Senior Thesis: Can Hue Remember?

The best description of my research comes directly from portions of my thesis introduction:

To smell is to remember. An olfactory association produces no doubt. Catching a waft of gardenia has the power to instantaneously, if just momentarily, transport you into your mother’s arms, even after her physical presence is gone. This sensory, nostalgic trigger works for smell, as it works for hearing a sentimental song, tasting a familiar dish, or feeling a particular presence in the air. For four of the five senses, the connection to memory is unquestionable. But what about for the sense of sight? Is there a quality of sight that emotionally conjures a memory? Perhaps catching a glimpse of a particular color is a powerful enough visual trigger to remember a moment from the past.

Can Hue Remember? seeks to answer the question by discussing the works of Spencer Finch and Byron Kim, two contemporary artists who explore the ability of color to act as vision’s sense of remembrance. The selection of these two artists in particular compares two oeuvres that predominantly use color as a visual metaphor for questions of collective and personal memory. A key difference between the artists is that Kim’s work focuses on private experiences with color whereas Finch’s addresses the public resonance of color. Through Finch and Kim’s unique cultural backgrounds, their works display different perspectives on what color can communicate. Kim’s Korean-American background surfaces through his personal explorations of color, identity, and memory. Finch’s American background comes through his work as many of his color creations deal with collective American memories. The dichotomy of private versus public memories drawn out in Kim’s and Finch’s works demonstrates the breadth of color in conveying meaning — more than merely presenting visual pleasure. Though these artists have varied perspectives, their surprisingly similar approaches to and methods of color handling provide an opportunity to study how color appropriately depicts memories at different scales.