171 blog assignment 5 - colour

Both Isaac Newton and Philip Otto Runge have had a strong influence on the way we use and experience colour today. Beginning with Newton’s introduction of the first colour wheel which consisted of all primary colours from his book “Optiks”, which portrayed his belief that colour should be ordered and something about colour should not be altered. He looked into how colour meets the eye and how we see it. He also introduced the idea of simultaneous contrast, where a colour make is perceived differently depending on what colour surrounds it. For example a blue square within a green circle will be perceived differently to a blue square within a red circle. While Newton had a very mathematical and scientific approach to colour, he did not research how we perceive and feel about colour. While Runge believed that colour could portray emotion and that symbolism could be found within colour. Rung also developed his own idea of the colour wheel in his colour sphere, “which consisted of a set of three primaries: red, yellow and blue arranged in a complimentary scheme, it” (Gage) uses ideas of colours and shades that are still present today.  An example of this experimentation with colour is “The night cafe” which uses an obscure combination of contrasting reds and greens creating a strong symbolism and emotion. These developed theories colour would not be incorporated into art and design as we know it today. There would be no link between the emotion and symbolism and colour that we successfully use today. Paintings would not have the emotion that we see and experience today, designs would use colour with no meaning.

Gage, John. (1993). Colour and Culture – Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. London: Thames and Hudson

171 Blog assignment 4

In the essay Ornament and Crime Adolf Loss argues (Loos, 1908)that a civilizations “progress” can be measured by the degree to which it has spurned ornament. I agree with his idea that ornament should be removed from objects of daily use. Yes ornament can be nice to look at, but from a functional and economic perspective ornament is absolutely unnecessary.  As today most every day use products are mass produced, and function based there is not point making them look pretty and spending hours to make each one individual and beautiful.  The beauty of an object should aid its aesthetics and not overwhelm its functional use through ornament, and ornamented object can strong decrease its aesthetical value as well as compromise its functional use.  Ornamented objects are also economically inefficient as creating individual ornamented objects for everyday use is not cost effective and wastes time. Being mass produced such products can be largely distributed with a primary purpose of function, solving the exact problems people have. Whereas ornamented objects take long as they are often hand crafted and for that reason require a higher value for money, which is not economically efficient.                                                                                                                  I believe that he is correct that the removal of ornament is progression in society as everything we do to progress as people is to make life easier and to benefit us. As mass producing functional products designed around function, carrying on to ornament objects would go against this and take us back not bring us forward.                                                                                                               For example this chair from the Renaissance may look very beautiful and be the only one of its kind, and at the time may be very relevant to its culture. But to continue to ornament products like this today would not be cost effective and would bring us backwards in our evolution as a society and the progression of our culture.