The Artist’s Palette: Primary Colors on Paper March 5–June 2, 2013
![Bucklow- Guest, 25,000 Solar Images [AF], 5:03 pm, 10th October 1995](https://static.mfah.com/images/bucklow--guest-25000-solar-images-af-503-pm-10th-october-1995.7051307159867312817.jpg?width=290)
Christopher Bucklow, Guest, 25,000 Solar Images [AF], 5:03 pm, 10th October 1995, 1995, silver dye bleach print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Manfred Heiting Collection, Museum purchase funded by Photo Forum 2002. © Christopher Bucklow
Kate Shepherd, Circling Around Yellow, Bigmouth, 2010, screenprint on paper, ed. 1/1, the MFAH, gift of Isabel B. Wilson. © Kate Shepherd, 2012
Sam Francis, Untitled (SF61-1030), 1961, watercolor on newsprint, the MFAH, museum purchase with funds provided by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund. © 2013 Sam Francis Foundation, California / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Robert Motherwell, Lyric Suite, 1965, black and peacock blue ink on rice paper, the MFAH, gift of The Brown Foundation, Inc. and the Dedalus Foundation. © Dedalus Foundation, Inc. / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
John Pfahl, Yellow Right Angle, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, from the series Altered Landscape, 1975, chromogenic print, ed. #10/75, the MFAH, Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection. © John Pfahl
William Christenberry, Red Building in Forest, Hale County, Alabama, 1991, chromogenic print, printed 1993, the MFAH, Manfred Heiting Collection, gift of Mrs. Clare A. Glassell. © William Christenberry, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
The Artist's Palette presents modern and contemporary works on paper—prints, drawings, and photographs—in which artists emphasize one of the three primary colors: blue, red, and yellow.
Color theory is an important tool in the art world. Artists use colors to represent emotional states; notions of identity; political and religious affiliations; and events and holidays. Colors also correspond to temperature: Red and yellow are warm, whereas blue is cold. In addition, some artistic processes are associated with specific colors.
Blue, red, and yellow are unique because they cannot be created by mixing other colors. All other hues, however, derive from them. The basis for understanding color comes from Sir Isaac Newton, who—upon passing a beam of white light through a prism in the 17th century—discovered that light separates into seven bands of color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Newton then developed the first color wheel, which reveals their respective relationships.
Drawn from the MFAH collections, the works on view in The Artist’s Palette are arranged by color, emphasizing the full spectrum of expressive possibilities within each hue.
This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.