Monochromatic Quotes

What does it mean when you hook up your work to that of a late modernist giant working in a reductive vein - Ad Reinhardt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, or Donald Judd, for example - like a caboose? I am not talking about engaging directly with another artist's work or ideas, but of perpetuating a look or, in the case of Wade Guyton, the various monochromatic, striped and geometric surfaces we associate with Minimalism. ~ John Yau

It was like The Wizard of Oz, instant beautiful color, only Quinn had been living in worse than black-and-white Kansas. He'd been trapped in a monochromatic world of beige, of nice, of going with the flow, not making waves. Eli was the whole super-sized box of crayons, with no rules about staying in the lines. ~ K.A. Mitchell

Oh, please," said Hessler. "It's your standard false duality designed to draw gullible believers into a world of monochromatic enemies and strip away any moral ambiguity - usually utilized by the ruling government to bolster whatever policies it wishes to implement. ~ Patrick Weekes

I looked exactly like the female version of George Costanza when I was in sixth grade… I insisted on dressing myself in monochromatic outfits. All my shirts had an animal performing an action on them. I had a pink sweater with penguins knitting to match my pink ribbed leggings. A hunter green shirt with dogs painting. ~ Olive B. Persimmon

The world can only appear monochromatic to those who persist in interpreting what they experience through the lens of a single cultural paradigm, their own. For those with the eyes to see and the heart to feel, it remains a rich and complex topography of the spirit. ~ Wade Davis

Texture is something we forget - it makes outfits look very expensive. You can do a monochromatic outfit, if you're afraid of things that are more colorful and printed, and still create interest. ~ Stacy London

No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in search of recruits. They promised rations, shelter, an eternity in Paradise, and, until that day of glorious martyrdom, a monthly salary of two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars. Few young men followed the monochromatic Wahhabi faith, but many were quite willing to be radicalized for a monthly salary that eclipsed what they would otherwise earn in a year. The war of independence so quickly conflated with jihad because no one cared about the self-determination of a small landlocked republic. Arab states would gladly fund a war of religion, but not one of nationalism. And in this way it didn't matter who won the war between the Feds and fundamentalists: the notion of a democratic and fully sovereign Chechnya would be crushed regardless. ~ Anthony Marra

For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.' ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up. ~ John Green

So what is there to make of the simplistic thing I've come to utter in explanation, which is so drab, so monochromatic, so water on top of ice even though it's the most direct, most distilled path from my heart to my mouth: I feel better without her. ~ Gabrielle Hamilton

The state of mind above which my distraction floats like fog is suddenly perfectly clear, though the right word for it is less immediately available. Grief is too sharp and immediate; maybe it's the high pitch of the vowel sound, or the monosyllabic impact of the word, as quick a jab as knife or cut.
Sadness is too ephemeral, somehow; it sounds like something that comes and goes, a response to an immediate cause which will pass in a little while as another cause arises to generate a different feeling.
Mourning isn't bad, but there's something a little archaic about it. I think of widows keening, striking themselves- dark-swathed years, a closeting of self away from the world, turned inward toward an interior dark.
Sorrow feels right , for now. Sorrow seems large and inhabitable, an interior season whose vaulted sky's a suitable match for the gray and white tumult arched over these headlands. A sorrow is not to be gotten over or moved through in quite the way that sadness is, yet sorrow is also not as frozen and monochromatic as mourning. Sadness exists inside my sorrow, but it's not as large as sorrow's realm. This sorrow is capacious; there's room inside it for the everyday, for going about the workaday stuff of life. And for loveliness, for whatever we're to be given by the daily walk. ~ Mark Doty

In a world full of monochromatic tadpoles, if you are fluorescent it does not matter what size of tadpole you are. ~ Subroto Bagchi

It is obvious that any rather non-color, monochromatic design is safe, easier, more generally restful and with life being the hurdy-gurdy that it is, more and more of us prefer and interior giving the maximum response. ~ Van Day Truex

A source of white light-many colors mixed together-emits photons in a chaotic manner: the angle of the amplitude changes abruptly and irregularly in fits and starts. But when we construct a monochromatic source, we are making a device that has been carefully arranged so that the amplitude for a photon to be emitted at a certain time is easily calculated: it changes its angle at a constant speed, like a stopwatch hand. (Actually, this arrow turns at the same speed as the imaginary stopwatch we used before, but in the opposite direction-see Fig. 67.) ~ Richard Feynman

I tend to wear monochromatic outfits - all one colour from head to toe. I did that when I was younger and still do that to this day. ~ Suzy Amis

It's the swirling river of time that makes our identities, not the monochromatic simplicity of skin colour or the definitive lines of international borders. ~ Giles Foden

But I'd done what I could to warm the place up. I'd started with a welcome mat. It had a happy face on it and was bright and colorful. It didn't say "Welcome." It said "!!!WELCOME!!!"
I knew he wouldn't like it. I considered it more of an amusing test to see how open he was to change. He'd let me move in with him, but how flexible was he really willing to be?
It disappeared the day after I placed it by the front door. It was just
poof!
gone. When I imagined the shocked look on his face when he would have first seen it, a spot of wacky and whimsical color in his otherwise monochromatic world, I started to laugh hysterically. ~ Michelle Rowen

Temperance Dews stood with quiet confidence, a respectable women who lived in the sewer that was St. Giles. Her eyes had widened at the sight of Lazarus, but she made no move to flee. Indeed, finding a strange man in her pathetic sitting room seemed not to frighten her at all.

Interesting.

"I am Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire," he said.

"I know. What are you doing here?"

He tilted his head, studying her. She knew him, yet did not recoil in horror? Yes, she'd do quite well. "I've come to make a proposition to you, Mrs. Dews."

Still no sign of fear, though she eyed the doorway. "You've chosen the wrong woman, my lord. The night is late. Please leave my house."

No fear and no deference to his rank. An interesting woman indeed.

"My proposition is not, er, illicit in nature," he drawled. "In fact, it's quite respectable. Or nearly so."

She sighed, looked down at her tray, and then back up at him. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

He almost smiled. Tea? When had he last been offered something so very prosaic by a woman? He couldn't remember.

But he replied gravely enough. "Thank you, no."

She nodded. "Then if you don't mind?"

He waved a hand to indicate permission.

She set the tea tray on the wretched little table and sat on the padded footstool to pour herself a cup. He watched her. She was a monochromatic study. Her dress, bodice, hose, and s ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

The night following the reading, Gansey woke up to a completely unfamiliar sound and fumbled for his glasses. It sounded a little like one of his roommates was being killed by a possum, or possibly the final moments of a fatal cat fight. He wasn't certain of the specifics, but he was sure death was involved.
Noah stood in the doorway to his room, his face pathetic and long-suffering. "Make it stop," he said.
Ronan's room was sacred, and yet here Gansey was, twice in the same weak, pushing the door open. He found the lamp on and Ronan hunched on the bed, wearing only boxers. Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers, was a beak where before he'd seen a scythe.
The ragged sound cut through the apartment again.
"What fresh hell is this?" Gansey asked pleasantly. Ronan was wearing headphones as usual, so Gansey stretched forward far enough to tug them down around his neck. Music wailed faintly into the air.
Ronan lifted his head. As he did, the wicked flowers on his back shifted and hid behind his sharp shoulder blades. In his lap was the half-formed raven, its head tilted bac ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The grey paintings, for example, a painted grey surface, completely monochromatic - they come from a motivation, or result from a state, that was very negative. It has a lot to do with hopelessness, depression and such things. But it has to be turned on its head in the end, and has to come to a form where these paintings possess beauty. And in this case, it's not a carefree beauty, but rather a serious one. ~ Gerhard Richter

1979. Coming to America after a childhood spent in the Soviet Union is equivalent to stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of pure Technicolor. ~ Gary Shteyngart

Monochromatic color schemes are lacking in contrast, which is why I start many of my canvas or paper pieces in this way. I can add layers of contrasting elements later on if desired. Adding tints and shades will give you a larger range of colors with which to create a richness of hues in your projects. ~ Roxanne Padgett