Exploring Colour in Contemporary Art

This thesis is the result of exploring contemporary artists' approaches to colour and comparing those approaches with notions of colour in colour philosophy, philosophy of art and artistic colour theories. How do contemporary artists use colour in their works and artistic actions? What governs or guides their choice of colours? What is the relation of colour theories to contemporary art praxis? The research is in six parts. Part 1, Nine conversations, presents interviews that I have made with nine contemporary artists, Kristi Kongi, Jussi Goman, Vesa-Pekka Rannikko, Inka Kivalo, Lois Swirnoff, Nathalie Miebach, Douglas Breault, Ann Veronica Janssens and David Batchelor, about their ways of using colour in their art. Part 2, Epistemology of colour, is an overview of current ontology and epistemology of colour. Part 3, Philosophies about colour in art, is a discussion of texts about colour in art by the French philosophers Mikel Dufrenne, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze,