Colour Research And the Re-enlivenment of Creative Thinking
by Angela Patten
From the Golden Blade :
An Anthroposophical Science Journal
This article is from the 2008 Volume
Whether we look outwards into nature or inwards into our inner imaginative world, we are influenced by colour. Its enigma has long been a challenge to our understanding, its beauty a source of inspiration, and its mystery a source of secret power.
To penetrate and to reveal this secret power is a challenge and a task for the creative artist of our present time, as it is now possible, with our contemporary consciousness, to paint in such a way that forms and images can be developed out of the nature of colour itself. In the creative activity of painting, shapes, forms and gestures can arise which stem from the unique formative capacity of each individual colour. In order to be able to “paint out of the colour”, the artist needs to become a researcher and to follow a path of systematic and thorough procedure in order that these potential formative powers within colour might be penetrated and revealed. A synthesis of accurate observation and imaginative artistic feeling is required, combined with a capacity to work within a rigorous yet sensitive methodology.
This combination of art and science offers a solution to an urgent modern need: on the one hand scientific and technological developments display a tendency to be coldly inhumane and require new “softer” creative insights which respect and acknowledge the human being in the deepest sense. On the other hand, the chaos of contemporary art, which offers on the whole little nourishment for the soul, lacks cohesive systematic processes for the expression of healthy, uplifting and inspiring works of art which are relevant to our time and not just mirroring mere reflections of our contemporary physical, social and psychological conditions.
How is it possible to embark upon colour research? On 1 June 1922 the sculptress and painter Henni Geck (1884-1951) asked Rudolf Steiner this very question. She asked him for a new training path of painting based upon spiritual science. A fiery sunset pastel sketch was the beginning of their mutual work, and a series of nature mood images (suns, moons, and trees) was given by Rudolf Steiner as a foundation for colour research.
Henni Geck painted with water-colours. She was to proceed systematically by painting a white sheet of water-colour paper with a pale wash of colour. Several sheets of paper were to be toned with such a colour-wash, each paper a different colour. When thoroughly dry, just one colour was to be painted ont oeach toned paper, say, a red, a green , or a yellow; the same colour was to be brought onto each paper. The artist needed now to identify so loosely with this particular colour that she could sense how it behaved and responded to each coloured background or colour-space. The painter Gerard Wagner (1906-1999) later developed a research process whereby the following questions could be asked: “If I am this colour, how would I feel? What would I do? How would I move in each of these different-coloured environments? If, for example, I am red (that is, the red colour being painted into the toned page), how do I feel and what do I do in a yellow room? How do I react and move in a blue colour space? What do I do, as red, when I enter a violet environment?” The differently toned papers influences the gesture, shape, and form of the red. The artist is required to sense and to see during the act of painting how the red is responding and behaving, how the red moves and forms itself differently in each situation. Literally hundreds of experiments are possible using this methodology by varying the coloured backgrounds and by varying the colours brought into them.
Although simple in its instruction, this research process is demanding and challenging, as tt requires the inner self of the artist to be united with the colour to such an intimate degree that it becomes possible to gauge reliable yet subtle colour-responses, both inwardly, in the active perception of the inner eye, and outwardly, as the artist’s gaze focuses on the coloured surface. A dual, wakeful, honest and independent activity of observation is needed.
A further research process is to vary slightly the tone or shade of colour which is being brought onto a paper. Here, one can begin
with a white page and paint, for example, different shades of green. Owing to the fact that each shade of green has its own unique tone, it
follows quite logically then, that each asks for an individual form or shape. As not one green is identical to another, each shape and form
gives expression to this individuality. One begins to sense the potential for (probably) an endless path of research which gives rise
to ever increasing degrees of subtlety, detail and accuracy. This research process can be extended to encompass hundreds of colour tones, each of which will reveal an individual gesture, movement and form. As the artist-researcher develops an increasingly secure sense
of perception, progressively more complex combinations of colours can be explored until picture images are developed .and imaginative
motifs give rise to a new creative art-form, one which is developed from out of the individuality of the colour itself.
A Renewal of Aristotle’s Categories
Colour-research asks for an attitude of self-sacrifice on the part of the artist, who becomes an instrument through which the formative
forces of the colours can make themselves visible. Rather than forcing the colours to bow down to his or her own intentions, associations or pre-conceived conceptualised images, the artist enters into a delicate dialogue with the colours. This new approach to painting requires an unbiased willingness to be open towards the development of a new type of consciousness. As the colour perceptions grow, a new colour-language is required in order to define and to clarify the research process, as well as to provide a defining structure for the growth of an entirely new set of aesthetics.
Here we can turn towards the categories which Aristotle first perceived in the age of the rational or mind-soul in his ascribing ten conditions to which the origin of our thought-forms are related. The ten categories were later extended by Rudolf Steiner to twelve states, or classifications which provide a formula directly related to a Universal basis of thinking.
When applied to the field of colour research, they can be recreated and re-enlivened. They can be brought to life in an imaginative way so that the newly developing artistic consciousness required by, and resulting from, the rigours of colour research, can find a supportive and appropriate aesthetic vocabulary. In this way the twelve categories provide a secure foundation for the conscious cognition of the processes involved in colour research work.
The twelve categories are as follows: being, appearance, time, space, quantity, quality, doing, suffering, conduct, position, relation, substance. Let us look at them more in detail and in their applications to this new path of painting.
BEING : Each colour has its own individuality, its own being. We penetrate this being when we begin to identify and to unite ourselves with colour. It is the being, the true nature of each colour, that we would hope to reveal and to give expression to.
APPEARANCE : As a colour being descends from its original non-physical source, it enters into the realm of appearance. This is observable in the wonderful appearance of colours in nature, particularly in the changes which the four seasons bring about. Colour also gains an appearance when it enters the picture-space and is formed through the perceptions and activity of the painter.
TIME : The sequence of colours in a research process is of paramount importance, as quite different results will develop depending upon the sequence, or order, in which colours are painted. Here, through the colour sequence we enter into a time process: yellow is a first colour, blue second, red third, and so forth.
SPACE : Colours enter into the picture space, into the two-dimensional plane. As they do so, each colour creates its own spatial realm. A cool blue (prussian) for example, recedes, creating a vast distance, opening a colour-space into which the viewer can go. By contrast, a red comes forwards, bringing the surface nearer. In a contemporary perception of colour, the colour-space can be equated with the colour-perspective techniques used by the Renaissance artists.
QUANTITY : The question of quantity is an aesthetic as well as a scientific concern. How much of a colour does a painting need? How much of a new colour is needed in relationship to preceding colours? In the decisions required to discern the quantity of colour, the artist is engaged with an inner process of measuring. The quantity of colour is influenced by a number of factors: by time, that is when in the colour sequence a new colour enters into the picture space; by its response relative to the existing colour mood; and by its own individual nature, its own characteristics and intensity.
QUALITY : The quality of a colour belongs to its inherent individuality. The classification of quality can be defined by using a process of
comparison, by comparing each colour with another. It can readily be seen that certain qualities express opposite polarities, for example: light-dark; warm-cool; hot-cold; heavy-light; sweet-acrid; Soft-hard; expansive-contracting; joyful-sorrowful; active-passive, and so on.
DOING : Colours are active in the realm of activity itself, each having its own behaviour, conduct, and affecting us in a particular way. A
colour always does something to us, to the environment, to another colour.
SUFFERING : Goethe voiced the expression that “colours are the deeds and sufferings of the light”. Suffering in this sense can be interpreted as Longing, for it is the interplay between light and darkness which gives rise to colour; darkness longs for light and light longs for darkness.
CONDUCT : Colours behave in particular ways owing to their individuality, to their response to each other and to the colour situations in which they are placed.
POSITION : Colours find their place within the picture-space. The movement of a colour coming to rest in a particular position is the essence of a composition – where the colours are placed in relationship to each other.
RELATION : Colours move in relation to each other based on specific principles including: sympathy-antipathy, necessity, balance, concordance-dissonance, opposition–support. The colour circle is an archetypal form which places colours in relation to each other e.g. the complementary colours; primary and secondary colours; the principle of colour enhancement.
SUBSTANCE : The substance of a colour alludes not merely to its material nature, but to its substantiality, to its visibility, to its being
as a real entity. During the activity of creating a painting, the substances of colours are continuously transforming themselves through mutual interactions. They are also reacting with and responding to the soul–substance of the artist, and actually transforming the soul -substance of the artist-researcher. Here, an alchemical process is at work, as colour-substance and the soul substance of the artist are mutually transformed, whereby the colour researcher becomes a modern alchemist.
By taking these categories as living processes and working with them into the colour-world, we can begin to form the preliminary
exercises for a new, freer and more creative imaginative way of thinking. We begin to unite ourselves with pure spiritual activity as it manifests itself through colour into the sense world. Rudolf Steiner spoke, in 1914, the following inspiring words:
Perhaps in nothing as much as in the deepening in such problems as the problem of colour, can we, as it were, celebrate our most intimate uniting of the soul with spiritual science. For we rise truly, when we participate in the living flood-tide of colour itself, we rise truly out of ourselves and participate in cosmic life. Colour is the soul of nature and of the entire cosmos, and we participate in this soul when we experience colour.
GA 291 , Lecture 1, 26.7.1914, Dornach.
Notes on the plates : The first two plates illustrate the techniques described in the text. In the last six plates my intention was to develop plant forms. The cool “spring” colours, in the first three of these, have qualities of freshness and tend to resist each other. Their movements are contracted and vigorous. The plant is in a state of potentiality, of becoming. The warm “summer” colours in the last three plates have
sympathetic, saturated qualities which seek to unite. The plant is formed, mature, and opens in response to the warmth.
Suggested Reading
- Rudolf Steiner – Karmic Relationships Vol 2 Lecture 9 – Rudolf Steiner Press 1997.
- Rudolf Steiner – Karmic Relationships Vol 3 Lecture 8 – Rudolf Steiner Press 2002.
- Rudolf Steiner – Easter Festival in the Evolution of the Mysteries – Steiner Books 1988.
- Rudolf Steiner – “Categories of Aristotle” (13 November 1908) – Typescript Z421 Library, Rudolf Steiner House.
- Walter Johannes Stein – The Present Age Vol 3 No 11/12 – 1936.
- Guenther Schubert – “The Categories of Aristotle” in The Anthroposphical Movement Vol 5 – 1928.
- Ita Wegman – “To All Members” (30 August 1925) in The Mysteries – Temple Lodge 1995
- Elizabeth Koch & Gerard Wagner – “A New Colour Circle” in The Individuality of Colour – Rudolf Steiner Press 1980.