The Color Chart at MoMA

On Sunday we made it up to MoMA to see the Color Chart exhibit, which showcases experiments in color from 1950 to the present. Most of us take color for granted as a means that artists use to achieve their ends; the exhibit shows how color can be the end in itself. While some of the pieces are conceptual, like Lawrence Weiner's black-and-white descriptions of colors, most are rich embodiments of color that highlight the dizzying range of the palette. Gerhard Richter's color panel paintings, which look like paint-supply cards blown up to monumental proportions, draw you close to inspect their subtle variations of tone, and Dan Flavin's fluorescent light tubes bathe their surroundings in a daybreak light that reveals just how complex a simple color like pink can be. The exhibit doesn't aim to be groundbreaking, but its small pleasures are revelatory all the same.

(photos: thanks)