Living la vida Crayola

"All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."
~ Marc Chagall

The other day I read a fascinating article about colors, cultures and language. The title is "The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains" [link below]. Its focus is the relationship between language and color perception.

The thing that startled me was how few words some cultures have for colors. According to the article, some have names for only four or five colors. The Dani people of New Guinea have just two words for colors and one Amazon tribe, the Pirahã, is said to have none. I, who grew up with ever-larger boxes of Crayolas, have a gluttonous color vocabulary. Dozens and dozens of words. According to studies quoted in the article, once you start naming colors, the left side of the brain – the language side – takes charge. Naming colors becomes a new skill to be developed.

Discovering the color wheel ranks among my most memorable childhood experiences. I had always liked to draw and color, but this – it thrilled me. It showed me the relationships between colors – I hadn't known they had them. It showed me how to blend, and how not to blend, my little jars of tempera colors. I suddenly understood that harmony and dissonance were not just musical terms: They applied to color, too.

I had a similar thrill years later when, as a first-year art student, I was told to buy a Color-aid kit for my color theory class. I checked and was pleased to discover they're still on the market.

The Color-aid kit of my art school days was a box of 100 or so color swatches. They were a lot like paint chips but in a profusion of colors, some of which vibrated wildly when placed side-by-side. Who knew colors could do that? I suddenly had a new sense of the possibilities of color.


"Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions."
~ Pablo Picasso

Color theory class also gave me new ways to think about colors: by their hue, saturation and chroma. I don't know what they're teaching now, but in those days, these were defined as the three properties of color. Hue is of course the color itself. Saturation is the richness and depth of the color – how much color is in the color. Chroma I interpreted as the brightness of the color – the amount of light it seemed to emit. Knowing these terms made me feel like I understood color for the very first time. Ms. Pantone 1969.

It was a gorgeous day in New York City today – all clear air and bright, bright colors. As I walked down the street I instinctively noticed the sky that went down the blue scale from ultramarine to powder, and the trees that went from the yellowest green to apple, fern and forest, and I thought about a fact I'd just learned: that in many cultures, the words for blue and green are the same.

I would feel lost without my color names. Thank you, Crayola.

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Read the article:

• The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains

Amen

"You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life

before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave."

~ Billie Holiday

Young artists about town: Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work."
~ Chuck Close

Down in the lowest part of the Lower East Side of New York City, on Norfolk Street just off Delancey, is a fascinating photography exhibition in a pop-up gallery called site/109. The photographer is William John Kennedy, whose editorial work  appeared in publications including Life and Sports Illustrated and who also worked for top corporate clients.

But in the early 1960s, Kennedy befriended the artist Robert Indiana, who then recommended him to Andy Warhol. Kennedy photographed both in the first half of the 1960s, just as their careers were about to take off — and then put the photos in a drawer for almost 50 years.

My frequent gallery companion Dawn and I were there because Dawn's mom, Joan, had noticed an article about the show in an upstate New York newspaper — thanks, Joan! By the time we arrived, we'd missed a talk earlier in the day where the director of the Warhol Museum, Eric Shiner, had chatted with Kennedy and old Warhol companions Ultra Violet and Taylor Mead (both of whom figure prominently in multiple photos). But we had our own good luck when Louis Canales, the Creative Director of KIWI Arts Group, which produced the gallery catalog, agreed to be our very own docent. He showed us around the gallery and gave us the background on the photographer, the photos and the New York City art scene at the time they were taken, which was a few years before Dawn and I both attended the School of Visual Arts and Warhol and Indiana were household names.

I found the photos of the young Warhol especially interesting. There must be thousands of photos of Andy Warhol and I've seen scores, but these are the first I've come across where he looks like he's having fun. The affectless ennui that characterized every photo of him once fame took over is much less apparent in these photos.

Louis also gave us a copy of the catalog, which includes a rather fabulous DVD with a recent interview with the reclusive Robert Indiana.

The artist has lived for many years in Vinalhaven, Maine, which pretty much defines "off the beaten track." In the video, we see Kennedy and his wife travel by boat through heavy mist to the Vinalhaven dock, then walking up a street that probably hasn't changed much in 150 years before knocking on Indiana's door. You can see a brief clip from the video here.

The show is open until May 29. If you're in New York City, it's definitely worth a visit.