Emily Noyes Vanderpoel's Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color. Image courtesy Art Meets Science.
In 1902, American artist and writer Emily Noyes Vanderpoel published Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color. This surprisingly modern book, given the date it was published, combines science with art. Vanderpoel used gridded diagrams to analyse the colour composition of everyday objects, from ceramics and carpets to flowers and paintings. Each study broke its subject into a structured, geometric form. The results look shockingly similar to modern abstraction and contemporary data visualisation. Despite being made decades before, her work reminds us of Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers.
Vanderpoel was vice president of the New York Watercolor Club, an organisation that was set up in response to the American Watercolor Society’s policy to not accept women as members. Despite the theory, research and history detailed in her book, it never received the audience it deserved. Though largely forgotten in her lifetime, Vanderpoel’s work has recently found new resonance among contemporary artists.
One such artist is Yto Barrada, whose 2025 work Colour Analysis (Tintin in Palestine, 1 and 2) reinterprets Vanderpoel’s analytical methods. Barrada worked with a computer programmer to abstract images, applying Vanderpoel’s 1902 grid system. For this installation, she explored two different versions of Hergé’s comic, which tells the story of Tintin visiting Palestine. Barrada analyses two plates from the 1939 Tintin comic. Its later revision erased this political context.
By translating the colours from the comic into squares arranged in a grid, Barrada’s work transforms Vanderpoel’s method into a tool of political archaeology. The palettes become visual evidence of historical redaction. Vanderpoel’s forgotten system of colour study is used by Barrada as a means of seeing and questioning the politics of representation itself.
Yto Barrada, Thrill, Fill and Spill, 2025. South London Gallery. Photo: Lucy Dawkins
Find out more about how Yto Barrada was inspired by the work of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in our video tour of the exhibition below.
Yto Barrada: Thrill, Fill and Spill is free to visit at the SLG from 26 Sep 2025 – 11 Jan 2026.
