*Image credited below
Last Thursday I stumbled upon a great little art museum called the C.N. Gorman Museum in the Native American Studies Department at Hart Hall. It was my first time in Hart Hall and I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this museum whose show called “Diversity” featured lithographs and sculpture by Salvador Dali and, paintings and drawings Florentino Laime Mantilla, a Peruvian artist. I was completely taken by the rich vibrant color palette of Mantilla’s paintings and so were the other visitors who when entering would first stop and stare at Mantilla’s work which was across the room, then proceed through the show. I observed this occurrence many times during the hour I was there, and would see people go straight to the paintings then move on to Dali’s work, counterclockwise. I became curious and wanted to investigate what was it about Mantilla’s use of color that drew people into his paintings first rather than Dali’s sculptures.
Perception and color theory, I think, has a lot to do with the answer. Most of Dali’s sculptures such as Surrealist Eyes (pictured above left) tapped into the multisensory aspect of our perception because they had strong tactile and visual, unity, however, the materials used such as metals and platinum failed to catch people’s immediate attention. This was because they were mostly a dull grey color and since our perception of color changes according to its surrounding, which were mostly white walls, the value of the grey darkened against the pure white walls and thus made the piece less inviting. This phenomenon in turn helped Mantilla’s painting, Yawarchanakuson /Ensangrentémonos (pictured above right), because vibrant colors do not show a change in value despite of their different surrounding (Lauer 257). Thus the colors the audience sees is much closer to the colors Mantilla saw when he painted the image. So he is able to use color as a tool to convey his ideas to the audience in the most effective way without worrying about light changing the interpretation of his image as is the case with Dali’s sculptures.
Similarly, Mantilla in Yawarchanakuson /Ensangrentémonos uses unexpected color combinations such as red-purple, orange and lime green which may be seen as discordant to depict the excitement and power of the moment (Lauer 278). Yawarchanakuson /Ensangrentémonos depicts a rare Peruvian cultural tradition where a bird is tied to a running bull and escapes to symbolize the journey to the afterlife. So Mantilla uses vibrating colors to capture this compelling moment, and this color combination also captures the views attention. This is partly due to the nature of our perception where meaning, excitement and power in the painting, precedes recognition of a ceremony in the painting; before we identify the forms of an image, the color creates an atmosphere to which we respond to by looking (Lauer 283). On the other hand, although the use of a monochromatic color scheme in Dali’s Surrealist Eyes provides unity to the different elements of the sculpture this color harmony also reads as somewhat boring and very static. Unlike the color in Mantilla’s painting, the color in Dali’s sculpture fails to create movement, or capture excitement and instead recedes into the background. Thus, making it less eye-catching (forgive the pun!)
Color when mastered can be such a powerful tool in design that it can literally impact the way people look or act, as was the case with Mantilla’s paintings where people actually moved counterclockwise around the museum because they were fascinated with his color palette and just had to go closer to have look. This technique has been mastered to such an extent in commercial media today that we go out and buy items and products because we just want to have a closer look!
*Images courtesy of C.N. Gorman Museum Collections
Links:
http://gormanmuseum.ucdavis.edu/
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Design-Basics/David-A-Lauer/e/9780495501817
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD
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