Re: Kelvin Relevance in Fine Art?
Re: Kelvin Relevance in Fine Art?
- Subject: Re: Kelvin Relevance in Fine Art?
- From: Roger Breton <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 14:01:53 -0500
Painting and color perception and exhibitions. Hmmh. There's no end to where
color is viewed and applied. I won't go against the implicit consensus
expressed here, that tungsten or 3500K lamps are to be accepted practice
wherever art is exhibited, in spite of all the arguments that seems to go
counter. I've not had a chance to read that "Kruithof Curve" paper yet, and
maybe that will sway my opinion when I finally do, but, in the meantime, let
me tell you about my humble experience with color, painting and lighting. I
recently had the pleasure of meeting a "colorist". Yes, a main calling
himself a colorist. This is not a Physics PhD but a practicionner who's
worked all his life in color professionnaly, mixing colors for the Benjamin
Moore and the Sherwin-Williams of this world. As a colorist, his job
entailed the ongoing development of ever new paint palettes, as fashionable
as the taste of the day. Surprisingly, this is a man who does not even know
the meaning of the word colorimetry, his only color instruments are sitting
in his eye lobes. What's interesting about his man is that, in parrallel to
his daytime colorist life, he is also a painter by academic training, coming
from some reputable european shool of art. I confess I am not art historian
but it's easy to tell that his work is not just a hobby. So much so that
his work can be seen at some local art galery. Sharing some common interest
for color, we met many times. At some point, we came on the subject of
lighting. I was telling him about my research on exotic and less exotic
lamps for the purpose of color management and viewing reproductions. That
piqued his interest. He said to me he had the chance to try all kinds of
lamps in the course of his work but there was he never found anything that
beat the quality of what he called Verday-Ray tubes (if anyone know where I
could procure some of these please contact me off list!). Anyway, one night,
I show up at his place with my stock of my 5000K lamps. We setup shop in his
studio amids his paintings, paintbrushes and Windsor&Newton tubes. It was
late at night and the only lighting available in that room was a cheap,
Westinghouse 60W bulb hanging from the ceiling. (I could not believe my
eyes!) I'd brought along some Just-Normlicht ColorControl 5000K tubes, some
GretagMacbeth 5000K tubes, some Phillips Colortone tubes, a model OTL-13TCG
Ott-Lite lamp and my custom-powered Solux 4700K halogens. Well, nothing
impressed him in all these lamps except my pair of custom-powered 4700K
Solux halogens. That really popped his eyes wide opened. We successively
aimed the Solux at all the walls in his studio, where some of his collection
of paintings hung proudly : it was like a revelation to him. He said to me
"stop looking for the ideal lamp, this is it"! He confided he never seen his
painting that way, saying there were just some colors that he said he never
seen!
Roger Breton | Laval, Canada | email@hidden
http://pages.infinit.net/graxx
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