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2) Borgia Codex, artist unknown, 1400-1500, animal hides/natural paints and pigments, British Museum, London (copy)

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2) Borgia Codex, artist unknown, 1400-1500, animal hides/natural paints and pigments, British Museum, London (copy)

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Taking viewers on a journey of geometric and outlined abstraction, this piece reveals bits and pieces of the culture of the Aztecs. The Borgia Codex not only tells an illustrated narrative but also leaves space for interpretation that inspires modern art historians to individualize its context. Bold and brash, yet beautiful and detailed, the Borgia Codex is something viewers could look at for hours and continue to learn new things about South American Art.

The Borgia Codex is an Aztec manuscript that is full of intricate illustrations of pigment on thin parchmented deerskin. Only one of less than 15 manuscripts that survives the Spanish Conquest, this piece's meaning is still unclear. There are messages of religious divination and astronomy which historians believe contextualize the codex to present systems of belief and the life of the Aztecs. The imagery is dense and was rich in color and had very meticulous and perfect black outlining. The book consists of 39 pages in an accordion style folding pattern that stretches a 33 feet when unfolded. On the specific page above, there are two deities situated back to back, one god of the wind and the other of death.

This Borgia Codex relates to the rainbow theme through the original polychromy in which it was colored. With rich reds, yellows, blues, and black, this piece portrays the vivid colors in full saturation as presented through natural pigmentation used in the form of paint. The original codex's pigment would have been attained from minerals such as hematite, azurite, charcoal, and goethite. The replica does it's best to present these colors how they would have been in the pieces creation. Overall, this piece relates to the theme without including the full spectrum of the rainbow, but with the inclusion of very saturated and vivid primary colors.

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1) School of Athens, Raphael, 1509-1511, fresco, Stanza della Segnatura, Papal Palace, Vatican

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1) School of Athens, Raphael, 1509-1511, fresco, Stanza della Segnatura, Papal Palace, Vatican

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Philosophical by nature and inviting by sight, the School of Athens presents an inviting scene of some of the most well known minds of the ancient world. The piece in its central composition and a horizon of humanistic realism stretches the mind of the viewer in notes of speaking and celebration. This piece allows the viewer to walk right in and sit amongst the geniuses of the time.

The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael, decorates the wall of the Papal Palace in the Vatican City. This piece distinguishes who's who of ancient philosophers on the wall of knowledge. The other three walls each depict one idea of poetry, justice, or theology. A celebration narrative, this piece illustrates the famous Aristotle, Plato, Apollo, and Athena in a Micheloangelo influenced Renaissance style. Raphael also included himself in this piece as did other artists of the Renaissance as little Easter eggs in their work. This style is representational of motion and a combination of realism and stylization to demonstrate personality of the people illustrated but also the piece as a whole.

As far as the rainbow theme, the School of Athens uses a wide aray of colors with focus on reds, blues, and orange yellows. These colors are presented through a fresco style where water is used as a vehicle to let pigment into plaster. Through this process the School of Athens presents the rainbow in its entirety through shadows and highlights mostly in a pastel pallet. The masonry and sculpture work is a beige tan stone color that allows the robe and outfitting of the characters to pop. The blue sky also distributes the color in a way that lightens the piece and reminded the viewer that it is a celebration. In it's entirety, the School of Athens centralizes the rainbow and utilizes the full spectrum in an intentional way.

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3) The Court of Gayumars, Sultan Muhammad, 1522-1535, watercolor on paper, The Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada

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3) The Court of Gayumars, Sultan Muhammad, 1522-1535, watercolor on paper, The Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada

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Visually intense, yet beautiful and organic in nature, this piece shows great use of hierarchy in both story line and color. With bright hues and intricate shadows, The Court of the Gayumars which took years to produce demonstrates a pictorial visionary of one of the most celebrated pieces of Islamic Art. The work invites the viewer to search in the nooks and crannies, high and low to figure out just what the colors and characters represent.

The piece "The Court of the Gayumars" is a mythical account of the Perian rulers and is most notable for its spirituality. There are many aspects of the image including the humanistic characters themselves as well as animals and even the introduction of text through calligraphy in the very bottom and top registers. The typically aniconic, this piece shys away from typical Islamic Art and presents a stylistic version of realism in the form of an illuminated manuscript. This piece is a single folio that is part of a larger book accompanied by 258 other illustrations.

This intense work fits into my vivid rainbow theme very well with its intense use of color and dramatic presentation of watercolor. Made from pigments such as lapis lazuli, malachite, a insect based, this piece biases towards a cooler color scheme while still maintaining a very rich yellow in the upper third. Another color use of color and material is the inclusion of silver and gold leaf to add a metallic element in the very richly ornamented parts of the work. The fact that the rich colors in the subject of the piece contrast to the unsaturated beige color we see as a background/border really makes everything pop. Overall, The Court of the Gayumars presents the full rainbow in varying gradients of saturation.

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4) A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884-1886, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

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4) A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1884-1886, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

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One of the first of its kind, this piece, which is presented on a monumental canvas, let's the viewer do the work. With the use of carefully placed unmixed hues, A Sunday of La Grande Jatte uses pointillism to allow for optical mixing like never before. Close up, the narrative of a park seen may seem like just a bunch of small swatches of color, but the farther away we as the viewer become, the more this piece comes to life.

This post-impressionistic painting depicts a public park where we see varying status of subjects. In the right third of the piece there is a fancy woman dressed in a hat and dress and even accessorized with an umbrella and her pet monkey. However, in the foreground on the left third of the piece there is a man who seems to be guidelines lounging next to his dog. Overall, this shows the mingling of social classes in the 1880s in a beautiful way. With the use of much preparation, Seurat was able to conduct this piece to be moralistic in size which is also another aspect that impacts the viewer and how important people deem this piece to be. Though seeming to follow the guidelines of impressionism in subject matter, this work strays away from that period in its application and use of color.

Oil on canvas, "A Sunday on La Grande necessarily" utilizes every color imaginable to the human eye. Though we don't see this intense work of blending and shading through the use of the gradients that are presented in the average color spectrum, instead our brains piece it together for us. The idea of pointillism is that you don't necessarily need a green hue, but the presentation of blue next to yellow will suffice. This work does a wonderful job utilizing many colors in a saturated way and allows for us as the viewers to fill in the gaps to make it that much more impressive.

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4) A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat

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Presented in a wide range, this exhibition of works really shows how each culture and timeline has and continues to represent their versions of color. There is no way to separate the pieces in their context because within this study it seems that color boldly presents itself in many contexts including religious, abstract, representational, realistic, narrative, symbolic, etc. The list goes on and on. Not only is this study in color important to see visually, but it is also essential to see how the pigments and mediums are able to make these hues across cultures and timelines. It is very notable that art is multimedia; some artists are doing with what they have, and others may have easier access to a vast array of materials. However, all artists alike have and will continue to push the vivid saturated rainbow, which happens to be my personal favorite.

In these pieces specifically, it is really cool to see how each piece is individual in style but similar in color. After all, there are only so many colors to work with. Whether it's flat blocked color like in the Codex, a pastel smooth finish from Europe, an intricate manuscript from an Asian book, or a mural sized optically mixed park scene, the use of color is something that is amazing and universal.