Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet. – Paul Klee
Look, you can read Color Scheme or just look at the color palettes – either way you’re bound to enjoy it. The subtitle promises an “Irreverent History of Art and Pop Culture in Color Palettes” and author Edith Young delivers in this inspired book.
Young is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and is an artist slightly obsessed with color. In the introduction she describes watching a documentary on Diana Vreeland who said “All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me…About the best red is to copy the color of a child’s cap in any Renaissance portrait.”
And just like that Young was intrigued and inspired; red caps in Renaissance portraits became the first color palette she put together. From there she set out on a path of noticing and researching color palettes in art and in unexpected places (like Dennis Rodman’s hair and Spike Lee’s eyeglasses).
I hope this book feels a bit like sinking into a cushy auditorium chair in an art history lecture…
That it does! The essays that kick off each section are mini art history lessons, subjective to Young’s experience and taste, with numerous references and notes. I feel like I could spend a year investigating all of them. Her musings and tutorials enhance the book, but you don’t have to read a word. Turn the pages, flip back and forth, notice what draws you in. Which palettes would you wear? Which could you live with in art, furniture, paint? (Brings to mind one of the ‘extreme’ rooms featured in the book May I Come In? )
One of my favorite rooms was in the Extreme chapter. The décor was based on a painting of a teenage Marie Antoinette. The bedroom is pink – and I mean entirely pink – to match the blush on her cheeks and the Tiffany blue living room matches the blue of her dress. It’s beautiful and while it’s overdone, it’s surprisingly serene.
My favorite palettes? The blushes of Madame de Pompadour’s and Marie Antoinette’s cheeks; Audubon’s blue bills and roseate bills; the mountaintops in the diorama paintings in the American Museum of Natural History. And my new favorite artists? Helen Frankenthaler, Charles Burchfield and Wayne Thiebaud.
Young created something unique with Color Scheme and it’s a total pleasure to read / look through this book. I think you need more color in your life and highly recommend getting lost in this book for a while.
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