My Kid Could Paint That

Color Theories

By NAYOUNG KWON

Born in Germany, Franz Marc became an iconic figure during WWI, for his courageous actions in the battlefield. Not only he successfully gained honor in the war, he was famous for his bright, and colorful paintings. Over the years of his art career he developed his own code to portray his emotions and thoughts through color. The color blue is used to portray masculinity while the color Yellow was to show feminine, joy, and softness, and finally red portrayed the blocking the sound of violence. These three primary colors are simple yet at the same creates an odd but sad feeling when looking at his works.

When looking at most of Franz Marc's paintings he uses mostly blue, to show the masculinity within himself, and the expectations from the society that he has to bare. The animals that he paints could mean that he's comparing the humans with wild animals that are experiencing the same emotions and violence. That us humans are nothing more than animals and we don't have the choice but to live with it. In The Yellow Cow, yellow it portrays femininity but it also shows unsuitability. The cow in the painting moves freely but it looks as if its running from something. The bright color combination of red, blue, and green sets off as a background while creating a focal point of yellow. The urge to escape from noises of violence, and masculinity that he has dealt with portrays in the cow running through the fields -- just like Franz Marc.

Franz Marc painted the Horse in a Landscape in search of the "absolute essence of art." He hoped to discover the beauty and purity inherited in the natural world. He managed to break away from the domain of naturalistic colors and lines. And by doing so, he made the recognizable things more abstract and expressive. Marc believed that pure colors had just as much symbolic potentials and subtexts as the real world. He came up with theories about colors and attributed particular qualities to the three primary colors. For him, blue represents the masculine part of the world, associated with austerity and intelligence. Yellow arouses feminine characteristics and sensuality. And red stands for the material world, relentless, brutal, and belligerent. In the painting, we see a horse halt his steps and hesitate about where he is going. He is strong, but somehow there is no clear path for him to dash, only a field of gentle yellow. "Mrs. Robinson you are trying to seduce me, aren't you?" Powerless and puzzled, Ben walks right into that field and losses his way there for a long time. It's only when he darts to the church and runs away with Elaine has he finally found a way to what he truly wants. However, on the bus, as smiles gradually fade away from their faces, we start to wonder, perhaps the characters too, is it really a good decision? Or did they just screw up their lives again? As the yellow bus drives farther into the horizon, a new round of loss and find begins. If this is the start of a new education, the education of life, then, when is the graduation?