For centuries, painters have deliberately purified the colors in their art to achieve more subtle and complex effects. From Jan Van Eyck, Rembrandt and Angel to Degas, Picasso and gerhard richter, artists constantly create and recreate in the black and white world to improve their works.
"People think that abstract artists in the 20th century first turned to black-and-white painting, but painters have been great colorists for centuries, completely limited by their color palettes," said Lelia Packer, the first large-scale exhibition to explore this theme.
There are about 70 paintings in the exhibition, many of which come from institutions and private collections around the world. The black-and-white exhibition at the National Gallery of London proves how expressive the painting without color is.
At the beginning of this process, just like the art in other western churches, in the12nd century, the Cistercian monks began to limit the colors used in stained glass windows to reduce sensory stimulation and encourage people to concentrate more on meditation. Centuries later, during the early Northern Renaissance, devout believers would spread cloth on the altars they painted during Lent. Lucky members can hide their colorful art with shutters in gray or neutral tones.
One of the earliest works in the exhibition is a portable altar made by Flemish master hans memling, equipped with a set of oak panels, which features two pure gray images to present the stone carving effect. Imitating sculpture is indeed a clever way to deal with the challenge of "giving up color"
Angels bring good news (archangel Gabriel; Virgin Mary) (1433- 1435)
Parker said that this is also the core issue of the fierce competition between painters and sculptors in the Italian Renaissance. "(At that time) there was a famous argument called" comparison wheel ",which was the comparison between arts. Michelangelo and Leonardo both expressed their views on this phenomenon. Most of the time, sculptors will criticize painters for expressing themselves only in two-dimensional space. "
Painters responded with black and white paintings, in this way to show how the three-dimensional sense is formed in the use of light and shadow. Titian, a painter of Venice School, applied this idea to the painting A Portrait of a Woman (about151512), which painted a bust of a woman, as if it were carved on a stone.
Over the years, the method of imitating sculpture has been widely used in interior design to produce fashionable effects, and it won't cost too much to imitate stones with painting skills. In fact, some painters choose to copy color paintings in monochrome as a way to show off. Prove that they have the skills to master light and colorless shadows. Jean-Dominique Ingres, a master of French neoclassicism, showed his mastery of shadow play painting in black and white in the years after he painted Palace Maid, one of the most famous naked women in history (18 14). Parker said: "This is a better way to understand the different effects of light on various surfaces."
With the spread of printing in16th century and17th century, artists understand that if paintings can be reproduced, it will certainly attract more audiences. Therefore, under the guidance of plate-making workers, painters began to turn color masterpieces into black and white, and they needed to turn these images into linear designs of printing media.
But in the 20th century, when artists such as Picasso, Warhol and richter began to use black-and-white technology to imitate products printed by machines, the other side of this practice appeared.
Pablo Picasso, the maid in the palace (Princess Margarita Maria) (1957)
Picasso copied newsprint in guernica (1937) and other paintings. However, he is also limited by his palette. For example, he imitated Princess Margarita Maria (1957), which is part of 58 abstract paintings by Diego velazquez. Restore the scene to black-and-white contrast and dark and frantic lines. "He paints quickly," Parker said. "He is responding to his great predecessors and trying to surpass him. This is a game. "
Without the works of 20th century radicals like Frank Stella, the monochrome art exhibition would not be complete. He painted on canvas with black enamel pigments to show that they are not windows of illusion, but a kind of entity. There is also jasper johns, who turned familiar signs into gray (such as the American flag), thus vilifying these signs and achieving more obvious satire. The representative work of the latter artist is a collage created in 2007, similar to the slate painted on wooden shutters.
Gerhard richter, Helga mathura and her fiance (1966).
"All the light turned into a gray shadow," Parker explained. "This is the way your eyes perceive color," Eliasson explained in the exhibition catalogue. Our aim is to let the audience see more things than usual. He wrote that our eyes "will find more gray shadows in black and white photos than in color photos." "Obviously, artists have been wise for centuries." "Monochrome: Black and White Art Exhibition" will be exhibited at the National Gallery of London on February 18, 2065438.