‘Color in Drawing’ Brings Emotion Into Line

“Color in Drawing” at the Getty Center ponders a debate that’s curiously timely despite being about 500 years old. In 15th century Italy, the aesthetic pundits of Florence decreed that, in art, line is superior to color.

Like so many supposedly theoretical arguments, this one had a political subtext. Florence was full of painters who practiced a largely linear art. Its rival city-state, Venice, was chockablock with artists in love with the hues of the rainbow. So the Florentine argument really boiled down to a tiresome ploy to assert the superiority of its own art.

There was, however, something more fundamental afoot. Line is traditionally associated with things rational, color with emotion. So the underlying question was really: “Is art better made by emphasizing intellect or intuition?”

To this day the whole idea of drawing remains linked to the linear-rational. Thus it’s refreshing to have an exhibition of some 50 excellent Old Master drawings showing that draftsmen as various as Durer and Delacroix were deeply involved with chromatics.

The thematic centerpiece of the show is a case containing colored paper, inks, chalks, pastels, oils, watercolors and even some powdered insects. The display was put together by artist Sylvana Barrett, who emulated drawings of artists on view to demonstrate the effects of the various substances. Instructive, it also defines the show as an exercise in sensuous materiality.

Colored drawings are quite simply more vivid. It doesn’t take much. “Portrait of a Man” by Lucas Cranach the Elder, for example, was executed on a beige ground approximating Caucasian skin. The only added tints are blue eyes, pink lips and subtle highlighting. Yet the effect is of a fully worked portrait of surprising freshness.

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Adriaen van Ostade’s “Peasant Festival on a Town Street” sets the opposite end of the spectrum. Depicting an idyllic moment in the simple life of the 17th century, small actual size maintains the scene’s intimacy while complex composition and limpid use of watercolor lend an air of monumental celebration.

Similarly, Delacroix’s “Episode From ‘The Corsairs’ by Lord Byron” and Theodore Gericault’s “The Giaour” look like miniature oils. Actually their sonorously saturated palette was also achieved with watercolor. Here the medium has all the richness we expect from classic Romanticism.

By contrast, William Blake’s “Satan Exulting Over Eve” and J.M.W. Turner’s “Long Ship’s Lighthouse, Land’s End” take the other tack. Their color is subdued and monochromatic. Combined with melodramatic subject matter, the effect is of brooding danger.

So drawing media can create the sensation of large oil paintings without losing their own virtues. Different, more nuanced vibrations come from images that suggest color more obliquely.

Antoine Watteau used just chalk in red, black and white to suggest the sumptuous costumes in “Studies of Three Women.” He was, however, incapable of merely recording a scene. Here his suggestion of color-but-not-quite carries the poignancy of all his work. It’s that sense of the French Rococo period--when the privileged who seemed to have it all were dogged by the sense of something missing.

The exhibition was organized by associate curator Lee Hendrix. Her work appears to represent a move to use its wonderful drawing collection in more inventive ways. Since this example challenges presuppositions, provokes thought and delights all at once, it seems like a good idea.

* “Color in Drawing,” the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive; through May 24. Parking reservations: (310) 440-7300. Closed Mondays.