Color

"Color possesses me"
Paul Klee declared, in one of art history's most impassioned statements on the subject, I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. Color and I are one. I am a painter.

Contemplating a well-ordered palette, Kandinsky rhapsodized: The eye... is charmed by the beauty... of the color. The spectator experiences a feeling of... pleasure, like a gourmet [with] a tasty morsel in his mouth... The psychological power of color becomes apparent, calling forth a vibration from the soul.

Numerous artists and writers have weighed in on the element Roy Lichtenstein called crucial in painting, but... very hard to talk about. There is almost nothing you can say [about color] that holds up as a generalization, because it depends on too many factors: size, modulation, the rest of the field, a certain consistency that color has with forms, and the statement you're trying to make.

Color is so much a matter of direct and immediate perception that any discussion of theory needs to be accompanied by experiments with the colors themselves.

-Walter Sargent

The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.

- Hans Hofmann

There are no colors, strictly speaking, only coloring materials.

- Jean Dubuffet

In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually.

- Josef Albers

The laws of color are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.

-Vincent Van Gogh

Some of us come on earth seeing - some of us come on earth seeing color.

- Louise Nevelson

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

- Georgia O'Keeffe

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No.

- Pablo Picasso

When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.

- Henri Matisse

Give me mud and I will paint you the skin of Venus.

- Eugene Delacroix

Whenever I give a demonstration of color mixing, I ask my audience where they experience the main difficulty. The answer is invariably the same - 'mixing greens.'

- Michael Wilcox

I love red so much, I almost want to paint everything red.

- Alexander Calder

If one says 'red,' and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.

- Josef Albers

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

- Winston Churchill

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

- Alice Walker

I have finally discovered the color of the atmosphere. It is violet.

- Claude Monet

Yellow is capable of charming God.

- Vincent Van Gogh

There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

- Pablo Picasso

I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.

- Pierre-Auguste Renoir

We were always intoxicated with color, with words that speak of color, and with the sun that makes colors live.

- André Derain

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

- Oscar Wilde

Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance.

- Henri Matisse

The purest thoughtful minds are those which love color the most.

- John Ruskin

 Taken from:

"The Primacy of Color"

Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975
Currently at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, Tenn., June 20 - Sept. 21

Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today
Recently at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

By K. Kimberly King