This week I’ve been thinking about paint and colour, so here are a few of my favourite artists in colour.
Portrait of Michel Leiris, 1990. Self-Portrait, 1971. Study for a portrait of Lucian Freud, 1964.
Bacon’s use of colour is evocative, energetic and incredibly fleshy. The rawness of the figure comes from the high quantity of hot colours, reds, orangy-pinks and purples. This is emphasised by the contrast with dead cool blues making the figure meat like rather than human. Dead, bloody, beaten flesh. Cool blues and browns take shadowed areas of face backward in the picture while whites and bright reds bring areas of highlight to the foreground drawing the viewers attention to them and making them important areas of the image.
Jealous, 2011. A Warming Beyond, 2011. Melancholia (I’ve just about had enough with this cavalier bullshit), 2011.
This week I discovered Salgado, his fabulous use of expressive marks and bright contrasting colours immediately drew my attention to the images. Again bright, hot reds mark highlights on the face making the flesh seem raw and drawing attention to these areas. Areas of dark are marked by different colours in each image, combined with the directional marks these give each face a three-dimensional quality and the image its overall emotion, Jealous for example with its green shadows and background reflects on the contrasting reds making them duller and the whole image sickly and cold.
Rebecca Lois 