lifting colors

A board of 1.50 X 1 meter lies at a slight angle to the floor. The edges show that it had many coats of paint before it was finally painted a shiny black.
On the floor, 60 glass jars of different sizes are lined up. They are painted in many colors.

Above the board hangs a 1.50 meter wand. It is also painted black and is kept balanced horizontally by a blue jar hanging from one end.
The wand turns in circles above the stacked jars, almost tipping them over. The visitor is invited to give it a gentle push.

Anne Truitt (1921-2004 USA) was a Color Field Artist whose artworks were shown in major museums in the US alongside those of Elsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman and Dan Flavin. It is unfortunate that she, like other women artists, virtually disappeared from the canon of modern history.
In ‘Daybook’ she wrote about how to be an artist and of her deliberations while making her artworks. Her writings, the beautiful and accurate lines, are a great source of inspiration for me.
Recently, Anne Truitt’s work has seen a revival and is being discovered by new generations.

Website Anne Truitt: http://www.annetruitt.org Instagram: @annetruitt

Video by Jem Cohen (starts at 0:50)

The installation was made with a documentary in mind in which Anne Truitt explains how she chooses the colors for her sculptures. She holds glass jars filled with different mixes of paint close to one another, to show how a certain color will ‘lift’ another. She relies on her personal intuition, not on formal color theories.

I am trying, like Truitt, to ‘know’ which colors boost each other, but I don’t yet have her sensitivity for hues.
For now the wand, like a dowsing rod, will have to make the choices for me.