Talk by Jenny McNamara – Colour in 20th Century Art

21st January 2023 at 10.30am
Learning Room at the Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne.

‘Art that is meant for the sensation of the eye primarily, would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light and colour art.’ – Sol LeWitt, 1967

This talk will explore the use of colour in 20th century art from Fauvism to Abstraction, Colour Field Painting, Op Art, Minimalism and Installation.

Around 1905, Fauvist painters like Matisse, Braque and Derain began experimenting using colour in a different way. They used bright, saturated colours in a loose, gestural way and chose colours that didn’t represent the actual colour of the object (e.g. painting grass bright blue and faces green). At the same time, new scientific developments of our understanding of vision were emerging in fields like Neuroaesthetics, Gestalt psychology and Empirical Aesthetics.

In the 1950s, Minimalism marked a shift in art from object to experience. Rather than imagined pictorial space, the focus moved onto the experience of the viewer and their direct relationship with the material, form and colour of the object. Installation art followed on from this and took it further by completely filling up the visual field and putting the viewer ‘inside’ the work.

Colour research by vision scientists and artists has overlapped greatly. The artists in this talk were not thinking or writing about vision science in particular, but constantly experimented with colour and other visual elements in their studios. Where scientists measure quantitatively, visual artists work intuitively and have a deep understanding of our emotional response to colour. In 1991 Semir Zeki, a world renowned neuroscientist, discovered that the V4 area of the visual cortex in the brain contains clumps of neurons that specifically process colour and in 1997 proved that colour is the visual element that is processed fastest by the brain. Artists are masterful in their intuitive use of colour as a multi-purpose tool – to make references, place emphasis, tell a story and elicit emotion, and this talk will highlight some key examples of innovative applications of colour in visual art in the 20th century.

Jenny McNamara is an artist/designer based in Newcastle who explores visual mindfulness and the effects of colour and pattern on mood. Jenny runs The Spaghetti Factory with Eve Cromwell, which supports artists in the North East. She is the grassroots art representative for The Clayton Street Corridor, a board member for Round Lemon and works at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art as Producer (Communities) on Neighbourly, a programme which uses creative processes and welcoming practices to support people seeking sanctuary to rebuild their lives in the North East.

To reserve a place for this talk, email hatton.friends@btinternet.com.

Please note, the talk is free for members and £5 for non-members.