Poppies on the Isles of Shoals, 1890
© Brooklyn Museum

(Someone certainly captured the essences of summer, sea breeze and masses of Papaver rhoeas in bloom. Click on the image to find out who!)

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There was a lot to love about Color Chart: Reinventing Color 1950 to Today, a recent exhibition held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The concept was simple: how do visual artists choose to manipulate commercial color charts? "Commercial" here meaning the swatches of paint one finds on rectangular cards at the hardware store, or reproduced in brochures at the auto body shop.

You'd suppose that, faced with somewhat limited and very impersonal color choices, artists might create similar pieces. Any art student can tell you, though, that an entire color theory class executing the exact same assignment--right down to color placement and overall dimensions--will produce individual results that are slightly differentiated. There were no assigned requirements for the works in Color Chart, and the results were Read more...