COLOUR AS STIMULUS

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 17, 21 January 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

COLOUR AS STIMULUS

For Women

TWENTIETH century psychologists have demonstrated to t ' lat our em °ti°ns are more influenced by colour than we realise. To sum up roughly, absence of sunlight usually means absence of colour, and absence of colour usually means gloom. Sunshine means colour and colour means an added vitality and joy. Speaking generally, tliere is a cataclysmic difference in temper between the sun-starved northerners and the sunsoaked southerners. Introspection belongs mostly to the north. Even to the most umesponsive mind a grey day means something deadening, while sunlight with its alchemy of blue and sold quickens the blood. So nowadays we remove our fripperies and open and enlarge our windows to admit this cncrgy-™ivin", colour-producing sun. ° _ This sun-worship, if indulged in with intelligence, promotes the body's and mind's health and well being. Nowadays our clothes are suitably designed to encourage the benefit of sunrays, and a healthy sun-tan, which was. once shunned, is now' so popular that powders and lotions are being manufactured to be rubbed on the body so that it will at least seem to have that so sought after sunburned appearance. Colour and the Sexes As far as .we can see, colour seems and yet to be unevenly divided between the sexes. At the present stage, women seem to have the monopoly of colour, whereas man's attempts to bedizen himself are somewhat timid and tentative. Perhaps a note of colour in tie or handkerchief and that is all. While there is an attempt to introduce livelier colours in men's clothing—such as greens ami burnt russets—all in all, | men's dress is standardised as to colour i-and cut, at times almost funereal and very rarely experimental. On the other hand, woman's clothing lends itself to all manner of styles and, influences; the folk dress of all - nations and - even men's military uniforms have been invaded to give a .fillip to new fashions. Colour, always a strong item in feminine dress is used with more and more daring. To take an instance, where formerly .we met the rain in monotonous gabardines and blr.ck umbrellas, 011 a rainy day, we now disport ourselves in vividly checked and coloured raincoats and the gayest of gay tartan umbrellas. Our very gloves, that were once restricted to modest black, white, fawn or grey, now join in the colour revel and burst forth with every, colour in the spectrum—the. powder with which we soften the outlines of our faces has changed from the unimaginative plain white, once ;of universal rule, to every conceivable . shade, including mauve and green. Every season, face powders deepen in richness and tone, and lipstick is more positively scarlet, so that the colours of stockings, shoes and all accessories -have had to be heightened to match. ' Even toe-nails and fingernails join in this new triumphal march of colour. * (Possibly, the ivories of the teeth may Vbe tackled next). White Is In Eclipse - In the home, the same revolution is taking place. White bedspreads, curtains and tablecloths have been relegated to top cupboards as being too lifeless for modern requirements. Even our blankets and sheets now bloom like flowers in a garden. Tired of the old dullness which we had never noticed before, we now cover our staid ta,bles and chairs . and doorsteps with bright paint. With all this long association and nearness to colour, are women as a sex more deft at it? I believe it is true that we are more instantly aware of it and perhaps more emotionally responsive to colour's power to move us. For myself, I have to confess that I cannot look at some colours without an instant quickening of the pulse. PerImps it is significant that very few females, if any, are born colourblind. And yet the greatest colourists have not been women but men and there is a long line of them. I mention only a few: Giorgione, Veronese, Rubens, Velasquez/ Vermeer, Turner, Van Gogh, Monticelli. The earlier painters, Italian - renaissance more particularly, used only the purest, richest, simplest colours. ,Onc has only to look at the peasant art of most countries to see. the innate skill in colour blending and also their ability to produce original patterns. ; ' In the" East, which has-been civilised for so many,- many centuries, all the primitive instincts- (still so potent to lis -Western barbarians) , have been dis-

ByJess Duff

tilled and shaped into a mellow wisdom, a calm, almost a stolid philosophy of of life which views all life's vicissitudes with a detached and lofty- indifference. While we are still happy in our schoolcliild's primary colours, the Chinese, say, have long since built up from them a science of secondary colours. -As Samuel Butler says, the eye must he "tamed" from the cruder and. more elementary colours to their more complex developments. The Japanese, as well, in their art, whether of colourprint, lacquer or pottery, have progressed from the simple primaries to tones subtler, more opalescent and elusive. There is a complete absence of chaos either of design or colouration in the art of the East. Hokusai's Wave may be singular to Western eyes, but there is no confusion in it. Neatness of design and exquisite restraint in colour characterise the art of the Orient, whether of Java, China, Japan, India or Persia. West Plus East Towards the end of last century, this beautiful art, in the shape of the colour print, spread to the west and took hold of the French impressionist group, notably of Monet, Manet and Degas, extending to the English-adopted James Macneil Whistler; it was mainly Whistler who crystallised this art of the East in his own paintings and spread its influence. Whistler seemed an inriovater to a public nourished on the heavier, roast-beef Victorian colours and solid anedotal subjects, but he was largely interpreting this admirable art through his own distinctive temperament, Owing to this new invasion, the easel picture concentrated more 011 de-

sign. Whistler's, own exercises in moods, hints and evocations bore the novel titles of Nocturnes, Harmonies in grey, gold and green, Symphonies, in white, Cappriceias, in purple and gold. Probably a mist had never been painted 60 poetically before, with such a variety of tones. But I am getting away from colours pure and simple. Velasquez, portrait painter of Spanish kings and princesses, was a restrained and elegant eolourist. Whistler owed much to him as well. Both these painters have shown us the imperishable loveliness that lurks in certain rare rose-pinks and in every manifestation of.grey. While Hals and Velasquez have shown us the superb and rich sonority to be struck from mere black. Vermeer's Blue and Yellow Vermeer of Delft has an extraordinarily refined and scholarly use of colour values. Looking at his work, unique and unparalleled as to subject-matter, treatment and colour, one could readily imagine that he had imbibed much from the art of the East; although, to my knowledge, Vermeer could never have come umlcr such influences. If all painters have a favourite colour harmony, then Vermeer has an especial fondness for all the possible nuances in the interweaving of the blues and tlio yellows. His little girl, worldfamous and none the worse for that, with tlie larpe pearl drops in her ears and muted blue turban and grey-yellowish bodice, is an excellent example of this preference. Texture and Colour It is very noticeable that texture affects colour considerably. Similarly, the same note on a violin or a piano varies in quality. For instance, if you cire looking at many reels of coloured cotton an<4 the same shades of coloured silk, you will find that the colours "of the silk are more brilliant, intense and superlative than the colours of the cotton.

When I was small, I had. an inordinate joy in gazing at boxes of pastels in shop windows. How long and rapturously would I stand, lost in a colour dream, drinking in those meticulously fine gradations and half-quarter tones of colour that we see in pastels' particularly. I felt colour's encroachment on music and the finely graded intervals in the shades were like the chromatic intervals in music. Colour in Music I think the joy in colour comes to us before the joy in line—again, more people will see colour than line in music. An appreciation of form is-claimed to be more intellectual and, if reason is considered more important than emotion, this is probably true. You could say that what colour is to form, the lyric is to the epic. Now there are some people who can even 6ee colour in music, but probably that is a question of temperament and moreover a strictly personal matter, as no two people will see the' same colour in similar sounds.

For myself, certain treble notes on the piano, especially in the sharp keys, suggest cool colours: blue is the colour I get most. There i 6 a little Musette of Bach, which, for its colour, I like to call the blue and silver musette, and his sth\Prelucle has for me quite definite tones of blue.. Chopin's Berceuse suggests to me mauve, blue and silver and I see much blue in Mozart; while in Haydn. Beethoven or Wagner the colours suggested would more likely be old gold, peacock green, crimson or yellow. I can easily appreciate how Arthur Rimbaud, Verlaine's "evil genius," invented a colour for each vowel:—a, black; e, white; i. red; o, blue; ti, green. Now, why; with her greater preoccupation with eo'.our and its emotional repercussions, why did not a woman think of that?