Fitchburg Art Museum Showcasing the Beauty of Art Without Color

If you haven’t been to FAM recently, you are missing out on Shelley Reed’s “A Curious Nature”, an exquisite collection of work by accomplished artist Shelley Reed. For those that have been to the museum, you are of course aware of the defining characteristic of all of Shelley Reed’s work. That is, every single painting is in black and white. Black and white art has roots that run deep to art’s core, and it will continue to have its presence felt in the field of art, such as in amazing work like that of Shelley Reed.

photo credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)

One of the most powerful innovators of black and white art was somebody that nearly everybody has heard of, Pablo Picasso. Picasso was actually on record as saying he felt that “color weakens” work. That is such an interesting take, because everything about color and its uniqueness and specificity says it should make something stronger and more detailed. Yet, here we have one of the most world-renowned, accomplished painters to ever live saying that color actually takes away from a painting, or any piece of art.

Why is that exactly? Partially, this may be up to the viewer to interpret. After all, the only thing an artist truly does is create the work. The feelings from a viewer afterward are all established in their mind, based off of their reaction to viewing a piece. Many consider Picasso’s most famous piece to be “Guernica”. The piece is a powerful anti-war painting, displaying Picasso’s perspective on a bombing during the Spanish Civil War. One thing that everyone knows, no matter how educated they are about art is that red means blood. However, Picasso decides to go against this is in the powerful “Guernica”. He uses strictly black and white to tell this powerful story, despite the fact that one of the most powerful parts of the the painting has a color that is directly associated with it.

In 2012-2013, one of the most important recent occurrences in black and white art took place. The world famous Guggenheim Museum displayed an exhibit of Picasso’s art, which seems like a very common happening, considering Picasso is so famous. However, the idea was that all of the art would be in black and white. The exhibit was specifically tailored to make viewers appreciate Picasso and how he was such a pioneer for black and white art. Clearly, Picasso valued form and overall design in his work, using these concepts to create powerful stories like that in Guernica.

Shelley Reed uses a similar mentality within her paintings. She says that work without color is “a little bit easier to read”, thus citing storytelling as a major reason for her use of black and white. “Some of the images I paint are a little bit violent. If I showed blood gushing from a tiger there might be off-putting reactions that push you away where the grey tones kind of pull you in.” This is seemingly quite similar to Picasso’s mindset when painting Guernica. Both artists feared that the color red, always associated with blood, would actually take away from the story at hand.

On a different scale, the Fitchburg Art Museum is giving visitors the opportunity to have the same interaction with art that the Guggenheim gave them in 2012. Shelley Reed has managed to create exceptional work without using color. It can be quite eerie to walk up the stairs at FAM and enter “A Curious Nature”. Viewers are inside their own mind just as much as they are in the presence of the art, and this connection between viewer and art is unique to black and white art.