Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today

The Museum of Modern Art is currently running a show that explores the shift of color use from a hand mixed personal expression to a commodified readymade product.

If you cant make it out to New York City before the exhibition ends on May12th, 2008. MoMA's online exhibition is a site to be seen on its own. The beautifully designed site allows you to explore the works at the exhibit categorized by timeline, artist, or medium.

About The Exhibition

This exhibition takes as its point of departure the commercial color chart, an item that openly declares the status of colors mass-produced and standardized. Midway through the twentieth century, long-held convictions regarding the spiritual or emotional power of particular colors gave way to the embrace of color as an ordinary commodity. At the same time, many artists rejected traditional artistic pedagogy about correct relationships between colors and instead adopted aesthetic approaches that relied on chance, ready-made sources, or arbitrary systems.

The Romantic quest for personal expression, so often achieved through color, instead became Andy Warhol's "I want to be a machine." The artistry of mixing pigments was eclipsed by Frank Stella's "Straight out of the can; it can't get better than that. "This exhibition features the work of forty-four artists who take a position in which art and life mingle rather than remain separate, and where beauty is found in the everyday rather than in the ideal.
- Ann Temkin

Color Lab Interactive Space

Color Lab, an interactive space for families created in conjunction with the exhibition Color Chart, is located in the Reading Room on the first floor of the Cullman Education Center. Open for the run of the exhibition, Color Lab offers materials for families to conduct their own exploration of color choice.

Children and adults are invited to experiment with giant magnetic boards, play games and activities, or create their own color-choice systems using colored pencils and paper. Free with Museum admission.

Other Pieces at the Exhibition

Photos: Museum of Modern Art