HomeColors of artists

Colors of artists

Couleurs d’artistes

Poietics, context, experiments

Poïétique, contexte, expérimentations

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Published on Friday, April 19, 2024

Abstract

This conference aims to build on the notion of color to bring together thematic reflections on works, classic or current, digital or pigmentary, raising questions and interpretations about the use, exploitation, experimentation of colors and shades.

Announcement

Argument

“Color is the ideal part of art that has the magic gift. While subject, form and line are primarily addressed to the mind, color has no meaning for the intellect, but has all the power over sensitivity”

From Eugène Delacroix/Journal

Manufactured, worked, used, questioned and theorized, color is a component of the works of art or of the creative process for artists.

Regardless of its definition which could well be in the realm of perception, cognition or even chemistry or physics, color is first and foremost used as a plastic parameter in artistic creation. What do artists work with? What is this almost “magical” parameter which addresses sensitivity according to Delacroix and which Manlio Brusatin questions between sense and body? “This uncertainty of senses has conditioned all the scientific theories on the essence of colors, given the inconsistency of their appearance and perception, and their uselessness if calculated”. (Brusatin, 1986, p. 29).

Color is also the light offered to the viewer of the work. The pictorial, pigmentary, sculptural material worked on by the artist from a subtractive synthesis, gives the eye of the beholder the effect of light, according to an additive synthesis–an effect pushed to its paroxysm by Pierre Soulages. Elsewhere, in these light-images in the cinema, color takes on a virtual form as long as it rests on a medium, a white screen. Or no medium at all except for the convergence of hologrammatic projections; otherwise the emergence of specific diffusion points (Dan Flanvin) or diffuse (James Turrel). In this respect, Jean de Giacinto invented light cladding for his composite architectures such as the Clos-De-Hilde (Bordeaux 1994), (De Giacinto, 2023). In another way, Ettore Spalleti plays with the effect of color taking with it the medium or space it occupies, giving it a light density. When color is an intrinsic part of an architectural, sculptural or clothing material for example, how does it govern its choice? Is it rather the reason for working with this material? In his books, Hervé Fisher shows how much color depends on symbolic and ideological social languages (scientific, religious, mythical, and artistic) favoring a certain number of colors (Fisher 2023). Therefore, these colors are related to value systems, the mental construction of our perceptions. For instance, New York of the 1930s inspired Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier and Mondrian who invented new polychromes. (Fischer, 2019, p. 341–343).

We propose several lines of thinking:

1) Colors depend on their cultural identification; as such, they may refer to a strong symbolism in the artist’s work, resonating or dissonating with the cultural symbolism of the sphere in which they are inscribed. For example, Camila Moreira describes her practice in “The Red Color of an exiled body” (Moreira, 2023).

This cultural anchoring, which Hervé Fisher describes as a sociological and mythanalytical opening of art, can also be applied not to a specific color, such as blood red, for example, but to an entire palette whose components create meaning and work of art. This involves identifying the artists’ palettes in order to determine their sociological or critical significance in a given cultural era.

Artists, designers and architects can also use colors inherited from great artists (Klein Blue, Van Dyck Brown…). What do they do with this legacy? Do they explore it, deviate from it, hybridize it? What happens in the context of their creation?

2) The manufacture of colors is the subject of a major study both in terms of the artists themselves and the technical gestures applied to works for their conservation or restoration. This is described by Edi Guerzoni as “The blues in the restoration of the Cene” by Leonardo Da Vincci: the artistic and scientific collaboration of Pinin Brambilla Barcilon and Antonietta Gallone (Benelli and Guerzoni, 2024).

Colors can be thus examined from a technical point of view, whether in terms of their manufacture, their components of and treatments, their work in their workshop, or their “solidity”, their mutation, accidental or programmed, which can be part of an artistic approach. For example, how does Kapwani Kiwanga produce the indigo color in her monumental installation at the CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, Retenue, from June 30, 2023 to January 7, 2024? Color production can also depend on the resources available in the artist’s natural environment. To assume this constraint is to value the elements of context in the work and more broadly to ask even indirectly the question of the relationship between nature and culture on the one hand and artistic practice on the other.

3) The use of color in digital art raises new questions. One of these issues is its place at the intersection of science and arts leading to the creation of new colors and components such as green fluorescent protein. As Alexandra Boucherifi shows in “Enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein, when green fluorescent protein meets art” (Bouchefifi, 2023). A technical approach involves the questions of translation and equivalence. For example, from CMYK to RGB, the transition from a physical medium to a screen medium and the digitization of works.

Digital works (to be distinguished from digitized works), question in a new way this parameter that has become just as measurable as form, leading to corporealities at work, carried out for example by Eliane Chiron in whose honor the International Colloquium CORPO PINTURA COLOR FRONTEIRA/CORPS PEINTURE COULEUR FRONTIÈRE was held on December 06, 07 and 8, 2021, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia.

4) The aesthetic scope of artists can be questioned in several ways: through the work of the imaginary (based on narratives, scenography, distortions, at work, or along the creative process engaging the spectator); by the use of synesthesia allowing passages, or even translations between colors and other perceived, received or sensed plastic data; through connections between color and text, leading to cognitive associations or developing new creative processes, in generative virtual works for example. The unprecedented use of one or more colors by an artist, taking up cultural codes, in friction with the context thanks to a particular technical treatment of these colors can also create an aesthetic. As shown by Elissar Kanso from an analysis of her work, in “Fluo pink: disruptor of a luminous sensation and revealer of a critical material performing” (Kanso, 2024).

However, questioning contemporary creations does not go without taking into account the epistemological anchoring of color, as Aurélia Gaillard shows at the convergence of naming, conception and perception of color, when she identifies pink in the new way of thinking in colors of the Enlightenment (Gaillard, 2020). Undoubtedly, research into color in contemporary creations could help identify the paradigm of the thought in today’s societies.

The laboratory of language and Automatic Processing (LLTA), FLSH of the University of Sfax, the Doctoral School Arts Cultures University Tunis, the Research Unit Mediation, Information, Communication, Arts (MICA) of the Montaigne Bordeaux University, FrancophoNéA (Network of Neo-Aquitanian Research on Francophones) and the Union of Tunisian Plastic Artists, are launching a call for papers aimed at researchers of different specialties in Arts, Design and Humanities and Social Sciences.

This conference aims to build on the notion of color to bring together thematic reflections on works, classic or current, digital or pigmentary, raising questions and interpretations about the use, exploitation, experimentation of colors and shades (Pastoureau, 2017). In addition to a long version for publication in the conference proceedings, papers may be submitted as short articles for the ENC https://encyclopedienumeriquedescouleurs.com/, mainly in the Arts and Creation research axis, but also in the Technology and Science axis if they concern artistic creations, or in the Anthropology, History, Culture; Linguistics, Literature, Communication; Aesthetics, Psychology, Philosophy axis.

Submission guidelines

The presentation may be that of an artist researching his or her own practice, or of a theorist and artist working together on research into the creation of the latter, or of a researcher working on a specific technique or cultural area. It is highly recommended that the study focus on one (or more, if it is a palette) specific, identified and measured colors, identified by their hexadecimal code: https://encycolorpedia.fr/

Any use of color measuring equipment (e.g. colorimeter or spectrophotometer) must be identified in the text.

Proposals (aroundn 800 words, with short bibliography and biography) should be sent

before 15/06/2024

at : colloque.couleurs.artistes@gmail.com

Date and venue : October 30–31 and November 01, 2024 at Hammamet, Tunisia

In addition to a long version for publication in the conference proceedings, papers may be submitted as short articles for the ENC https://encyclopedienumeriquedescouleurs.com/, mainly in the Arts and Creation research axis, but also in the Technology and Science axis if they concern artistic creations, or in the Anthropology, History, Culture; Linguistics, Literature, Communication; Aesthetics, Psychology, Philosophy axis.

Scientific committee

  • AGRESTI Giovanni, Professeur des Universités, Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
  • BEN AMEUR Fetah, Professeur des Universités, Université de Sfax.
  • BEN AMEUR Sami, Professeur des Universités émérite, Université de Tunis.
  • BIDA Habib, Professeur des Universités émérite, Université de Tunis.
  • CAUMON Céline, Professeure des Universités, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès.
  • CROCE Cécile, Professeure des Universités, Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
  • DUARTE Aninha, Professeure, Université Fédérale d’Uberlândia.
  • DUPONT Jérôme, MCF HDR, Université de Nîmes.
  • FRANCA-HUCHET Patricia, Professeure, Université Fédérale de Minas Gerais.
  • GIANOTTI Marco, Professeur des Universités, Université de São Paulo.
  • GMACH Nomen, Professeur des Universités, Université de la Manouba.
  • HOFFMANN Carole, Professeure des Universités, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès.
  • KERINSKA Nicoleta, Maitresse de conférences, Université Polytechnique Hauts de France.
  • LAFARGUE Bernard, Professeur des Universités émérite, Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
  • LAMBERT Xavier, Professeur des Universités émérite, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès.
  • LECERF Guy, Professeur des Universités émérite, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès.
  • MÜLLER Susanne, Maitresse de conférences, Université de Lorraine.
  • MOREIRA Camila, Professeure, Université Fédérale de Minas Gerais.
  • PELE Gérard, Professeur des Universités émérite, ENS Louis-Lumière.
  • SAFTA Moez, Professeur des Universités, Université de Tunis.
  • TRIKI Mounir, Professeur des Universités, Université de Sfax.
  • TURKI Ramzi, MC-HDR, Université de Sfax.
  • WUNENBERGER Jean-Jacques, Professeur des Universités émérite, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3.

Comité d’organisation

  • ABASSI Asma, Maitre-assistante, Université de Tunis.
  • BEN CHEIKH Hela, Maitre-assistante, Université de Tunis.
  • BORGES Rodrigo, Professeur, Université Fédérale de Minas Gerais.
  • BOUCHAALA Sameh, Maitre-assistante, Université de Sfax.
  • BRUNEL Thomas, Enseignant et chercheur associé MICA, Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
  • CRUBILE Marine, Enseignante et chercheure associée MICA, Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
  • FREITAS Rodrigo, Professeur Adjunto, Université Fédérale d’Uberlândia.
  • MEGDICHE Nizar, Assistant, Université de Tunis.
  • NOURI Lamjed, Maitre-assistant, Université de Tunis.

Coordination

  • GHARSALLAH Wissem, Maitre-assistant, Université de Tunis
  • HENTATI Jihen, Maitre-assistante, Université de Tunis

Chairs

  • CROCE Cécile, Professeure des Universités, Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
  • SAFTA Moez, Professeur des Universités, Université de Tunis.
  • TURKI Ramzi, MC-HDR, Université de Sfax.

Organising institutions

  • LLTA, Univ. Sfax - Ed. Arts Cultures Univ. Tunis
  • MICA- Montaigne Bordeaux University
  • FrancophoNéA, Neo-Aquaitaine Research Network on francophonie
  • Union of Tunisian plastic artists

Places

  • Hammamet, Tunisia

Event attendance modalities

Hybrid event (on site and online)


Date(s)

  • Saturday, June 15, 2024

Keywords

  • couleur, arts, poïétique, expérimentations, contexte, esthétique, langage, création, technique

Contact(s)

  • Ramzi Turki
    courriel : ramzi [dot] turki [at] isims [dot] usf [dot] tn

Information source

  • Ramzi Turki
    courriel : ramzi [dot] turki [at] isims [dot] usf [dot] tn

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Colors of artists », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, April 19, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/w8rz

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