light out of darkness
“The method of the old masters was to darken the canvas with brown or red-earth ground and then pull gleaming lights out of the gloom with touches of thick oil paint. The technique is called chiaroscuro, a term meaning light out of darkness. And while modern art has generally moved toward brighter colors, the drama of shadowy spaces lit by shafts of light continues to attract some of our most imaginative painters.”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
the yellow/violet chord
“The yellow/violet harmony can be summed up in a single wordexotic. For while red/green reminds us of trees and flowers, and orange/blue of earth and sky, the yellow/violet chord has little connection with everyday experience. Instead, we find it in rare butterflies, tropical birds, unearthly sunsets, costumes of the Far East, and the trappings of royalty.”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
[C]omplementary colors
“[C]omplementary colors have tremendous psychological importance. They touch upon deep-seated, universal experiences. In even the most abstract art, green reminds us of natures greenery, red, of its flowers. And blue will forever stand for sea and sky, orange for fire, purple for royalty, and yellow for the sun.”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
all of the color variables
“A picasso blue or an Ad Reinhardt black canvas is almost never truly monochrome, as imitators working with a single tube of paint plus white sometimes think. Instead, all of the color variables are normally present, even when compressed into a narrow range. . . .”
—Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
five or six color combinations
“When I had every choice open to me . . . I used the same five or six color combinations. . . . Having imposed a system on the construction of an image, I found myself making shapes and colors I had never made before.”
—Chuck Close; quoted by Charles Le Clair, Color in Contemporary Painting, 1991.
a rainbow at midnight
“After the war was over
I was coming home to you
I saw a rainbow at midnight
out on the ocean blue”
—Ernest Tubb, Rainbow At Midnight, 1946.
Tropical hot dog night
“Tropical hot dog night
Like two flamingos in a fruit fight
Evry color of day
Whirlin’ around at night”
—Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), Tropical Hot Dog Night, 1976.