Uncomfortable

I wouldn’t normally have selected to do a color study of Andy Warhol — not one of my faves. But I had grabbed this postcard from the Tate Modern the other week, thinking I really ought to.  So I did.

To start, I take a moment just to look at Andy Warhol’s Self Portrait, 1966 - 1967 —

This whole piece is a study of color relationships and transformation.  My eye reads it like a book, left to right and line by line.  Taking each square in turn.

Top left square feels like an introduction to the color world of the piece.   The only high value contrast square.  Facial information is in the light.  Yellow along his shoulder gives the full color range.

Top right square moves into the darker values — the red feels more neutral and darker next to those blues.  No yellow, but the hint of green at his temples.  The vibe borders on ominous.  The expression more sinister.   

Bottom left square takes me a moment to make out the face.  Not an attractive image.  Once I’m able to see the face, I don’t linger.

The bottom right feels like a color negative.  The facial information is now conveyed with the dark neutral color.  This silhouette is the clearest of the four, but the overall effect feels the most “off.”

Right — move on to your color study.

I decide to do the top two squares in one sitting, mix up a red paint for the under layer, and pull out my pan pastels.  My notes document the mixing of hues, finding the values in my palette, and testing out different ways to get it right (light down first, or dark with light on top, or build up back and forth).

I take on the bottom squares over the following two days.  For the left, I mix up a green paint for the under layer; for the right, the red paint from above.   Matching the green is particularly challenging.

Look again.

I return to the Warhol picture in it's entirety and the bottom right portrait in particular.  This last square unsettles me.  My eye returns to the top left square and now finds that face, with it’s neon green, unsettling as well.    

What is Warhol doing here with color?  Saturated to desaturated.  High to low contrast.  The red is the same hue throughout, I'm sure of it.  The green toggles between tint and shade.  The gutters are the lighter shade of the last square’s face. Violet is introduced at the end, echoing the first square, but more red.  Some colors are shared across all the squares, some just across opposing squares.

What does it all add up to?  One more step, then. I strip the color from Self-Portrait and look again [see below, A closer look, for the results]. 

But why this deeper dive into the experience of Warhol’s color?  Because I was uncomfortable.  Uncomfortable with Warhol’s piece certainly — it's meant to be unsettling, I’ve concluded — but equally so with the results of my own efforts.  In writing this up here, I feel better. Enough that I can put this color study fully to bed.

One more takeaway. Warhol reminds me to ruthlessly complete flawed work — uncomfortable as it may be. 

A closer look:  

What we have when we strip out the color.

Warhol’s masterpiece Clarke’s masterpiece

Red is dark value, same as blue & brown. Red is medium value.

Green lighter than red.   Green the same value as red

Portraits become sinister. Portraits become comical.