Public defence in Contemporary Art, MA Harald Arnkil

Title of the thesis: Exploring Colour in Contemporary Art – Epistemic Boundaries and Artistic Practices

Thesis defender: Harald Arnkil
Opponent: Associate Professor Megan Craig, Stony Brook University (SUNY), USA
Custos: Professor Paula Hohti,Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Colour is one of visual art’s central means of expression, yet it has been met with almost total silence in the art discourse of the past approximately seventy years; colour has been seen as either too trivial or too difficult to express with words to be included in serious discussion of contemporary art. 

In his thesis, Harald Arnkil takes apart this myth. The ineffability of colours is a key to understanding the fundamental nature of art, Arnkil says. With the help of philosophical texts about colour in art by Mikel Dufrenne, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Henry, Arnkil shows why colour is a central content of contemporary art and that it is possible to speak and write about colour in an interesting and meaningful way. 

From the 1960s onwards artists have used colours in ever more varied material, spatial and temporal contexts; the globalisation of the art market, the Internet and the availability of cheap air travel have provided artists with access to an exponentially growing array of ideas, means and cultures of colour. At the same time, science has produced new knowledge about colour vision and perception which has rendered obsolete the simplifying doctrines underlying many artistic theories of colour. The result has been that ever fewer artists regard traditional norms and rules about colour as meaningful for their art. 

Arnkil has interviewed for this research nine contemporary artists from Finland, Estonia, England, Belgium and the USA. In addition, he has studied the approaches to colour over 200 contemporary artists. The research also includes overviews of colour in recent epistemological philosophy, philosophy of art and art-pedagogical literature. 

The research revealed that although colour was a common subject for scientists, philosophers, pedagogues and artists, exchange of knowledge across these disciplines is hindered by an incompatibility of language, concepts and styles of writing about colour. As a result, colour theories for artists are lacking in knowledge about recent scientific and philosophical discourse about colour; but they are also largely oblivious to the ways contemporary artists think about and use colour. In marked difference from the dogmatic rules of traditional colour theory, the often poetic and "visual" language of the above-mentioned philosophers offers a more viable approach to colours in contemporary art.

Keywords: Colour, contemporary art, philosophy, pedagogy

Thesis available for public display 10 days prior to the defence at Aaltodoc. 

Contact information: 

harald.arnkil@aalto.fi 
+358-40-7164804 
www.arnkil.net