The Essence of Art: Light, Color, and Architecture
Girl with a Pearl Earring- Jan Vermeer Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague
Light
Light is essential to artistic expression.
Light is figuratively experienced by the audience in music, dance, literature and sculpture. Beethoven, George Balanchine, D. H Lawrence, and Michelangelo articulate light as an essence in their work.
Botticelli and Vermeer were masters of light.
In film, light is powerfully dominant in the background. The Godfather films and Cinema Paradiso illustrate the power of light to express the essence of film.
In art photography- Edward Weston and Man Ray were innovators in understated light as a dominant force.
Color
All art has color.
In music, dance, and literature, color is figurative. It is experienced by the audience, although it is not visible.
We feel the color of the music in the Shostakovich 5th Symphony , Rachmaninov Second Piano Concerto and John Coltrane’s Love Supreme. The music evokes color as we connect to the composition.
Color is powerfully evident in painting, film, television, and set design.
In the novels of Laura Groff and Paul Auster we viscerally experience color which is encased in the literature and transported to the reader.
Watching great dancers such as Wendy Wheelan and Fred Astaire, we are drawn to the color of the choreography.
Architecture
Architecture is an essential component of all artistic expression.
The music of J.S. Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker exude musical lines of architecture.
The works of the leading American sculptors, John Woodrow Wilson emanate luminous lines of sculpture. His most famous work is the bronze bust of Martin Luther King Jr. which stands three feet tall in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C.
William Shakespeare’s plays are infused with architectural symmetry.
The novels of Charles Dickens and D.H. Lawrence expand dynamically in architectural development.
Dance is the most exuberant display of architecture. Sterling Hyltin and Bob Fosse express the consummate dance twins- fluency and architecture in their art.
Great artistic expression is the confluence of light, color, and architecture. The artist is consciously aware of all three components in their work. This requires a life-long investment- the constant focus on the three essential artistic components.