of his works. In Claude Monet’s Gardens at Giverny, Dominique Lobstein’s dynamic text introduces us to the many personalities that have strolled through these gardens and the role this setting played in Monet’s life, while Jean-Pierre Gilson’s lush four-season photographs offer a tour through the literally thousands of flowers—daffodils, irises, poppies, tulips, and more— winding pathways, arching trellises, cherry trees heavily laden with blossoms, and, of course, the iconic water garden. This book brings to life critical moments in Monet’s biography, presenting a vivid glimpse into the beloved artist’s personal experiences and creative universe.
  • Color Creates Light by Tina Dickey
    Call Number: ND237.H667 D53 2011
    ISBN: 9780986651106
    Publication Date: 2011-02-20
    Color Creates Light: Studies with Hans Hofmann brings together the man, the schools, the painting, the ideas, and the teaching. Jed Perl of The New Republic calls this book "enormously important... nothing less than the missing chapter in the history of the period," for Hofmann's decade of painting in Paris prior to World War I, combined with his observations of the masters of all cultures, enabled him to explain Cubism to the avant-garde and catalyzed the later Abstract Expressionism.

    In the ateliers of German emigrant Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) in Munich, New York and Provincetown, talented students later to become some of the most significant artists and educators of the time rubbed shoulders with critics, collectors, and curators, who in turn transmitted and transmuted Hofmannâ¿¿s ideas across Europe, America, Canada, and beyond. From how Hofmann taught to what he taught, artists talk shop about the inner workings of the visual language, required reading for those engaged in creative composition, whether visual, verbal, musical, architectural, cinematic, or choreographic.
  • Color grids by Lewitt, Sol
    Call Number: NK1535.L63 A4 1977
    Publication Date: 1977
    Art Special Collection
  • Colorful World by Amandine Guisez Gallienne (Photographer); Hilton McConnico (Preface by)
    Call Number: N7432.7 .G35 2005
    ISBN: 9780500285862
    Publication Date: 2006-04-10
    How do colors become imbued with meaning? Why do some colors attract us while others repel? How have phrases such as "green with envy" or "the blues" arisen? Here are hundreds of photographs, organized into color-coded chapters that revel in color's all-pervasive influence and accompanied by a text that explores color's symbolism and the emotions it generates. The international quest takes us to some of the planet's most exotic and far-flung places, from a workshop on the outskirts of Kyoto to a bustling market in a small town in Peru and on to a cochineal farm in the middle of the Mexican desert. Colorful World is a vibrant celebration of human creativity that will be a source of inspiration and delight for designers and artists everywhere.
  • Compositions, couleurs, idées by Delaunay, Sonia
    Call Number: 771 D375c
    Publication Date: 1930?
    Art Special Collection
  • I Send You This Cadmium Red by John Berger; John Christie
    Call Number: ND1488 .B47 2000
    ISBN: 8495273322
    Publication Date: 2000-10-01
    A book of correspondence between two highly talented friends -- writer/critic/artist John Berger and filmmaker/artist John Christie -- I Send You This Cadmium Red began in concept in February 1997, when Christie mused to Berger: "What could our next project be?" Berger replied "Just send a color..". Soon after, a painted square of cadmium red crossed the English Channel, from Christie in London to Berger in France, and an amazing conversation began. The accompanying book reveals, in the form of letters, notes, small books, and drawings, their subsequent exchange of ideas on color -- a visual odyssey that ranges from Matisse's blue to the blue of Yves Klein, from industrial brown anti-rust paint to Joseph Beuys' Braunkreuz, from mysterious cave paintings to Byzantine gold leaf. Unprecedented and engaging, aesthetically stunning and intellectually enlightening, I Send You This Cadmium Red both explores new 'ways of seeing' and provides a key to understanding the work of these two artists.
  • Yves Klein by Yves Klein (Artist); Kerry Brougher (Text by); Klaus Ottmann (Text by); Philippe Vergne (Text by)
    Call Number: N6853.K5 A4 2010
    ISBN: 9780935640946
    Publication Date: 2010-07-31
    One of the last century's most influential artists, Yves Klein (1928-1962) took the European art scene by storm in a prolific career that lasted only from 1954 to 1962, when he suffered a heart attack at the age of 34. Klein was an innovator who embraced painting, sculpture, performance, photography, music, theater, film, architecture and theoretical writing. Self-identified as "the painter of space," Klein sought to achieve immaterial spirituality through pure color (primarily an ultramarine blue of his own invention-International Klein Blue) and even went so far as to present white galleries emptied of all artworks for his renowned 1958 exhibition of "the Void." His diverse oeuvre represents a pivotal transition from modern art's concern with the material object to contemporary notions of the conceptual nature of art.Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powersis published to accompany the first major retrospective of the artist's work in the United States in nearly 30 years. It includes examples from all of Klein's major series, including his Anthropometries, Cosmogonies,fire paintings, planetary reliefs and blue monochromes, as well as selections of his lesser-known gold and pink monochromes, body and sponge reliefs, "air architecture" and immaterial works. Essays by curators Kerry Brougher and Philippe Vergne, Klein scholar Klaus Ottmann, art historian Kaira M. Cabanas and curatorial fellow Andria Hickey, as well as archival materials and translations of Klein's published and unpublished writings, offer insights into the artist's endeavors and process.Born in Nice, France, in 1928, Yves Kleincreated what he considered his first artwork when he signed the sky above Nice in 1947, making his earliest attempt to capture the immaterial. The artist carved out new aesthetic and theoretical territory based on his study of the mystical sect Rosicrucianism, philosophical and poetic investigations of space and science, and the practice of Judo, which he described as "the discovery of the human body in a spiritual space."
  • Cover ArtMissoni Art Colour O/P by L. Caramel
    Call Number: TT505.M57 M574 2016
    ISBN: 9780847849956
    Publication Date: 2016-05-03
    Published on the occasion of the Missoni, Art, Colour exhibition, this visually rich book surveys the history and inspiration behind one of the most iconic fashion houses of all time. Rosita and Ottavio Missoni launched their eponymous fashion house in the 1950s, combining art and fashion to create a unique style that is recognized all over the world. This book is both a celebration of the unmistakable Missoni style, whose innovative approach mixes color, pattern, and matter with an extraordinary sense of balance, and an exploration of works by artists who have influenced the designers over the course of their creative, cultural, and artistic journey.The book is divided into four thematic sections that describe the creative process of the Missoni house, from the sources of their inspiration to their transformation of material. It begins with "Roots," which presents the historical avant-garde in Europe, including works by Kandinsky, Klee, Balla, and Severini, and is followed by "Color, Material, and Shape," which focuses on Missoni fashion and design. "Conversations" explores Missoni's creativity in relation to Italian visual culture from the 1950s to the 1980s, and "Tapestries" reveals Ottavio Missoni's most significant works of art made of knitted patchwork."

In an effort to measure the cosmic spectrum, or the color of the universe, scientists have measured the light output of stars, and found  #FFF8E7, also known as Cosmic Latte, to be the predominant color of the universe.

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  • Last Updated: Apr 21, 2025 9:05 AM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/color
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