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How art affects culture
How art affects culture
Cultural influences in art
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The color blue is regarded as peculiar color by Goethe because it is a powerful hue that can be perceived as exciting and repose. Goethe mentions that blue is the opposite of the color yellow because blue is always accompanied by darkness while yellow is always accompanied by darkness. Since blue is very close to darkness thus it may give away negative emotions. “The appearance of objects seen through a blue glass is gloomy and melancholy” (Goethe, p. 171). His description of the color blue is similar to the description of the state of mind of being blue. The blue can produce a feeling of emptiness and sadness that can be an undesirable effect upon individuals. When blue is lighter in appearance, the emotional perception of blue becomes …show more content…
According to Goethe, red conveys a phenomenon of gravity and dignity, and at the same time feelings of grace and attractiveness (Goethe, p. 173 ). Similar to the color blue, emotions produced by the color red vary greatly. Goethe refers to red as a peculiar color that ranges from its deep dark state and its lighter weaker tint. Also, the color can possess the dignity of age and the amiableness of youth can be both represented by the color red (Goethe, p. 173). Goethe essentially means that red can represent the worthiness of individuals of old age while representing pleasantness of individuals of young age. “The red glass exhibits a bright landscape in so dreadful a hue as to inspire sentiments of awe” (Goethe, p. 173). Red produces feelings of wonderment and admiration in which brand personalities that use red similarly try to represent. Netflix and Target are two brands that use red exclusively in their logos. Netflix’s brand personality is heavily geared around producing feelings of excitement through entertainment. Their logo is primarily text based with a red background behind it. The bold red logo is synonymous with producing feelings of awe with consumers because is known for their overwhelming video selection. Target brand personality is very bold and friendly to consumers. Their red bull eye logo is bold on its own and its similarly produces feelings of wonderment. Although …show more content…
He focuses on the psychology of viewing art and gives unique attention to the perception of color. According to Arnheim the absence of color deprives the most efficient element of discrimination (Arnheim, 1974, p. 330). He uses the example of cats and dogs because they are biologically color blind. These animals would be able to efficiently identify a rolling ball on a lawn if they could perceive color. Cats and dogs can only differentiate objects because of the different textures in their environment. This example shows the importance of having the ability to perceive color because it allows for us to discriminate our world properly. Arnheim also highlights one cannot assume that different people or different cultures have the same standards for what colors are alike or different (Arnheim, p. 332). Different cultures may distinguish colors of plants better than cultures who are more industrialize. A tribe that is heavily involved in agricultural may possess more words to describe the different hues of green in their crops more superiorly than differentiating different hues of blue. Although Arnheim states that the color person is the same across for individuals of different backgrounds, ages, and cultures. The differentiation of color can vary from different groups of people but the perception of color would generally by similar.
An artwork will consist of different elements that artists bring together to create different forms of art from paintings, sculptures, movies and more. These elements make up what a viewer sees and to help them understand. In the painting Twilight in the Wilderness created by Frederic Edwin Church in 1860 on page 106, a landscape depicting a sun setting behind rows of mountains is seen. In this painting, Church used specific elements to draw the viewer’s attention directly to the middle of the painting that consisted of the sun. Church primarily uses contrast to attract attention, but it is the different aspects of contrast that he uses that makes the painting come together. In Twilight in the Wilderness, Church uses color, rhythm, and focal
...teristics. In Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, the author utilizes the color orange to represent hope that Pi survives his endeavor with a Bengal tiger at sea. Orange signifies life and ensures that Pi lives to tell his story. Throughout the course of events, the orange tiger aboard the lifeboat drives Pi to fight for his life. In contrast, the fading yellow color in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper steers the woman further into mental hysteria. Rather than leading to salvation, the aging yellow embodies her illness and leads to her ultimate demise. Whether a color provides positive or negative thoughts and emotions, any piece of literature remains incomplete without splashes of color throughout the text.
Landesman defends a view called color skepticism, that nothing has any color, neither bodies nor appearances. He came to the conclusion that colors do not exist. In making the case for his "color skepticism," Landesman discusses and rejects historically influential
Though people can look into color and composition, others can still even look into the source of the art itself. Cole goes deeper, delving into the source of the art, looking in particular into the idea of cultural appropriation and the view a person can give others. Though it is good for people to be exposed to different opinions of a group or an object, sometimes people can find it difficult to tell the difference between the reality and the art itself. Sometimes art can be so powerful that its message stays and impacts its audience to the point where the viewer’s image of the subject of the art changes entirely. Cole brings up an important question about art, however. Art has become some kind of media for spreading awareness and even wisdom at times, but in reality, “there is also the question of what the photograph is for, what role it plays within the economic circulation of images” (973). Cole might even be implying that Nussbaum’s advertisement can sometimes be the point of some media, and that sometimes the different genres of art can just be to make someone with a particular interest happy. One more point that Cole makes is that “[a]rt is always difficult, but it is especially difficult when it comes to telling other people’s stories.” (974) Truthfully, awareness and other like-concepts are difficult to keep going when a person or a group is not directly involved.
Throughout the novel, 'The Scarlet Letter,'; Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the themes with various dramatic colors. Of the array are the colors green and gold, where green symbolizes different aspects of nature such as tranquility, security, and gloominess, whereas gold represents all that pertains to luxuriance, serenity and goodness. In certain chapters, it seems as if one color is codependent with the other.
Ellison uses colour such as white, gold and red in order to transmit the story’s themes and issues. White people have power over black people and the use of a gold color demonstrates it: “I would use both hands. I would throw my body against the boys nearest me to block them from the gold” (21). The gold represents the power, the wealth and the prosperity of the white people. Instead of grouping up together against the white, black people continue to fight for the money. And it benefits the whites because as long as they fight each other they will not fight them. Red color is usually associated with love, but here it represents rage and blood: “I spoke automatically and with such fervor that I did not realize that the men were still talking and
Flowers of different colors not only paint a picture of contrast but the underlying meanings of the difference displays “the mesh of good and evil” in the truth of human nature. The
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
Today artists doing to explain an idea are really interesting and attractive to look to it, especially when it comes to colors. Do artists know how to do magic? Or they take control of the viewer by using colors? For example, when you see the red color in a surprising way it mean stop now. “God made the country; man made the town” the deprivation of colors makes the town really sad. Life without colors is unbearable. Scientific explanation of the white color is a mixture of rainbow colors; it is not fair to dispensed seven colors for one color. The science does not consider the black as a color, although it was considered as a color from ancient time. They think black is a symbolism of mystery and mysterious like the god. (Gage, J. Color and meaning)(Conroy, E. The symbolism of color: 1921)
Color can be a semiotic resource. It has many uses in the cultural association of signs. Some features that contribute as a signifier are saturation, purity, modulation, value and hue. Red can signify danger, green can stand for hope. In most countries black is a sign of mourning. However, in some parts of Europe, brides wear black for their wedding. In China and some other Eastern Asian countries, white is considered the color for mourning. While in America and most of Europe, white is a sign of purity and warn by brides. These contrasts of cultural semiotics make color partly unpredictable. In order for the color to function as a sign, there must be a consensus of meaning. In most cases there is not a consensus that is shared by all societies. There are some regularities and this is what makes color function as a semiotic resource. The challenge is understanding the motivations and interests of different groups. Some colors translate well and some do not. Finding these regularities within groups and applying them as semiotic resources is a challenge (Kress, 2002). Some associations to color are universal and these connections could spread as communication becomes more global (Eiseman, 2000).
In this essay, I shall try to examine how great a role colour played in the evolution of Impressionism. Impressionism in itself can be seen as a linkage in a long chain of procedures, which led the art to the point it is today. In order to do so, colour in Impressionism needs to be placed within an art-historical context for us to see more clearly the role it has played in the evolution of modern painting. In the late eighteenth century, for example, ancient Greek and Roman examples provided the classical sources in art. At the same time, there was a revolt against the formalism of Neo-Classicism. The accepted style was characterised by appeal to reason and intellect, with a demand for a well-disciplined order and restraint in the work. The decisive Romantic movement emphasized the individual’s right in self-expression, in which imagination and emotion were given free reign and stressed colour rather than line; colour can be seen as the expression for emotion, whereas line is the expression of rationality. Their style was painterly rather than linear; colour offered a freedom that line denied. Among the Romanticists who had a strong influence on Impressionism were Joseph Mallord William Turner and Eugéne Delacroix. In Turner’s works, colour took precedence over the realistic portrayal of form; Delacroix led the way for the Impressionists to use unmixed hues. The transition between Romanticism and Impressionism was provided by a small group of artists who lived and worked at the village of Barbizon. Their naturalistic style was based entirely on their observation and painting of nature in the open air. In their natural landscape subjects, they paid careful attention to the colourful expression of light and atmosphere. For them, colour was as important as composition, and this visual approach, with its appeal to emotion, gradually displaced the more studied and forma, with its appeal to reason.
Several psychological studies conclude that the mind has adapted universal reactions to colors. While these responses are subjective depending on the region, there are general responses that exist in relation to the human population as a whole. According to journalist Sarah Marinos, color psychology professor Jill Morton’s global studies have reported that when surveyed on the significance of specific colors “black was linked to bad luck and mourning” (70). Black now encompasses strong “association(s) with impurity” (Sherman and Clore 1020). Many have come to see black as a sign of moral pollution, “not because immoral things tend to be black, but because immorality” (Sherman & Clore 1020) contaminates much like dirtiness might taint a clean mind. Prejudice against the color black has established not only its negative connotation in language, but a deep resentment within America’s roots linked to its progression into a cultural identity. Though there appear to be no longer a “scientific justification for racial classification” (Banton 1111), there is an obvious “dualism in language” (Wilson 112) which links the color with its “cultural representations” (Wilson 112), i.e. Blacks, or African Americans. It has arrived to the point that the “achromatic hue[s]” (Wilson 113) has become defined “solely from the viewpoint of heritage” (Wilson 113). As
Clive Bell theorizes art in terms of a theory known as Formalism. Formalism is based upon a relatively simple line of logic. All art produces in the viewer an emotion. This emotion is not different but the same for all people in that it is known as the Aesthetic Emotion. There must be a factor common to all works of art that produces in the viewer a state of Aesthetic Emotion thus defining the works as art. This common factor is form. Formalism defines artworks as that which has significant form. Significant form is a term used by Bell to describe forms that are arranged by some unknown and mysterious laws. Thus, all art must contain not merely form, but significant form. Under Formalism, art is appreciated not for its expression but instead for the forms of its components. Examples of these forms include lines, curves, shapes, and colors. Abstract art, twentieth century, or modern art such as color field painting or the works of Mondrian, are examples of art that are not representative and thus are most lik...
Conversely, upon investigating the artwork’s factual information such as the painting’s context, the artist’s background, the genre and the school or movement associated with the painting, it is possible to obtain knowledge that combines objective information and subjective opinion, confirming that some degree of objectivity, albeit with our ‘cultural imprint’, is possible as an art observer.
The human brain is attracted to the presence of color and it leaves a satisfying feeling when it is perceived.(The Psychology of Color—How Color Affects Human Behavior) This can be applied to an everyday society by helping to improve behavior through the spread of colorful graffiti. Color not only attracts the attention of the brain, but it also leaves a lasting impact because of its uniqueness and difference between the norm.(The Psychology of Color—How Color Affects Human Behavior)