INVITED
XVII COLOR CONFERENCE
Short Bio
Verena M. Schindler is an art and architectural historian. She has worked at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) and the Department of Architecture at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. She has been affiliated with Atelier Cler Etudes Chromatiques in Paris and was guest researcher at VorAnker in Vienna. She is Chair of the Study Group on Environmental Colour Design of the International Colour Association, a member of the editorial board of several journals, and Senior Editor of Color Research and Application.
Title and Abstract
On different approaches to Environmental Colour Design
In 2022, the Study Group on Environmental Colour Design (SG ECD) of the International Colour Association (Association Internationale de la Couleur, AIC) is celebrating its 40th anniversary! The main goal of the SG ECD is to disseminate knowledge about experience made in the process of integrating colour in the planning, design, and realization of the built environment, exterior and interior spaces. The activities and events of the SG ECD have opened up exchanges between experts working in diverse countries around the world. At present the SG ECD includes approximately 300 members from 43 countries. The means of exchange include meetings, a website, a mailing list, and publications as well as collaborations with other groups and organizations to stimulate research and teaching related to the members’ key interests. An SG ECD report is published in the AIC Annual Report. The Study Group on Environmental Colour Design was consolidated the following year at the AIC Interim Meeting on Colour Dynamics, which was held 8–10 June 1982 in Budapest. Nemcsics believed that architectural colour had been applied in a more conscious way ever since World War II. As well, it seemed to him that many professionals such as physiologists, psychologists, anthropologists and sociologists were investigating the effects of environmental colour on humans. Further, in physics and aesthetics, the relationship between colour sensation and colour composition and harmony were being newly investigated. Nemcsics thought that this variety of points of view and heterogeneous research results should evolve into a new science that he suggested calling Colour Dynamics. The aim of this new science was to gather together insights from different disciplines to create a theoretical and practical basis for the study of the relationship between colour, the environment and human response. In essence, environmental colour design concerned any design of the physical setting for human habitation and activities. As well, it also used to refer to aims and results in the applied arts and sciences in the creation of immediate manmade environments, such as in interior design and lighting design. More recently, however, the term implies ecological and sustainable design efforts including the protection of the environment and nature-friendly strategies. And lately, in terms of developments in the field of colour, colour design is playing a key role in creating ambience or atmosphere in indoor and outdoor spaces. Here the aim is to improve a sense of well-being and comfort through the construction of aesthetically appealing and environmentally friendly urban spaces. This presentation aims to explore different approaches to environmental colour design and glean answers to the question as to what role is to be attributed to theory in environmental colour design and how theorical concepts relate to colour practices and colour applications in urban design, architecture, exterior and interior spaces.
Short Bio
Renata Pintus, Art Historian, graduated in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Pisa in 2003 and at the same University she obtained the Specialization in History of Art, address Contemporary Art, in 2008. Since 2010 she is employed in the Ministry of Culture. In the Directorate-General for Education, Research and Cultural Institutes of the MIC she was responsible for the Research Operating Unit, as well as contact person for the Restorers of cultural heritage area of the Professionals Operating Unit. She has collaborated on numerous research, curatorial and exhibition projects on 20th and 21st century art in the Uffizi Galleries. She is currently Director of the Consultancy Service for the Restoration Sectors for the conservation of contemporary works of art and of the Wall Paintings Sector of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, at whose Higher Education School she teaches Contemporary Art History. She is also Scientific Technical Coordinator of the Master in Conservation and Management of Contemporary Art Works.
Title and Abstract
Color = Shape = Space: Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #736 “Rectangles of color”
The wall drawings are among the most famous works of the American artist Sol Lewiitt (1928-2007), considered one of the founding fathers of Conceptual Art. Over the course of about 38 years he made about 3500 of them, considering the different versions, in 1200 different places, 350 of which in Italy where he chose to reside almost permanently after buying a house in Spoleto in 1982; the first are executed directly on the wall by the artist, but above all what makes these creations peculiar is the fact that very soon he chooses to deal exclusively with the project, delegating the realization of the work to specialized operators, each of whom interprets the instructions in a personal way. It is therefore a question of variable and multiple works, based on a principle of collaboration. To define this relationship between ideation and execution Sol Lewitt often used the metaphor of the musical score: “I think of them [the wall drawings] as a musical score that has to be remade by someone or by some people. I like the idea that the same work can exist in two or more places at the same time ”. During 2021 the Wall Paintings and Stucco Department and the Contemporary Art Service of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure intervened for maintenance on the wall drawing # 736 Rectangles of colour of the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Arts in Prato, created in 1993: it was the opportunity for a comparison with this category of works by the American artist that have almost become “school” when we intend to speak of the paradigm change that certain part of contemporary art requires from a conservative point of view, because it escapes a concept of authenticity intended as an autograph. It is a long geometric frieze (in this sense a unicum in the conspicuous corpus of wall drawings by the artist) of which the rectangle represents the basic modular element, repeated in the variations of size and color, designed to dialogue with the space a circular plan and also with the furnishings that it should have housed, obtained through the use, very unusual for a wall painting, of Drawing Ink Z® by Pelikan, usually used in architectural drawing and in four-color heliographic printing, for years out of production, characterized by a high resistance to light and capable of giving the painted surface an extraordinary almost translucent brilliance, similar to that of a fresco, applied by successive glazes.
To continue with the musical metaphor, Lewitt orchestrates an extraordinary symphony of colors with his wall drawings, in which each color, while maintaining its own individuality, contributes to the overall result.
This study and restoration work will be briefly discuss.
Short Bio
Emanuela Chiavoni – Full Professor, ICAR 17 Drawing Sector and PhD Coordinator of History, Drawing and Restoration of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome. Member of the Editorial Staff of the magazine “Drawing, Ideas, Images”, Gangemi Editor, Rome. Professor responsible for the Historical Archive of Drawings of the former Radaar Department at the University Sapienza School of Architecture in Rome, now the Department of History, Drawing and Restoration of Architecture. Her main research topics are: the role of drawing in understanding the tangible and intangible architectural, archaeological and landscape heritage and the methodologies, tools and techniques of architectural survey. Part of the departmental team involved in the preparation, management and evaluation of several proposals for national and international research.
Title and Abstract
COLOURING IN ARCHITECTURE: problems involving nocturnal representation
The visibility of an architecture changes enormously throughout the day depending on whether the light source is diurnal or nocturnal, natural, artificial or mixed. Since perception of the same building changes, it is always necessary to experiment with suitable representation systems in order to convey these changes in colour. Several methods can be used to understand these effects; they include photography and all kinds of drawings, be they analogical or digital. The big difference in architectural representations is the contrast between light and shadow, the absence of colour, in black and white, and the descriptions of the different colour intensities and tones. Since daytime representations have been studied the most, even by this author, the contribution will focus on the nocturnal representation of architecture, a topic that still needs to be examined in-depth by anyone involved with drawing. I have chosen several subjects which I will draw at a certain time of night: the castle on the island of Patmos (Greece), the castle in the city of Blanca (Mursia region, Spain), and the Cathedral in Orbetello (Tuscany). Instead to express colour differences during the night, I have chosen just one subject that I can access more easily: a farmhouse in the hamlet of Titignano (Orvieto, Umbria). The goal behind all these graphic experiments is to try and represent on paper the numerous phenomena of light and colour, aspects that are always a priority compared to the form and intangible narrative of the architecture.
2ND EDITION OF “COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM”
Short Bio
Henry G. Wilhelm is an American researcher and author known for his studies of the archival properties of photographic printing processes. In 1981 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photographic Studies to continue his work studying photographic processes. He is the co-author, along with Carol Brower Wilhelm, of the 1993 book The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures. They are the founders of Wilhelm Imaging Research.
Title and Abstract
A 145-Year History of the Stability and Preservation of Color Photographs and Film – The Overlapping Roles of Manufacturers, Photographers, Collecting Institutions, and the Consumer Marketplace – From 1877 to 2022
Short Bio
Nicola Mazzanti (Bologna, 1963) has been active in film archiving and restoration since the early 1980s.
He was first film archivist at the Cineteca di Bologna, then co-founder of the Film Festival “Cinema Ritrovato”, and of the restoration center L’Immagine Ritrovata, for which he supervised the analog and then digital restoration of hundred of films.
He served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and of the European digital library (Europeana). He was also member of the Technical Commission of FIAF (int.l Federation of Film Archives).
He was also involved in Digital Cinema standardisation as member of SMPTE’ DCinema WGs.
He was President of ACE (Association des Cinémathèques Européennes), and called as expert by the European Commission on issues regarding film archiving, film conservation, Digital conservation.
An independent consultant in Europe and in the US on major projects involving the transition of traditional Film Archives to Digital, Nicola Mazzanti has collaborated with many archives (Los Angeles, Madrid, Bologna, Brussels, among others). He designed or coordinated several European research projects, and in 2011 he coordinated the group of experts who produced the report “Digital Agenda for the European Film Heritage”, which he edited.
NM was director of L’Immagine Ritrovata restoration lab, of the festival Cinema Ritrovato, and recently retired from Director of the Film Archive of Belgium (2012-2020).
NM has an extensive list of publications on topics related to film history and theory and practice of film archiving and restoration. On the same topics he lectured at many Universities (Frankfurt, Braunschweig, Gorizia, UCLA¸Bologna, Bruxelles, Lille…) and held teaching assignment in the MA programs on film archiving in the Universities of Udine, Bruxelles, and Lille.
Title and Abstract
“The stuff that dreams are made of.” – Color and Cinema between creation and restoration from analog to digital. A (somewhat) personal story.
Since 1895, through both the analog and digital eras, color is among the many narrative and aesthetic tools cinema language used in its creative process to shape a unique multi-sensorial experience for its audience. Over these 127 years many cinema color techniques, technologies, aesthetics, and ideologies came and went. One thing that stayed the same is that color in cinema more than a technology is a complex system made up by many components: including filmmakers’ ideas and decisions, negotiations with the audience, technologies (such as film stocks, chemicals, cameras, printers, developers, projectors), and laboratory processes and practices – taken individually, none of these elements can tell ”the whole story “. This, and the fact that most of cinema color history is not written in books, journals and patents and often not even remembered (as so much of it relies on individuals’ practices and memories) makes the preservation and restoration of color cinema – which is, the recreation of its effects on the audience through totally different means – such a challenge.
The aim of my contribution is twofold. First to elaborate and reflect on these realities, also by drawing upon my personal experience and research as a film restorer and archivist starting at the end of the analog era (the early 80s) to today through the turbulent (and now largely forgotten) times of the “Digital Intermediate” up to the birth of Digital Cinema and its final triumph. Second, and hopefully most importantly, to draw and propose an agenda of research for the coming years in the field of understanding and knowing cinema color in order to be able to preserve it for the future.
Short Bio
Joel Meyerowitz (born in New York, 1938) Is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. Celebrated as a pioneer of color photography, he is a two-time Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of both National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities awards, and a recipient of The Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal. He has published over 40 books. Joel Meyerowitz is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, Polka Galerie in Paris and Huxley-Parlour Gallery in London.
Meyerowitz lives and works in New York and in Italy.