Scientific basics in art from the Theories of Colour: Authors, methods, rules, applications

Abstract

In the "chromatic way of thinking", between Art and Science, between the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, colour played an essential role: between Romanticism and Modernism, between Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism (and other derivated movements). This complex phenomenon (with its experiences and manifestations) is connected programmatically to the equally complex phenomenon of the Theories of Colour, which has to insert in the debate about contemporary artistic theories. In a broad cultural and scientific territory, starting from the qualified literature and from the publications of the time, the analysis methodology addresses the relationships between institutions, and the exchanges between individual theorists and protagonists, paying attention to the artists that have punctually and consciously applied and experimented those theories, up to the examples in executive techniques, practised in relation with their training. It is consistent with my thirty-year investigations on 48 chromatic beliefs, collected and systematically compared (Marotta 1999). The critical rereading of the treatises and works through their interrelated cultures and experiences confirms a system of knowledge stratified and verified in practise, in an international and interdisciplinary dimension, all to be explored.