Some years back I was invited by the Portland Art Museum to give a talk on the psychology of seeing in the context of its Rothko exhibit. Portland homeboy Rothko, color field Rothko, painter who makes people faint in front of his paintings Rothko. Unbelievably interesting and creative Rothko. Clearly his way with color created strong emotions in many viewers, and not just the elite who “knows art.”

Why might colors influence emotion? Part of the answer may be biological, so that for example colors that might indicate rot or decay might be hard wired into us as things to avoid or things that put us on alert. Part of the answer may involve learning, but it is learning that is inevitable in the natural world like bright sunshine makes bright colors possible but also raises the temperature, more or less guaranteeing that we come to associate those colors with heat and end up talking about warm colors. There are numerous studies showing how people respond emotionally to different colors. It seems that the color of a medicine capsule can influence whether people take their prescriptions meds on a regular basis or take them at all.  Likewise, cool and warm colors affect our sensation of temperature and so people reliably set the temperature higher in a room painted blue compared to a room painted yellow. Sports teams are penalized more often when they are wearing black uniforms. And certainly many studies have shown that hair color, eye color and of course skin color influence how we react to people. Learned associations between the forces of light and the forces of darkness carry, unfortunately, over into all kinds of stereotyping.

So, colors do trigger reactions. However, the various color effects are embedded in a cultural context. For example the association of pink for girls and blue for boys is a modern development. A century ago red hues were associated with masculinity and blue with femininity in Europe, something you can see in fashions and surroundings. In western cultures white stands for purity while in Asian cultures it signifies mourning, and it is interesting to notice that these cultural convention are picked up very early in life.

What does all this then imply for Rothko?  Some of the emotion effects, especially for the late paintings, are straight forward. He is using dark, somber colors, and I have already suggested that these may be tied to emotions for biological reasons or because of inevitable learning. It will be safe to assume that the darker colors towards the end of his life will be perceived to be sadder (independent of our knowledge about the artist’s own psychological state at that point in time) than the earlier, lighter work. Browns and greys and blacks, as we mentioned, might be associated with decay and danger, not just by learning but by some biological hard wiring

Mostly, though, I believe Rothko, in a sense, under – stimulates the eye. This leads you to respond by adding, wandering, exploring, associating. When you are then struck by the impact of these associations you’re likely to ask yourself: wo/man, where did that come from? And if you have nothing but strong color in front of your eye, it’s plausible that you assume that you must be reacting to the colors themselves.  In this way, the emotional reaction is real, but the idea that it is caused by color may just be a mistake.

Color can delight and depress. In vision, however, it has the primary function to help us to detect and discriminate between objects that have survival value.  I would therefor be cautious about strong claims of color causing emotional changes by and of themselves.  This takes nothing away from the astonishing beauty of these paintings.