Blog assignment 5

Ogden Rood and Vincent van Gogh, two men who changed the way we look at and consider colour. Their experiments and productions directly influenced our understanding of colour. They also developed, and expanded on the theory of ‘colour vision’.

In 1879 Rood wrote ‘Modern Chromatics, with applications to art and industry’ and with this introduced the world to his theory optical colour mixing. Rood suggested that small dots or lines of different colours, when viewed from a distance, would blend into a new colour. This idea is hugely influential in the way we understand how colours behave when put side by side with another colour. You can see this theory being used in the paintings of Vincent van Gogh in his post impressionism stage.

Vincent van Gogh influenced our understanding of colour and thanks to his experimentation and use of colour in his paintings, not only did he change how people looked at colour but he also showed people that colour could be used to portray feeling and emotion. He used colour in a way that his paintings showed not what he saw but more what he felt. This is important because he showed that people could use colour to express feelings and experiences rather than just to record things as they were. A great example of this is his painting The Night Cafe’ 1888.