This work is a case study in color contrasts: Bright, high key, warm yellows
and oranges are overwhelmed by more static, cool, dull blues and purples. Yet,
the warm colors leap off the canvas, imitating the after-images of the Sun one
would experience after looking directly into it for a moment. |
Interplay between the bright, overpowering disc of the
Sun and the vast, never-ending motion of the ocean is the subject of this work.
The realism of the scene is deconstructed and abstracted to the edge of being unrecognizable,
yet is still as believable as if Courbet had painted it in Marin's superior
impressionism.
This work is an example of something I would consider a mess and dismiss before
my training, but now I appreciate its beauty. Color and value, inseparable as
always, communicate first and foremost. The color scheme is (double)
complementary: yellows and oranges against purples and blues. Color defines
shapes, which seem freely applied, are actually carefully arranged in proximity
to each other.
Reliance on shape and their deliberate arrangement create a decorative global
sense of depth. The primary center of interest, which is the bright, warm area
just above the elevated horizon, compounds the flatness of the work when the
massive area of cool sky and water are considered. The small relative size of
the warm hues and our own innate understanding of the scene contradict this
sense of space, creating depth that is in conflict.
I want to say there is a sense of symmetric balance in
this work, and the character and arrangement of the elements nearly create that
in vertical orientation. But this is not the case; the two sides simply do not
reflect each other enough. Static asymmetry results.
Pictorially, warm colors overwhelm cool. In terms of area, cool colors
overwhelm warm. In total, these two remarkable and inverted scales balance each
other to near perfection. Value disbursement uses a similar strategy.
Color interaction with depth is the most effective and beautiful
component of this work. Along with a couple of other artists, Marin’s
manipulation of color was ground-breaking because it broke from traditional
methods of creating depth, which were basically to assume all objects receded
directly from the picture plane-backward. The combination of shape isolation
and blending, and their spatial arrangement are nearly equally as effective as
his use of color in this painting.
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