The Colour of Thought

THE COLOUR OF THOUGHT

For me colours are living beings, highly evolved individuals which integrate with us and with all the world. Colours are the real inhabitants of space. (Yves Klein)

Let us imagine that a colour is assigned to the constant dialogue in our minds. We will notice that our mood may be tuned to a chromatic frequency. In this way we can start to observe our thoughts and understand what colour we are most of the time. Artists, perhaps, do not need such an exercise, because they can make use of their never ending resources of inspiration and intuition and the compass, which guides them is their emotional intelligence. Yet emotional intelligence belongs to all human beings. It is an inextinguishable source of physical and mental wellbeing.

These are times in which selfishness, violence and lack of morality seem to be plotting to corrupt the values of our lives. And this is where emotional intelligence finds its natural collocation. We also know that education, as it is understood today, is based on the primacy of thought not on feeling; it lends importance right from the early learning stage to rational, analytical, sequential and deductive logic, tending in general to develop the rational ability of the individual thus neglecting important aspects of the human being. Life itself will be the true teacher, who through experience will help us to understand who we are.

Emotional intelligence unites the heart and the mind, these two great enigmas; it blends passions and reason, and it is the only type of intelligence, which is able to make humanity evolve. Emotional intelligence is strictly tied to creative thought and art is always fruit of thought and emotion. Art helps us to understand our emotions and so it is fundamental in order to preserve a sane society. Artists have always used all the possible tools, which enable free expression of emotions and thoughts reflecting, with a greater or lesser degree of awareness, the changes in society. Beyond the scientific value, which the title of this exhibition might well suggest, it is important to underline the impact emotions have on our daily life. Artists know how to lend a voice to a disparate range of emotions channelling them into sounds, colours and movement.

Why is colour such an important force in our lives? What effects can it have on our bodies and in our minds? Whilst the perceptions of colour are to a certain extent subjective, there are some chromatic hues, which have a universal significance. The colours in the red area of the chromatic spectrum are known as warm colours and they include red, orange and yellow. These warm colours evoke emotions, which go from feelings of warmth and comfort to feelings of anger and hostility. The colours on the blue side of the spectrum are considered cold and they include blue, violet and green. These colours are often described as more calm, but they may call to mind feelings of indifference.

Yet what is colour? And what is thought? They are two aspects which characterize the two hemispheres of the brain: the left side in which logical activity is dominant and the right side which is more involved in emotional processes. A poet’s brain and an engineer’s brain, in reality work in synchronicity. The aesthetic experience feeds on both. In a present which already lives and confronts the problems of massive technological interference which will tend more and more to transform man into an object which may be modified, taken apart and put back together again, we realise how necessary it is to safeguard art, life and humanism.

As Antoine de Saint Exupery reminds us “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly… “: perhaps this is the best key to reading the emotional phenomenon represented by creation and by the fruition of the work of art, never forgetting that anyway, the Rubik cube is much more beautiful when the colours are jumbled.

Stefania Carrozzini