Hey buds! I’m back again! With a very interesting art talk for you lil youngbloods!
You’ve been waiting for this one for a long, long, time!
The age old question, “Are Men Colorblind?” Is finally explored from an artist’s point of view, as we explore artworks done by both famous male and female artists. You may be able to tell the gender of the artist painting an artwork, simply by looking at how bright their color palatte is.
Much of this post is subjective to interpretation, and the goal is to have readers share their own thoughts about whether there is a correlation between how the two genders see color. With that being said, enjoy!
_________________________________
So, it’s no secret that, if you’re a man, you’ve heard of the expression, “All men are colorblind.”
Maybe you have that mother-in-law swinging her hand in the air at you, and calling you a tacky dressing goofball that can’t hardly see anything.
As an artist, and yes, as a dude, I found myself a bit annoyed…But as I began to paint, and blend my colors in my artworks, and as I studied both male and female artists, I found a strange correlation between the color choices female artists use, versus male artists.
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. (1783)._______________________________________________________________________
The color palette of the neoclassical female artist Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun as you can notice right off the back, is very bright and airy. It gives you that ‘head in the clouds’ and ‘cotton candy across the skin’
feeling, as your wet eyes roll across the artwork. In Marie Antoinette with a Rose. (Yes, the same lady that got her head guillotine x_x) Elisabeth’s colors features a bright vivid blue—a type of blue that almost reminds me of the Untamable Ceruleon Blue Hue—this particular blue I found to be very hard to blend with, and when used in large amounts, tends to overtake ever single color mixed with it.
It’s airy presence seems to upstage all the other colors. With that being said, the color palette, if you’re unaware of what colors are needed to blend to make them, seem to be very limited; the light blue, light green, grey, light pink, ect. with the dark brown tree with dark green over it.
All in all, the result feature a painting with a lot of lighter colors moreover. You don’t really see a deep overpowering of colors here that will take away from your main focus; the light blue dress of Ms. Marie.
___
In according to how men and women view colors, or how colors look to them, this would mean that to Elisabeth, the colors she used are already extremely brigher; that tree must’ve appeared almost black to her…However to male viewers, the colors probably appear lighter, and more subtle.
Now let’s take a look at male artist Leonardo da Vinci’s Infamous Mona Lisa:
——–
__________________________________________
Now, notice both are paintings of women, though carried out by two different gender artists.
What do you notice about Da Vinci’s artwork in contrast to Elisabeth’s Marie Antoinette?
What colors are present in Mona Lisa, that aren’t in Marie?
Right off that back, you should notice the reversal: While Marie Antoinette is the central figure; her colors are bright, soft, and whatever blues you see are very light. Any dark colors are pushed to the sides of Marie, left into the trees and environment.
While Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa as the central figure features her as one of the darkest objects in the painting.
From the dark clothes, dark hair; you’ll notice lots of brown, deep yellows, some orange hues, and overall the color palette is much less airy, with lighter colors such as a blue that seems to be slightly similar to Elisabeth’s use of blue pushed off to the back of the landscape.
This is quite odd, because it means what colors were focused on by the two artists were much different; one saw colors that interested them more than the other. All in all, Da Vinci’s artwork is much darker than Elisabeth’s painting—the color palette in a male artist’s artwork is darker than the female artist.
____
Many portraits of great figures were painted using the color black, but and didn’t always mean something sinister was in our view. Many times Black colors were a symbol of power, alerting the viewers that what they were looking at, was something to be remembered.
Though many colors substituted black, such as browns and even dark purples, it would appear that Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun wanted to focus on subtlety rather than force of nature, where Da Vinci almost couldn’t hold back pressing the canvas with deep colors to force us to focus on.
Let’s take a look at an artwork done by another famous female artist; Georgia O’keeffe!
_______________________________________________________
Studying Many of Georgia O’Keeffe’s artworks, you will notice that despite quite a few paintings featuring bright reds and oranges, she was no stranger to painting dull, or pale artworks—by pale or dull, I mean the color palette featured a lot of white (usually used in her many cow skull paintings) a lot of turquoise colors, and such.
=============
Lake George Reflections is a uniquely ambitious work painted by Georgia, where it uses many bright colors. The bright colors featured here are pinks, turquoise, purple, and even gradations. With that in mind, there are very few ‘blacks’ or dark browns, or any harsh burly colors that force our eyes to focus on anything ominous. Even the dark blue ombre in the waters have been broken up with a fading to white; our eyes look at the dark blue closest to us, but scroll up across the canvas to the white, or perhaps lock onto the white, then scroll down following down to the dark blue, then our eyes leap! Off of the canvas!
Right in the middle of the artwork lies one singlular horizontal dark color, and then…That’s all. This is the notion: for Georgia O’Keeffe, perhaps what colors she saw here, were extremely brighter than what a male viewer might see. Obviously the colors here are very vivid, and so it’s tough to classify what the true colors would be in terms of how two opposite gender artists are viewing it.
___
The color red might not be burgendy after all, and that burgendy might not’ve been bright red. Perhaps it was actually pink, and our human eyes are not truly viewing the correct hue we’re presented with?
___________________________________________________
Now studying the contrast of colors by Surrealist Salvador Dali’s artwork, The Persistence of Memory, you will notice once more the colors that male artists focus on more over a female artist. Ask yourself, what colors are important to you as an artist? Here in Salvador’s artwork, darker colors have a stronger presence on the eyes. Though even from two different time periods, and with vastly different art genres, the pattern is still there; the heavy use of orange and yellow seems to be present. The overall colors seem darker, while with Elisabeth and Georgia, the use of light blues and softness is always prevelant.
___
Almost like that men are from “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” philosophy, men just can’t seem to use colors to dominate the canvas.
What makes dark colors in a dress more important than dark colors in a tree? Or better yet, when is a color too bright, when should it be toned down. For what occassion?
=========
========
In Dali’s work, the yellow gold clock was something that the infamous Surrealist wanted to make apparent for our eyes; for Georgia O’Keeffe, she wanted you to notice the vivid pinks, the turquoise blues.
Also, notice how movement is portrayed in the different gender’s works of arts; men tend to make jaggered, almost transfixed edges—-Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa’s arms are fixed, stiff, and poised, while Elisabeth’s Marie Antoinette’s arms are free, curved, almost like a river flowing easily. In Georgia’s Lake artwork here, your eyes can lift over the mountains, and like a sleigh ride freefall down smoothly over each hill; but with Dali’s clocks, your eyes are told where they need to stop; the rugged table-like object where the two clocks and the tree are positioned; from the position of the tree, to the freefalling off the table, your eyes are being told where they should start, and stop. With the female artists, everything is implied upon the viewer…And I find that to be extremely fascinating!
Almost as if the female artists guide you where your eyes should flow, while a male artist dictates where your eyes will look.
This concept is quite humorous! Of course in terms of the different colors used in an artwork, many factors still would determine how an artwork will look; from the medium used, the genre, the artist’s skill in mixing and combining paint, the overall experience of the artist, how the artist was feeling at the time of their artwork’s construction, and even the culture of the artist—-back in the day Spanish artists such as Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Frida Kahlo were known to use a lot of oranges and reds in correlation to the different colors they may see in their own country.
___
Moreover, if ever you wanted to see if an artwork was done by a male or female artist, you need only look at a couple factors:
Male artists tend to use more darker colors, while female artists tend to use more airy, paler or lighter colors. Perhaps this may be because a male artist looks a a fire engine red paint tube, and say “This burgendy will do.” and the result is a firece red on the canvas, where a female artist may pick up a blue and go, “This blue is too dark.” And add white to it, and it turns into turquiose.
…Or perhaps what we thought was burgendy, was actually yellow, and what we thought was blue, was actually green, and unbeknowst to us, all our artworks look like tacky nonsensical constructions to any visiting extraterrestrials on the outside looking in on our art galleries! XD
______
-Sincerely, Your Favorite Uncle Ever, Gregory Thomas
References
Wiki Sources:
Cascadia Legends and Poetry 
