COLOURS. The emotion of art

Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea

“For as long as we live, we’re alive. Color is life.” –Etel Adnan, September 29, 2016

Drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Beccaria, Elena Volpato and Elif Kamisli, with advice from Vittorio Gallese and inspired by Michael Taussig and others, this exhibition investigates the use of color in art through the presentation of 400 works by over 125 artists from around the world, dating from the late 17th century up to today.

This exhibition is about colors, pigments, dyes and poisons. Fluorescent colors appear because they have light in them, just like on our screens today. We see more and more RGB colors, and they are saturated and bright, standardized and digital.

Around 1896, Cézanne said in conversation that Tintoretto, “he who had a chromatic range that could rival with rainbows, towards the end of his life liked only black and white... It is because colors are evil, they torture, you understand. To paint a swirling rose of joy, he must have suffered a great deal.”

In 1905, Annie Besant wrote, “to paint in earth’s dull colors the forms clothed in the living light of other worlds is a hard and thankless task; so much the more gratitude is due to those who have attempted it. They needed colored fire, and had only ground earths.”

Shortly thereafter, in 1910, the Futurists stated: “How can we still see a human face as pink while our lives have clearly doubled through nightlife? The face is yellow, it is red, green, blue and violet.”

In fact, “our relation to color is closely formed by our cultural habitat,” Olafur Eliasson reminded us in 2006, adding, “the Inuit, for instance, have one word for red, but 30 for various whites... Imagine if lime by nature had been bright yellow; maybe the now well-known gallery formula would have been based on this color—the yellow cube. Then our history would have been altogether different.”

“Color is like food, a food that feeds the soul,” Eugénie Paultre said a few days ago in early January. “Without this experience our soul would be very poor. I arrange this food in the simplest of ways, using lines. You end up forgetting the lines and you see only color.”

There will be works by artists and others, including: Anonymous Tantra drawings, Carla Accardi, Bas Jan Ader, Etel Adnan, Hilma af Klint, Josef Albers, Giovanni Anselmo, Karel Appel, Arman, John Baldessari, Giacomo Balla, Robert Barry, Claude Bellegarde, Annie Besant (with Charles W. Leadbeater / painted by Lady MacFarlane & Mr Prince & John Varley), Jakayu Biljabu, Irma Blank, Norman Bluhm, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Kerstin Brätsch, Alberto Burri, André Cadere, Corrado Cagli, Alexander Calder, Carlo Carrà, Felice Casorati, Enrico Castellani, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Michel Eugène Chevreul, Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Tony Cragg, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Giuliano Dal Molin, Sonia Delaunay, Nicola De Maria, Fortunato Depero, Nicolas de Staël, Piero Dorazio, Olafur Eliasson, Bracha Ettinger, Lara Favaretto, Oskar Wilhelm Fischinger, Dan Flavin, Lucio Fontana, Katharina Fritsch, Vittorio Gallese, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Theaster Gates, Rupprecht Geiger, Leo Gestel, Piero Gilardi, Liam Gillick, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthard Graubner, Giorgio Griffa, Gruppo MID, Paul Guiragossian, David Hammons, Camille Henrot, Auguste Herbin, Arturo Herrera, Damien Hirst, Channa Horwitz, Johannes Itten, Alexej von Jawlensky, Asger Jorn, Donald Judd, Wassily Kandinsky, Anish Kapoor, Ellsworth Kelly, Paul Klee, Yves Klein, Frantisek Kupka, Wolfgang Laib, Jim Lambie, Basim Magdy, Alberto Magnelli, Estuardo Maldonado, Antonio Mancini, Édouard Manet, Henri Matisse, Gustav Metzger, Piet Mondrian, Maria Morganti, Edvard Munch, Gabriele Münter, Sir Isaac Newton, Mario Nigro, Otobong Nkanga, Kenneth Noland, Hélio Oiticica, Giulio Paolini, Tancredi Parmeggiani, Pino Pascali, Eugénie Paultre, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Heather Phillipson, Francis Picabia, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Lea Porsager, Alejandro Puente, Walid Raad & The Atlas Group, Edi Rama, Gerhard Richter, Hans Richter, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Mark Rothko, Thomas Ruff, Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, Luigi Russolo, Anri Sala, Mario Schifano, Shozo Shimamoto, Ettore Spalletti, Simon Starling, Haim Steinbach, Hito Steyerl, Mika Tajima, Atsuko Tanaka, Cheyney Thompson, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, Luis Tomasello, Giulio Turcato, Joseph Mallord William Turner, James Turrell, Viktor Vasarely, Alfredo Volpi, Franz Erhard Walther, Andy Warhol, Liu Wei, Lawrence Weiner, Marianne von Werefkin, Ye Xianyan, Fahrelnissa Zeid, Gilberto Zorio.