Thursday

Color Chart: Reinventing Color from 1950 to Today at the MOMA

If you need to infuse a gray spring with a hint of color, New York’s Museum of Modern Art is the place to do it, with the museum’s exhibition Color Chart: Reinventing Color from 1950 to Today.

he exhibition’s departure point is the commercial color chart, which declares the status of color as mass-produced and standardized. As human beings we have long been attached to color as personal expression. But artists in the mid-20th century began to pull away from that, choosing to make color a commodity instead of a symbol of emotional and spiritual power. Instead of creating works that remained in line with society’s color expectations they went to a new level and began to adopt more aesthetic approaches that relied on chance and ready-made sources. Instead of mixing and creating new shades like artists before them had done for decades, the movement took a different route, best described by Frank Stella’s comment: “Straight out of a can; it can’t get better than that.”

Along with the exhibition visitors can also partake in Color Lab, an interactive space for families and children to play with elements of color. From giant magnetic boards to playing with colored pencils, the interactive area allows visitors to engage with color on their own level, allowing them to discover the complexities of color choice.

Color Chart features over 40 artists including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst and Marcel Duchamp. The show is on display through May 12, 2008.