Finding the RAINBOW in art

This mini lesson is total eye candy.  Sit back and enjoy basking in the glow of the RAINBOW.

Let's look at the RAINBOW in art!

Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow

Starting with Glass artist Dale Chihuly who along with his glass blowing team of artists spins RAINBOW colored glass into multi-color glass works of art
A boat filled with spheres of color or a twisted glass chandelier

Rainbows of thousands of shredded paper strips create this art by Travis Rice.

Sol Lewitt was an American artist whose color filled spaces might stop you in your tracks

Stripes of color carefully drawn and painted on a wall

A RAINBOW of Sol Lewitt's colors may greet you as you enter a New York City subway station.  A burst of color in a typically gloomy underground.

An Alabama community of quilters has transformed Colorful bed coverings into works of art.
A group of Gee's Bend quilters create a RAINBOW in stitched scraps of fabric to make these colorful quilts.In Taiwan an entire village is covered in a spectrum of colors

The buildings in this Taiwan village become works of art right down to the ground.

Why would an artist fill the walls of a building with color?

Well, over 10 years ago, the village where a then-86-year-old Huang Yung-fu lived faced being knocked down.  He did not want to leave the only home he had known in Taiwan.  Painting his village made people want to visit this location and residents to stay

Gabriel Dawes brings us RAINBOW art that is hanging by a thread

Strand by RAINBOW strand 

Literally miles of threads create RAINBOW installations 

Across a space, back and forth, slow and steady Gabriel strings delicate threads between secured hooks

A peak inside the process of Gabriel Dawes

Almas Thomas was a retired school teacher and artist. You made art in her style in Kindergarten

Alma would look out her window panes and see specks of color from the flowers in her backyard garden.  

She wanted her paintings to look like the rainbow she would view out her window. Dashes of color mimmic the squares of glass in a window.

A group of artists painted their art with intense and saturated colors that we don't typically see in nature.

Because of the colors these artists used, they were called the Fauves --which in French translates to Wild Beast.  People were not used to brightly colored art at this time.  It was unusual.  Sometimes people might not be kind when they don't understand or see something new.  How do you respond to things you aren't used to.  

Fauvism was a style of painting in the early 1900s (over 100 years ago) that emphasized bright, expressive color

Maurice Vlaminck, Bougival, 1905,

In this LANDSCAPE Do you see PINK, Blue, Read and Teal t

small towns and landscapes with intense color, thick paint, very similar to van Gogh’s style.

Color by number!  Artist Emmanuelle Moureaux used brightly colored paper to create a interactive paper installation titled Forest of Numbers

Our St. Louis Art Museum has several colorful works of art

Art by Elsworth Kelly and Frank Stella are a great place to start on your St. Louis Art Museum Rainbow hunt

The Shape of Abstraction by Stanley Whitney is another great stop on the search for color packed art at the SLAM.

Do you respond to color in art?  

Will you use more than one color in your art?

What are some of the colors that can make you feel emotions when you look at art?

Jen Stark Chromatic Cascade