Re: Quality

On 12/11/06, A. <atalanta.brilliante@gmail.com> wrote:

DubiousChrisJ wrote:
> I've been reading everyone with rapt attention, but I have to say, I'm
> beginning to think I am one of the few literalists on the forum. The concept
> of quality was taken far into the realm of metaphysics.
> I posed a question on the Word Use thread which was left unanswered. A.
> posited that it was impossible to paint a canvas primary red. I said it was
> easy; primary red is determined by chromacity, and using a pigment with a
> chroma of 255,0,0 tells me I am using Primary red. I understand that viewers
> may subjectively see different shades, but I maintain that the ones who have
> no degree of color blindness are all going to recognize the shade they see
> as primary red.

I'm pretty sure I did respond.  Perhaps not directly.

Yes - they'll "see" primary red - if they are PHYSICISTS who have been
told the chromacity.  Or artists who buy into the pigment-naming
process (which is quite, quite new - most major artists of the past
ground their own pigments, they had (each of them) their own view on
which red was primary red.

So yeah - go ahead and eliminate thousands of "primary reds" from past
paintings in one fell swoop with this "literalist" viewpoint.

I won't buy into it.

I didn't eliminate anything. You said it was impossible to delineate a primary red. I said you are wrong, and I am certainly capable, and showed how. I'll accept that all of those other interpretations are valid to the subjective sense of each artist. In doing so, I prove that it certainly is possible, both from the perspective of the literalist, who can paint a pure lightwave frequency pigment of 255.0.0 and of every subjective artist who has purported to paint primary red in his or her own way.

Now, I'm sure you are going to insist it's the physicists and their

 equipment who get to decide what is primary red - and I'm not going to
agree with you.  You will still be in the same realm you were in -

which is to say, out there with your label attempting to find a group
(this time, physicists, apparently) to agree that this is the *real*
"primary red."

I don't have to insist anything. Scientists study light and color. Hell, you rely on the work of one scientist to try and expound upon the quandary of color perception. Do you pick and choose which science suits you? You must be a creationist.

BTW, I find it odd that you'd claim that painters have "primary red"
about them - do you mean cadmium red?

I could use Cadmium Red if I was working in acrylics or oils...but if I was working in  Tempera, or  tile mosaic, I might very well have some primary red.  Or  pastels, for that matter, or crayons, or Krylon.

>
> While the perception of color may be subjective, color itself is not.

And what relationship does color "itself" have to art?  Or, even
further - to modern painting?

Lots of relationships - but you seem to want to avoid starting with the
prominent ones - instead you want to invoke something about the physics
of light.  Sigh.

Poor thing. It's so wearying to talk to those not at repose in the same lofty towers of thought. You should lie down and rest.

It is
> a measure of the varying wavelength of light reflected off an object. You
> can't argue that subjectively .

No - but I can refuse, subjectively, to have those measurements enter
into ANY DEFINITION OF ART.

Which was what the thread was about - NOT about the wavelength or other
properties of any kind of light.  I understand perfectly well what
Physics is, Chris.

Let's get back to art.  Can you?

Of course I can. Physics is the flip side of art...the expression of comprehension and observation through calculation, and ordered communication. They truly go hand in hand,

768 Mhz is ever anything but .768 Mhz. The
> romantic quality of the color of an object may be that primary red reminds
> us of passion, or anger, and we find it appealing, but the classic quality
> is still going to consist of the canvas, gesso, framing, stroke style, and
> 255.0.0 chroma pigment.

Excuse me.  But when ANY red paint is placed on a canvas, the canvas's
texture and color influence that paint.  And you can't get around that.

You're excused. Gastric discomfort?

Enough coats, and all influence of the canvas fades away. And you can't get around that.

Can you give an example of pure color (and it must be pure color - I
don't want laser beams, just color) being used in an artistic
application?  I think not.  The color has to be present in something
(like a paint).

 Why? Is laser not a medium?

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/12/05/unusual-light-show-to-attract-the-young/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bsn.org.uk%2Fview_all.php%3Fid%3D12416&frame=true

Once you add ANY medium to that pigment, and if you show the painting
under various lighting, and if the canvas has ANY texture, the light on
that paint will refract to your eye differently.

Art is NOT about physics - and I don't think it's useful to ask
questions like "If red pigment fell from the sky in a forest, would it
be red pigment?"

BTW, I'd love to know which brand paint you're speaking of that uses
255.0.0 pigment - and what that pigment is made of.  Certainly, you
aren't going to find that in a Rembrandt - or in a Picasso.

Let's talk art.  The "essence" of any artwork is not the wavelength of
the light in the initial pigment used in the medium.  So - how would
you (ever) get to notions of "quality" of art - from where you are,
with your alleged "primary red" pigment?

To me, the term "primary" means many, many things (not just physics) -
and to invoke the term means a long host of associations.  That's what
makes it the domain of art.

And, as anyone should know, even in the physics lab, the perception of
red light varies dramatically from person to person - especially if
each person has (just before viewing) done different things with their
eyes (closed them, looked at some other color, etc).  There's human
variation in rods and cones, as well.

Here's a paint supplier's "primary red" (note that it's labelled
magenta):

http://www.lilipubs.com/scripts/shopplus.cgi?DN=lilipubs.com&CARTID=77111580&FILE=/shop/maimerioil.htm

I think the light cadmium red is much closer to my own view of what
primary red is (in the sense that I use the term inside myself).

Here's a painter's page that shows how the same tube of paint looks
depending on how much is applied to the canvas (on WHITE canvas - raw
canvas would yield a different result, a wood panel would yield yet
another)

http://www.lawrence.co.uk/brochure/pdfs07/05.pdf

These are all basics of painting - the physics, the pigment, the way
it's mixed, how it's applied, where it's applied - and therefore, it's
all pertinent to art.  However, I can't think of any one worth reading
in aesthetics (or taking to) who would begin or end a discussion of art
with purely technical and technique-oriented concepts.

Anyway, look down the palette at that last link until you see the
brush-on of the "Primary Red" - not what we usually think of as primary
red, right?

By we, I mean most people raised with crayons in the United States.

And certainly not the "red" favored by modern painters as "the red"
they consider primary.

A number of artists have addressed "your" concern with what's primary.
Their interests in doing so are somewhat differently - radically
different in some ways - from what the physicists do when they choose a
particular wavelength to label.  Bauer for example, decided to work
with the notion of primary color here:

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79825

The idea that "red" would be next to white in this way has a resut,
doesn't it?  Let's just suppose the red in the picture is the right
wavelength for you.

Is there primary red in the picture?  What's it like with so little of
it?

Following your notion that "any tube of paint with pigment 255.0.0 in
it" produces "primary red," what do you make of this:

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=78723

He used but one pigment in that painting.  Which part of the painting
is now primary red?

And, to me, the Reinhardt painting, while fabulous, just doesn't define
primary red.  I will never be able to "see primary red" in my mind
(which is where I do my seeing) except via:

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79002

I find that all other "primary reds" end up judged by me in
relationship to that red - and I'm not alone - that red is in this
painting, which is Rothko's riff on primary red:

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80265

The word "primary" has many meanings.  Physics may have misappropriated
it, actually (one would think that there's no way for visible light to
exist at all without all the colors in it - they don't mean 'primary'
in its usual sense).  The words "cardinal" and "primary" are similar in
their meanings - and yet, "cardinal red" is a different set of reds.

Most of the time, when we think of or view red, it is in relationship
to other colors, as well (all the colors are in this painting):

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=78970

Anyone who could point to the part of THAT painting that's "primary
red" would win a prize from me - although I don't know how we'd verify
their answer.  Would it be the place where the most 255.0.0 pigment was
smeared?  Why?  Wouldn't it be anywhere that the 255.0.0 was smeared -
even it it no longer "looked" red to us?

Or is it important that the thing look and feel primary red, as well?
(You know my answer).

A.
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=78682

-  to see how different Mondrian's red looks when it is next to lots of
yellow...










>

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