The Shock and Awe of Color

Sometimes it takes a while, sometimes a very long while, to understand what Torah is saying to us. We may even need insights and discoveries made thousands of years after Torah first spoke to fully comprehend its meaning. "Let there be light." Such simple words. Yet, it was not until 1672 and Isaac Newton's experiments with prisms that we might understand those words as meaning "Let there be color."

Prior to Newton, people thought color was a mixture of light and darkness. Newton demonstrated that light is the source of color. Rather than being a property of objects themselves, he established that color is a property of the light that reflects from objects. Yet, even as science increasingly became the realm within which to understand color, spirituality continued to be a language of meaning for color. Let's begin with Torah.

References to color in Torah are rare. The most profuse is in the description of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary the Israelites built during their journey through the wilderness. The Mishkan is understood to be not just a structure for communal worship. It is a replication of the universe itself: a point of contact between this dimension and another. Colors used in its construction include: purple, blue, scarlet, gold, silver, copper, and white. These same colors are incorporated into the garments to be worn by the High Priest, the one who will enter into the very heart of the Mishkan, the Holy of Holies. The color blue is commanded to be incorporated into the garments of all Israelites, woven into the fringes of their garments. By gazing upon the blue in their clothing, the Israelites would be reminded of their connection to God.

Perhaps the most extraordinary use of color as a passageway to God is the vision that the seventy elders of Israel beheld at Mount Sinai: "They saw the God of Israel; and under God's feet was paved brickwork the color of sapphire, like the essence of a clear sky." A blue paveway leading up into a blue sky where exists the Source of all.

Mishkan. Priestly garments. Fringes. Paved brickwork. All adorned with a resource that is at once rare in an ancient society and in an ancient text and yet, through light, omnipresent...color.

Color before the Impressionists

Cave paintings dating as far back as 17,000 B.C.E. contain colors, mostly dark brown, straw yellow, red and black. These were made from metallic oxides found in the area. Prior to the modern period, the making of pigments was labor intensive. It involved the grinding of rock to powder, the boiling or burning of plants, bones, and woods. And, because the organic materials needed for certain colors were rare, it was expensive. A second factor in pre-modern painting limiting the use of color was the Renaissance emphasis on portraying ideal forms of beauty. Overall design, the exquisite line, the skill of drawing had place of privilege. Color played a supportive role to form. This approach was adopted by the major European art academies up through the nineteenth century.

Color as an Instrument of Liberation

The Impressionists embraced color as one of their instruments for the overthrow of the old order on behalf of a new, modern world. Colors did not need to be a precise representation of what might be found in nature. The perception of the individual artist prevailed. This drove the guardians of established standards mad. One critic cried out: "Try to make Monsieur Pissarro understand that trees are not violet, that the sky is not the color of fresh butter, that in no country do we see the things he paints and that no intelligence can accept such aberrations!"

Of course, such criticism only confirmed for the Impressionists that they were on the right track in their rebellion. And science increasingly was on their side. In 1839 chemist Eugene Chevreul found that colors change in relation to the other colors near them. Colors are not immutable realities but are dependent on individual perception. Color for the Impressionists was a tool of liberation from the past. And as color became primary, form began to dissolve.

But if an image was not to be the subject of a work of art, what would?

Color in Search of the Sublime

The Impressionists prevailed in expressly making the subjectivity of the artist an element of the painting and in valuing expression of color over definition of form. Artists who followed them extended those claims. Yet, they also longed for something more enduring than the transiency described by the Impressionists in their works. Their search took them into the world of the sublime. A dimension that was at once interior, like that of the Impressionists, but which held out the promise of a world beyond time.

A leader in promoting the supremacy of color as an entry into an eternal sublime was Henri Matisse. He wrote; "What I dream of is an art of balance, of pure serenity and devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter." He titled one of his early works after a verse from the poem "Invitation to a Voyage" by Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire would become an inspiration for many early modern artists who rejected the dominance of materialism and embraced a pursuit of the spiritual. His poem is an enticement to a lover to join him in a journey to a world of beauty. It is an imaginary and interior world, one of intimate and enduring beauty.

There all is order, naught amiss:

Comfort and beauty, calm and bliss.

The Shock of Color...The Awe of Color

As the Impressionists before him, Matisse used color as an instrument to declare his liberation from the constraint of representational form and his embrace of that which is beyond form. Matisse and others engaged in this approach held an exhibition in 1905, which sent shock waves through the art world. Matisse showed the piece below, Woman with a Hat:

Upon encountering the works of Matisse and his colleagues, which were exhibited in a gallery where also stood a Renaissance statue by Donatello, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles exclaimed, "Donatello among the wild beasts (fauves)!" The rebellious artists embraced Vauxcelles' contempt proudly and called themselves Fauvists.

The establishment considered the Fauvists, in their garish and non-naturalistic use of color, to be vulgar, unbridled, and uncivilized. At times, the Fauvists would even apply paint onto the canvass directly from the tube. Their disregard for finesse of form, their canvasses awash with bright colors assaulted established senses. Even such a supporter of the Impressionists as the writer and critic Camille Mauclair screamed upon seeing Woman with a Hat, "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public!"

Matisse's use of color in this painting encourages the eye to keep moving. Pairs of complimentary colors repeat in different parts of the canvass. No single point gains privilege of place. We know that the actual face of the woman portrayed does not consist of the greens, blues, and lavenders we see on the canvass. The dress too contains colors we know are not really present. The model is Matisse's wife, Amelie. When asked what the actual color of his wife's dress was, Matisse replied, "Black, of course."

Matisse's non-naturalistic use of color and his unconcern with definition of form let us know that representation of an image, or even his perception of an image, is not his intent. He is seeking to provoke us. To point us in a different direction than the material reality we think we're looking at. There is another dimension, one of true harmony, where all is "comfort and beauty, calm and bliss."

Matisse's shocking use of color is in service of restoring our vision of a spiritual realm. As was the use of color with the Mishkan, priestly garments, fringes, and paved brickwork. There is a reality that resists representation. That cannot be confined to form. Let there be color!