Realism, Part Two (What's real?)

In contrast to Vermeer (previous post), Charles Camoin was a charter member of the Fauves, who believed in expressive color. This is his view of Le Pont des Arts (1904). Another, contemporary, example of a free-spirited colorist would be Natalie Goldberg. She says that color is like a metaphor, to get your attention and describe the feeling connected to what you're seeing. When she did a painting of a friend's adobe house, she chose an expressive shade of deep blue-violet. "It was as though that blue paint were a sword slashing through illusion, bringing me into direct contact with the house's essence." She paints from life, but uses the colors in her mind's eye. This process reminds me of the new breed of economists who are looking at the big picture to calculate a more comprehensive "bottom line." They take more factors into consideration. Is this operation sustainable, is it fair to workers, what are the environmental impacts? All this is part of the balance sheet. A larger, more complete, multi-dimensional picture. Our whole experience on site is part of the "bottom line" of the painting.