CONTRAIRE, A NEW STYLE
You’re here, hang on to your hat.
The most revolutionary idea ever in art.
The kiss. (Rodin, the kiss.)
Xella
This new style, Contraire, is the second change ever of a basic element of art. The first was Impressionism, little bits of color that de-emphasized object and detail, a style made famous by Monet. Contraire reverses the object/color relationship. The color is the drawing, and the object is the color. Cary Kent
Mating call of the warm-titted catmouse.
Excaliber
How does Contraire differ from other paintings?
One of the basic elements of art is the object / color relationship. In all other pictures, and all things on earth, the color fits the object, fits the chair, tree, drawing, etc. Even in the abstract paintings where Pollock poured paint out of a can onto the canvas, the outside of each drip became the drawing.
You remember--“Keep your crayons inside the lines,” they told you, and even if you went outside the lines, the color still defined the image or object (the drawing). This new way of painting is entirely opposite--the object (the black drawing) fits the color, a complete reversal of the object/color relationship. This causes us to redefine some terms and relationships. The black lines of the drawing function just as color would in an ordinary painting. The black drawing, therefore, becomes the color.
What Aristotle had to say about color.
Aristotle said that all colors were nothing more than various mixtures of black and white, and compared the colors to flavors. And then people threw his explanation in the trash when they discovered prisms.
But I agree with Aristotle, and color is only a perception anyway. It’s how we perceive waves of energy of various wavelengths. It seems obvious that the only thing common to all colors and all shades of colors is that all of them contain various degrees of white or black, making them lighter or darker.
And today, when color is pictured as a shape, white and black are at the ends with the colors in the middle, the colors getting lighter or darker depending on how close to the ends they are (how much white or black they are mixed with).
These paintings support his original statement. The color (now the object or drawing) is no longer color, not even a flavor, I suppose. It has the same function as the drawing (object) would in an ordinary painting. The color, therefore, is the drawing.
Cary Kent
Bad boy syndrome.
The moment of truth.
Polly want a cracker.
Dali
One of the strangest things I discovered along the way is how little is known about color and color perception. Some animals even see colors we can’t see. What are those anyway?
Contrairism
A new style of painting, derived from the French word for opposite, a style where the drawing is the color, and the color is the drawing.
Well there’s lots of candles on that cake, and you know what happens when artists uhh… so lets get started. You’re in the right place at the right time. Cary Kent.