Color Theory: A Critical Introduction 135002726X, 9781350027268

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About the cover
INTRODUCTION: COLOR IN CONTEXT—PINK IS PRIMARY
Color activities
Of paradigm shifts
Critical principles
What is color?
References
CHAPTER 1 NATURAL RESOURCES AND TRADE: COLOR USE IN TRADITIONAL CULTURES
Faber Birren
Dark and light
Red
Environment and trade
Mandalas
Race, gender, and class
Color Use Activity 1.1
Other colors—color as substance
Berlin and Kay, and the absence of blue
Ancient Egyptian color
Esoteric color and the decline of the senses
Color Use Activity 1.2
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 2 KNOWING AT A DISTANCE: COLOR PROBLEMS IN ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT
Introduction
General notes on color in ancient Greek philosophy
Attitudes to color in ancient Greek culture
Pre-Socratic philosophy, a brief overview
Is/Becomes
The opposites
Color Use Activity 2.1
The achromatic imagination
The invalidity of the senses
Ancient Greek epistemology
Optics
Conclusions about Pre-Socratic color theory
Color Use Activity 2.2
Socrates and the Sophists
Plato
Aristotle
Color use in Greek art
Color Use Activity 2.3
Alternative narratives about Greek culture
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 3 STAINED GLASS AND ILLUMINATIONS: EUROPEAN AND ISLAMIC COLOR THEORY BEFORE GALILEO
Differing color needs, differing color applications
The Byzantine period
Iconoclasts and iconophiles
Color use in Byzantine art
Color Use Activity 3.1
Islam
Color in Islamic art and architecture
Medieval color theory
Color use in medieval art
Color Use Activity 3.2
Renaissance color theory
Alberti
Vasari
Color in Renaissance art
Color Use Activity 3.3
Leonardo
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 4 PRISMS, MIRRORS, AND LENSES: THE NEWTONIAN REVOLUTION
The scientific revolution
Galileo on color
Rationalism
Empiricism
Newton’s Opticks
Color Use Activity 4.1
Cultural impact of Newton’s Opticks
British empiricism after Locke
Color Activity 4.2
Color use during the scientific revolution
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 5 ROMANTICISM AND CHROMOPHOBIA: THE CREATION OF COLOR THEORY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Poetry in the Romantic tradition
Ideologies of the nineteenth century
Goethe as scientist
Goethe’s Farbenlehre
Color Use Activity 5.1
The evolution of color models
Color theory in the wake of Goethe
Color use during the Industrial Revolution
The invention of photography
Color Use Activity 5.2
Chromolithography and mass visual culture
The Crystal Palace and the Grammar of Ornament
Color use in painting: Romanticism and other alternatives to the academy
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 6 THE SCIENCE OF THE INVISIBLE: COLOR CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS AND SPIRITUAL COLOR
Color nomenclature for naturalists
Contending with disciplinary fragmentation
Early childhood education during the Industrial Revolution
Smuttynose Island and the origins of the Munsell color system
The Munsell color sphere and its successors
Evolving uses of the Munsell color system
Colorimetry and color forecasting
Color Use Activity 6.1
Spiritualism and the occult
Rudolf Steiner
Steiner on art and color
Occult theory, science, color, and race
Claude Bragdon
Color Use Activity 6.2
Color use: culture and counterculture
Color use: from Manet to the Fauves
Color use on the Electric Avenue
Hilma af Klint and spiritual color use
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 7 HIGH MODERN: COLOR USE AT THE BAUHAUS AND IN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
Before the Bauhaus
The Bauhaus idea
Bauhaus terminology
Color Use Activity 7.1
The “Basic Course”
Itten’s color whee
Ostwald
Klee
The dadaist counter-narrative
The surrealist counter-narrative
Color Use Activity 7.2
Early modern color use
Migration to the US
Black Mountain College
Albers
Color Use Activity 7.3
Interaction of color
Hofmann
Pollock
Greenberg
Color Use Activity 7.4
Photography and color
Architecture and color
High modern color theory
Conclusion
References
CHAPTER 8 POSTMODERN: CONTEMPORARY DIRECTIONS IN COLOR USE
Benjamin and color in the age of mechanical reproduction
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein on color
Language and color
Color science in the age of color standardization
Chirimuuta
Color and information
Color use through the turn of the millennium
Color in the age of information
Color Use Activity 8.1
Postmodernism and post-formal color
Conceptualism in postmodern art: pop and feminist art
Contemporary exploration of color as racial signifi er
Contemporary exploration of color science and technology
Vexillogical color
Color Use Activity 8.2
The modernist stance among diverse perspectives
Approaches to color use
Commencement
References
GLOSSARY
INDEX
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y

Citation preview

COLOR THEORY

Aaron Fine is Professor of Art and Chair at Truman State University where he teaches drawing, painting, and the history of design—among other topics. He has ten solo exhibitions and over fifty group exhibitions on his CV and twenty years’ experience teaching in art and interdisciplinary studies at the college level. He received an MFA in Painting from Claremont Graduate University and is the author of the mixed-genre creative nonfiction book Dialogues on Color.

i

ii

COLOR THEORY

A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

Aaron Fine

iii

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 © Aaron Fine, 2022 Aaron Fine has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image: Laura Berman, Coronae 1, Monoprint, 25 × 25 inches, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in copyright acknowledgement and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Names: Fine, Aaron, 1971– author. Title: Color theory : a critical introduction / Aaron Fine. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Color Theory gives an overview of the history of color theory, providing students with practical guidance on the use of color in art and design. By placing basic tenets of color theory such as the color wheel and color primaries within the Western industrial context that generated them, artist and educator Aaron Fine helps readers connect color choices to color meanings”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020056949 (print) | LCCN 2020056950 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350027305 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350027275 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350027282 (epub) | ISBN 9781350027268 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Color–History. | Colors–History. | Color in art. Classification: LCC QC494.7 .F55 2021 (print) | LCC QC494.7 (ebook) | DDC 701/.85—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056949 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056950 ISBN:

HB: PB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-3500-2727-5 978-1-3500-2730-5 978-1-3500-2726-8 978-1-3500-2728-2

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

iv

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Color in Context—Pink is Primary Color activities Of paradigm shifts Critical principles What is color?

ix xiv 1 3 3 4 5

1

Natural Resources and Trade: Color Use in Traditional Cultures Faber Birren Dark and light Red Environment and trade Mandalas Race, gender, and class Color use activity 1.1 Other colors—color as substance Berlin and Kay, and the absence of blue Ancient Egyptian color Esoteric color and the decline of the senses Color use activity 1.2 Conclusion

7 9 10 12 12 17 20 21 23 24 26 28 30 31

2

Knowing at a Distance: Color Problems in Ancient Greek Thought Introduction General notes on color in ancient Greek philosophy Attitudes to color in ancient Greek culture Pre-Socratic philosophy, a brief overview Is/Becomes The opposites Color use activity 2.1 The achromatic imagination The invalidity of the senses Ancient Greek epistemology Optics Conclusions about Pre-Socratic color theory Color use activity 2.2 Socrates and the Sophists

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 43 44 46 46 48 49 50 52

v

Contents

Plato Aristotle Color use in Greek art Color use activity 2.3 Alternative narratives about Greek culture Conclusion

53 55 57 65 65 67

3

Stained Glass and Illuminations: European and Islamic Color Theory Before Galileo Differing color needs, differing color applications The Byzantine period Iconoclasts and iconophiles Color use in Byzantine art Color use activity 3.1 Islam Color in Islamic art and architecture Medieval color theory Color use in medieval art Color use activity 3.2 Renaissance color theory Alberti Vasari Color in Renaissance art Color use activity 3.3 Leonardo Conclusion

71 72 73 73 75 78 79 81 88 91 96 97 98 100 101 109 110 114

4

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses: The Newtonian Revolution The scientific revolution Galileo on color Rationalism Empiricism Newton’s Opticks Color use activity 4.1 Cultural impact of Newton’s Opticks British empiricism after Locke Color use activity 4.2 Color use during the scientific revolution Conclusion

117 117 121 122 123 124 128 129 130 133 134 144

5

Romanticism and Chromophobia: The Creation of Color Theory in the Nineteenth Century Poetry in the Romantic tradition Ideologies of the nineteenth century Goethe as scientist Goethe’s Farbenlehre Color use activity 5.1 The evolution of color models

149 150 152 155 157 161 162

vi

Contents

Color theory in the wake of Goethe Color use during the Industrial Revolution The invention of photography Color use activity 5.2 Chromolithography and mass visual culture The Crystal Palace and the Grammar of Ornament Color use in painting: Romanticism and other alternatives to the academy Conclusion

167 173 176 177 178 179 182 190

6

The Science of the Invisible: Color Classification Systems and Spiritual Color Color nomenclature for naturalists Contending with disciplinary fragmentation Early childhood education during the Industrial Revolution Smuttynose Island and the origins of the Munsell color system The Munsell color sphere and its successors Evolving uses of the Munsell color system Colorimetry and color forecasting Color use activity 6.1 Spiritualism and the occult Rudolf Steiner Steiner on art and color Occult theory, science, color, and race Claude Bragdon Color use activity 6.2 Color use: culture and counterculture Color use: from Manet to the Fauves Color use on the Electric Avenue Hilma af Klint and spiritual color use Conclusion

193 194 198 199 202 204 207 214 215 216 218 219 224 227 230 231 232 236 237 241

7

High Modern: Color Use at the Bauhaus and in Abstract Expressionism Before the Bauhaus The Bauhaus idea Bauhaus terminology Color use activity 7.1 The “Basic Course” Itten’s color wheel Ostwald Klee The dadaist counter-narrative The surrealist counter-narrative Color use activity 7.2 Early modern color use Migration to the US Black Mountain College Albers

245 246 248 249 251 252 253 256 258 261 261 264 265 270 270 271 vii

Contents

8

Color use activity 7.3 Interaction of color Hofmann Pollock Greenberg Color use activity 7.4 Photography and color Architecture and color High modern color theory Conclusion

273 275 276 278 282 284 285 287 289 289

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use Benjamin and color in the age of mechanical reproduction Ludwig Wittgenstein Wittgenstein on color Language and color Color science in the age of color standardization Chirimuuta Color and information Color use through the turn of the millennium Color in the age of information Color use activity 8.1 Postmodernism and post-formal color Conceptualism in postmodern art: pop and feminist art Contemporary exploration of color as racial signifier Contemporary exploration of color science and technology Vexillogical color Color use activity 8.2 The modernist stance among diverse perspectives Approaches to color use Commencement

293 294 296 297 299 302 307 310 312 317 318 319 322 327 329 333 334 334 335 340

Glossary Index

viii

343 351

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover Laura Berman, Coronae 1, 2014. 1.1

Joseph Mallard William Turner, Shade and Darkness: The Evening of the Deluge, Tate Museum, London, United Kingdom, 1843. 1.2 Painting of a dun horse, or Chinese Horse, Lascaux, France, c. 15,000 bce . 1.3 Ishtar Gate, Babylon, Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany, c. sixth century bce . 1.4 Germantown Eye-Dazzler blanket, c. 1885. 1.5 Tibetan sand painting, late twentieth century. 1.6 Sarcophagus of the Spouses, Louvre Museum, Paris, France, 520–510 bce . 1.7 Robert Hay, Drawing of Egyptian tomb painting, British Museum, London, United Kingdom, 1826–38. 1.8 Depiction of Xiuhtecuhtli, from the Codex Fejervary-Mayer, Liverpool World Museum, Liverpool, United Kingdom, 1345–1521. 2.1 Terracotta oinochoe, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 470–460 bce . 2.2 Schematic drawing of Aristotle’s analysis of the rainbow’s fixed angle, 2019. 2.3 Terracotta calyx-krater in the red figure style, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, fourth century bce . 2.4 Terracotta calyx-krater in the black figure style, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, fourth century bce . 2.5 Brygos Painter, Kylix in the white ground style, Bavarian State Collection of Antiques, Munich, Germany, 490–480 bce . 2.6 Winged Nike of Samothrace, Louvre Museum, Paris, France, second century bce . 2.7 Kritios (attrib.), Kritios Boy, Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece, 480 bce . 2.8 Riace Warrior, Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia, Reggio Calabria, Italy, c. 460 bce . 2.9 Hades Abducting Persephone, Vergina, Greece, 340 bce . 2.10 Alexander Mosaic, Naples National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy, c. 100 bce . 2.11 Boxer at Rest, National Museum of Rome, Rome, Italy, c. 330–50 bce . 3.1 Cathedral of St. Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, 537 ce . 3.2 Empress Theodora and Attendants, Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy, sixth century ce . 3.3 The Vladimir Icon, Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi, Moscow, Russia, twelfth century. 3.4 The Taj Mahal, Agra, India, 1648. 3.5 Hall of the Two Sisters, Alhambra Palace, Granada, Spain, fourteenth century. 3.6 Court of the Lions, Alhambra Palace, Granada, Spain, fourteenth century. 3.7 Mosaic walls, from Alhambra Palace, Granada, Spain, fourteenth century. 3.8 Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain, eighth century. 3.9 Doge’s Palace, Venice, Italy, 1340. 3.10 AManuscript of Five Sections of a Qur’an, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, eighteenth century.

8 14 15 16 19 21 26 32 36 57 59 59 60 61 61 62 62 63 64 75 76 77 82 84 84 85 85 86 87

ix

Illustrations

3.11 The Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Abu’l Qasim Firdausi, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1663–9. 3.12 TheBook of Kells, Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland, ninth century ce . 3.13 Shoulder clasp (replica), Sutton Hoo ship burial, Suffolk, United Kingdom, c. 624 ce . 3.14 Enthroned Virgin and Child, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, twelfth century. 3.15 Stained glass at the Basilica of St. Denis, St. Denis, France, twelfth–thirteenth century. 3.16 Giotto, Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ), Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy, c. 1305. 3.17 Raphael, The Wedding of the Virgin, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy, 1504. 3.18 Michelangelo, The Prophet Jeremiah, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Vatican Palace, Vatican City, 1508–12. 3.19 Michelangelo, Doni Tondo, The Uffizi, Florence, Italy, c. 1507. 3.20 Nativity of the Virgin, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, c. 1480. 3.21 Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, National Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 1434. 3.22 Titian, Venus and the Lute Player, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1565–70. 3.23 Michelangelo, David, Galleria del’ Academia, Florence, Italy, 1501–4. 3.24 Leonardo, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Louvre Museum, Paris, France, 1510–13. 4.1 Galileo Galilei, drawings of the phases of the Moon, from The Starry Messenger, 1610. 4.2 Sir Isaac Newton, diagram of experiment with prisms and lenses, from A Letter from Mr. Isaac Newton . . . containing his new theory of light and colours, 1672. 4.3 Popular image of Sir Isaac Newton analyzing the ray of light, eighteenth century. 4.4 Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy, The Huntington, San Marino, United States, c. 1770. 4.5 Peter Paul Rubens, The Three Graces, Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain, 1630–5. 4.6 Moses Harris, Illustration of the life cycle of various moths, from The Aurelian, 1766. 4.7 Andrea Pozzo, Allegory of the Jesuits’ Missionary Work, Sant’Ignazio, Rome, Italy, 1691–4. 4.8 Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes, The Uffizi, Florence, Italy, 1614–21. 4.9 Jacob van Ruisdael, Landscape with Church and Village, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany, 1660–5. 4.10 Emanuel de Witte, Interior of a Church, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1668. 4.11 Johannes Vermeer, Woman Reading a Letter, Rijksmueum Amsterdam, The Netherlands, c. 1663. 4.12 Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Mauritshuis, The Hague, The Netherlands, c. 1665. 4.13 Willem Kalf, Still Life with Fruit, Glassware, and Wanli Bowl, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1659. 4.14 Rachel Ruysch, Still Life with Flowers, Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, c. 1755. 4.15 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington, DC, United States, 1659. 4.16 Diego Velasquez, Portrait of Juan de Pareja, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1650. 4.17 Room with ceiling frescoes, Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France, seventeenth–eighteenth centuries. 4.18 Room in the Small Trianon, Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France, seventeenth–eighteenth centuries. x

88 92 93 94 95 102 104 104 105 105 106 107 108 113 120 126 134 135 135 136 138 138 139 140 141 141 142 142 143 143 145 145

Illustrations

4.19 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 5.20 5.21 5.22 5.23 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10

Jean-Honore Fragonard,The Swing, Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom, 1767. Hermann Hahn, Goethe Monument, Chicago, United States, 1913. Schematic drawing of Goethe’s “Color Pyramid,” 2019. Jacob Le Blon, Portrait of a girl, demonstrating the four-color printing process, from Coloritto, 1725. Moses Harris, Prismatic Color Wheel, from The Natural System of Colours, 1776. George Field, color model in the form of a six-pointed star, from Chromatography; or, a Treatise on Colours and Pigments, and of their Powers in Painting, 1835. Tobias Mayer, Color Triangle, 1775. Philipp Otto Runge, Farbenkugel, 1810. Michel Eugene Chevreul, Color Hemisphere, 1855. James Clerk Maxwell, Color photograph of a tartan ribbon, 1861. Schematic drawing of Helmholtz’s asymmetrical color model, 2019. Samuel Hieronymous Grimm Swiss, Well-a-day, is this my Son, c. 1773. Julia Margaret Cameron, Beatrice, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1866. Advertisement for Prang’s Valentine cards, c. 1883. W. Lacey, after J. E. Mayall, The Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, 1851. Francis Bedford, chromolithograph of Islamic architectural decorations from Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament, 1868. Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in an Oak Forest, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, 1809–10. Frederic Edwin Church, Mount Cotopaxi, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, United States, 1862. Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1859. John Constable,The Hay Wain, The National Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 1821. Joseph Mallord William Turner, Peace—Burial at Sea, Tate Museum, London, United Kingdom, 1842. Joseph Mallord William Turner, Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) The Morning After the Deluge—Moses Writing the Book of Genesis, Tate Museum, London, United Kingdom, 1843. Eugene Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, Louvre Museum, Paris, France, 1827. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, Tate Museum, London, United Kingdom, 1864–70. Patrick Syme, A color sample page, from Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, 1814. Robert Ridgway, A color sample page, from Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, 1886. Robert Ridgway, Color mixture demonstration in the form of color triangles, from Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, 1886. Philipp Otto Runge The Hulsenbeck Children, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 1805–6. Schematic drawing of a cylindrical coordinate system, 2019. Illustration of the fruit analogy for the Munsell color solid. Illustration of the Munsell hue circle. Illustration of the Munsell color solid. Sample hue charts, from The New Munsell Student Color Set, 3rd ed., 2011. Priya Kambli, photo of Munsell Student Color Set. Sample of die cut pages used to compare color interactions, from The Grammar of Color, 1920.

146 156 159 163 164 165 166 168 170 171 172 174 177 179 180 181 183 184 184 185 186 187 188 189 195 196 197 200 204 205 206 208 211 213 xi

Illustrations

6.11 Diagram explaining the use of die cut pages for the comparison of color interactions, from The Grammar of Color, 1920. 6.12 Rudolf Steiner, First Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 1922. 6.13 Color demonstrations, after Rudolf Steiner’s chalkboard drawings, from Colour, 1971. 6.14 Spiral color diagram, after Rudolf Steiner’s chalkboard drawings, from Colour, 1971. 6.15 Pears’ Soap advertisement, nineteenth century. 6.16 Claude Bragdon, illustration of Wilson’s color wheel as compared to musical wheel, from The Frozen Fountain, 1932. 6.17 Claude Bragdon, illustration of Trautmann’s color wheel, from The Frozen Fountain, 1932. 6.18 Eduard Manet, The Bar at the Folies-Bergère, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, United Kingdom, 1882. 6.19 Georges Seurat, detail from Parade de Cirque, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1887–8. 6.20 Toulouse-Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, United States, 1892–95. 6.21 André Derain, Regent Street, London, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1906. 6.22 Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest No. 2: Childhood, Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden, 1907. 6.23 Henri Matisse, The Dance, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1910. 6.24 Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 1915. 7.1 Wassily Kandinsky, Several Circles, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States, 1926. 7.2 Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral, Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States, 1919. 7.3 Johannes Itten, Farbkreis, 1961. 7.4 Johannes Itten, Color Star, 1921. 7.5 Cover image, from Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture, 2013, after The Sun Worshipper, 1914. 7.6 Wilhelm Ostwald, Color Solid, 1933. 7.7 Paul Klee, Twittering Machine, Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States, 1922. 7.8 Paul Klee, Illustration of various color arrangements, Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1953. 7.9 Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, 1914. 7.10 René Magritte, The Assault, Musea Brugge, Bruges, Belgium, 1932. 7.11 Paul Klee, Fire in the Evening, Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States, 1929. 7.12 Wassily Kandinsky, Yellow–Red–Blue, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, 1925. 7.13 Giorgio de Chirico, Italian Square, 1913. 7.14 El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, Russian State Library, Moscow, Russia, 1919. 7.15 Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, National Museum of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia, 1929. 7.16 Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Epoch of Weimar Beer-Belly Culture in Germany, Berlin State Museums, Berlin, Germany, 1919. 7.17 László Moholy-Nagy, Photogram, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States, 1926. 7.18 Josef Albers, Homage to the Square, 1950–75. 7.19 Hans Hofmann,The Lark, 1960. xii

213 219 221 222 226 229 230 233 234 235 236 238 239 240 247 249 254 255 255 257 259 260 263 263 267 267 267 268 268 269 269 272 277

Illustrations

7.20 Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States, 1950. 7.21 Mark Rothko, No. 9 (Dark of Light Earth, Violet and Yellow in Rose), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, United States, 1954. 7.22 Ansel Adams, Grand Canyon National Park, 1941. 7.23 Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, Rietveld Schröder House,Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1924. 7.24 Truman State University Art Gallery, Kirksville, MIssouri, United States, c. 2010. 8.1 Roy Lichtenstein, Crying Girl, 1964. 8.2 N.I.M.E.S. color system cabinets with wool thread on bobbins, at Gobelins Tapestry Works, Paris, France, 2019. 8.3 N.I.M.E.S. color system cabinets with wool thread on bobbins, at Gobelins Tapestry Works, Paris, France, 2019. 8.4 C.I.E. color space, 1931. 8.5 Schematic diagram of retinal and neural processing of color stimulants, 2019. 8.6 Edward H. Adelson, checker shadow illusion, 1995. 8.7 Screenshot of drop-down color menu from a common image processing software program, 2019. 8.8 Carved wooden statue, Democratic Republic of Congo, Science Museum, London, United Kingdom, 1880. 8.9 Jockey of Artemision, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece, c. 150 bce . 8.10 Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, Museum of Modern Art, New York, United States, 1962. 8.11 Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, Brooklyn Museum, New York, United States, 1974–9. 8.12 Joyce Kozloff, Three Portals . . . pink triangle, 1977. 8.13 Barbara Kruger, site specific installation, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, United States, 2013. 8.14 Jennifer Yorke, Bombshell, 2006. 8.15 Kerry James Marshall, A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, United States, 1980. 8.16 Kara Walker, installation at the Artes Mundi Prize Exhibition, National Museum Gallery, Cardiff, United Kingdom, 2004. 8.17 Dan Flavin, untitled (in honor of Leo at the 30th anniversary of his gallery), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, United States, 1987. 8.18 Luis Tomasello, Atmosphere Chromoplastique, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, United States, 2011. 8.19 Sean Scully, Full House, 2017. 8.20 Michael Hayden, Sky’s the Limit, O’Hare International Airport, Chicago, United States, 1987. 8.21 Spencer Finch, Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson), 2010.

281 282 286 288 288 296 304 304 305 307 309 314 321 321 323 323 325 326 328 329 330 331 332 335 336 339

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe sincere thanks to the many individuals and organizations who have supported me in the long process of writing this book. Inevitably I will omit some simply because of the length of time over which I must cast my memory to recall them all. A year-long sabbatical provided by Truman State University gave this project its start, with important introductions and mentorship provided by my brother, Peter Fine. A fellowship provided by the Linda Hall Science Library to spend three weeks immersed in their archives and supported by their dedicated staff gave my research much needed interdisciplinary depth. A couple of brief but crucial artist residencies were provided by Paul Artspace in St. Louis, and Prairieside Cottage and Outpost on the edge of the open range in Kansas. And a couple of home-made writing retreats were also provided by Wendy Miner and my mother, Charlotte LaGalle. I was greeted with patient and resourceful support by the staff of the Spencer Art Reference Library at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, the National Toy and Miniature Museum, the Faber Birren Archive at the Special Collections of Yale University, and the Gobelins Manufactory where Sylvie Heurtaux was particularly hospitable. That connection would never have occurred without the clever assistance of Kathryn Feldman. And for decades now, the collaborative enthusiasms of Phil Ryan and Torbjorn Wandel have been a boost to my own exploration of color. Important suggestions and ideas came from numerous people including Atticus Bailey, Monica Barron, John Boggs, Sarah Catlin, Heidi Cook, Chaya Chandrasekhar, Julia DeLancey, Betsy Delmonico, Neil Delmonico, Mira Engler, Francine Fox, David Murphy, Amy Norgard, the late Roland Reiss, and this manuscript’s anonymous reviewers. All of those people and institutions got me going and helped me at various points along the way. But this project would not have been completed without the help of Rebecca Barden, Claire Collins, Louise BairdSmith, Olivia Davies, Ronnie Hanna and the rest of the team at Bloomsbury as well as the image rights sleuthing of Sophie Basilevitch. Nor could I have reached the finish line without my research assistant and tireless cheerleader for many years, Emily Pollman. Finally, and always, it is my wife, the artist Priya Kambli, who sets the priorities that make great things happen. I dedicate this book to our children, Kavi and Mehr.

About the cover The image on the cover is a detail of Coronae 1 (Monoprint, 25x25 inches, 2014) by the Kansas City based printmaker Laura Berman. The colors in the word “Theory” are in the sequence which Schopenhauer proposed, based on his theory of color vision.

xiv

INTRODUCTION: COLOR IN CONTEXT—PINK IS PRIMARY

“Can’t we imagine certain people having a different geometry of colour than we do?” That, of course, means: Can’t we imagine people having colour concepts other than ours? And that in turn means: Can’t we imagine people who do not have our colour concepts but who have concepts which are related to ours in such a way that we would also call them “colour concepts”? For here (when I consider colours for example) there is merely an inability to bring the concepts into some kind of order. We stand there like the ox in front of the newly painted stall door. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour Color Theory: A Critical Introduction is an overview of the history of color theory providing practical guidance towards the use of color in art and design. Going beyond a simple recitation of what has been said about color in different periods and places, this book explores what those theories say about the cultures that espouse them, including our own. The received color theory of contemporary Western culture, the principles and practices taught in art schools everywhere, are just one of many sets of color notions people have entertained over millennia. The fact that we don’t often think of our color theory as being part of a history—that we present it as a set of facts—is an error that this book seeks to correct. Many books on color begin by noting the interdisciplinary nature of their subject, correctly so, given that books on color sit in just about every section of a well stocked library. From art and design to physics, from computer science to music, from chemistry to poetry—there seems to be no discipline that doesn’t take color to be one of its areas of inquiry. The point of such observations is to suggest what a difficult task we have before us, and perhaps to provide a sort of warning to the reader not to assume too quickly that they have come to a full understanding of color. Despite their own warning though, relatively few writers on color theory critically examine our own assumptions about color—what our color theory says about our culture. They begin by hailing Newton (a genius, to be sure) and then proceed to lay a foundation on color science, confident that this is not just what is most true about color, but even that it is what is most relevant to the task of comprehending, and using, color. One of the best of those taking this approach is Zollinger’s Color: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, which succinctly provides the many faceted overview the title promises. He begins with a chapter on physics, then moves on to other hard sciences, before shifting to linguistics and finally concluding with a chapter on color in art. To be sure, there is a lot of technical information one might need, or want, to learn regarding how color is used today. Those seeking a resource on that subject would do well to begin with Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology, which is now in its fourth edition. Meanwhile, some others have done important work uncovering divergent ways cultures have thought about color, notably John Gage, whose Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning From Antiquity to Abstraction comes the closest to providing the critical historical overview that is the goal of our work here. And there have also been those working to lay bare our own culture’s habits of thought around color, as in David Batchelor’s Chromophobia. Our present book then, is an attempt to take such a critical perspective and apply it in a more comprehensive way to an overview of color theory; revising the history, and providing a new set of basic knowledge, as well as a series of activities to help the reader apply theory to practice.

1

Color Theory

We might clarify that color theory is not difficult because it is interdisciplinary, it is interdisciplinary because it is difficult. And this is why science cannot be assumed to provide the firmest foundation for understanding color. In philosophy, color is a test case for what one asserts about metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Before you say what color is, you have to work out what you think about the nature of reality, how we come to know what is real, and what we ought to do with our lives once we know it. Since we don’t propose to establish what reality is here, and yet we have to begin somewhere, this book follows a roughly chronological historical path. While we should take the narrative arc that results with a grain of salt, this also allows us to “reset the clock” and provide a counter-narrative to the one that begins with Newton. It allows us to speculate on how such basic facts as night and day, or supply and demand, may frame a more universal understanding of color that derives meaning from cross-cultural encounters and our relationship with the environment. In the end we will find that our own culture’s assumptions about color are not facts—that in fact our claims to universal truth are one of the peculiar features of Western color theory. As with all cultures, our color theory comes loaded with its own cultural baggage, including a legacy of colonialism, the imperatives of industrial production, and gender normativity. And, in the final chapter, we will attempt to find some theoretical footing that can make sense of color use in the digital age, which our historical overview reveals to be an epochal shift in the experience of color for both producers and consumers of colored artifacts and experiences. So this book is offered as a corrective to a number of under-examined assumptions common to color theory writing. And it is offered as an opportunity to engage with the rich reality of color in cultural context— which leads to meaningful approaches for all color users, whether they are artists, designers, connoisseurs, or consumers. These flawed assumptions—and their correlative opportunities include:

2

●

The color wheel, and various sets of primary colors, are not empirical facts.

●

But color wheels and other color models, as well as their privileged colors, are remarkable cultural constructs that reveal their creators’ often unspoken priorities and attitudes about color.

●

Newton’s discovery that white light is made up of the spectral colors ROY–G–BIV is not the final word on the physics of color, nor is it the final word regarding the reality of color.

●

But Newton brought about a paradigm shift in how we think about color that has shaped the world of color as we encounter it today.

●

Our own approach to color is not universal truth, and non-Western theories of color are not simplistic systems of color symbolism.

●

But our received color theory underscores the importance of quantitative scientific standards to our worldview, and is indicative of the extent to which color theory has been adapted to the needs and priorities of industry.

●

The artist educators of the Bauhaus did not create a universally applicable set of tools, free from ideological commitments, for tinkering with color.

●

But the Bauhaus did provide powerful ways of looking at color that are even more meaningful when used with an awareness of the political and spiritual milieu from which they came.

●

Religious and spiritual perspectives are not secondary or irrelevant to color theory and need not set back color science.

●

But discussions of the supernatural do attempt to explain things about our experience of color that either aren’t considered by, or are directly contradicted by, color science.

Introduction ●

Goethe’s approach to color theory, in opposition to Newton, did open the path to advances in color physiology and new aesthetic philosophies of color, and may be more in tune with the reality of color as revealed by neuroscience.

●

But Goethe did get the physics wrong, and the latest physics suggest that color provides profound insights into the nature of the universe and the limits of human understanding.

Color activities Finally, but actually distributed throughout the book, we have a series of color activities designed to exercise the imagination and suggest paths for color use. By offering this work both as a book on theory and a guide to users of color, we make the proposition that while color theory ought to have a practical benefit to color users, color use is easier when grounded in good theory. There are many books available that spend much less time on theory and more time on options for mixing and arranging color. Their instructions say that if you want to make green, you should mix yellow and blue. An interesting approach to this sort of instruction in color mixing, but using six primaries, is indicated in Michael Wilcox’ Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green: Or How to Make the Colour You Really Want—Every Time. And a hands on approach is carried out very succinctly and sensitively in David Hornung’s Color: A Workshop Approach. But learning to mix the green you want, a task often not possible with the blue and yellow at hand, succeeds or fails by doing the mixing, not by reading the book. What contemporary color theory does little to address, is why to mix that green. How do we choose one color and to what end do we place it alongside another? Not only is this critical approach consistent with the practical guidance the book offers, it actually speeds up the reader’s ability to apply theory to practice. Because the real issue is not “How do I mix this color?” but rather “What color should I mix?” These color exercises are designed to work for individuals or groups engaged in a study of color. They are meant to be suggestive rather than prescriptive, and they are frequently open-ended and ambiguous, inviting experimentation with views on color that span the rich intellectual history of the topic.

Of paradigm shifts Those discussing color often do so within a paradigm that simply cannot recognize the basic premises others might take for granted. As Kuhn puts it in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a paradigm admits certain things into evidence and excludes others, considers certain questions as pertinent and others as irrelevant, and selects from within a limited set of possible answers. In short, one theorist’s superstition is another’s revealed wisdom. The most famous example of this within color theory is the construction of Goethian color theory against Newtonian. When he demonstrated that white light is made up of all the colors of the spectrum, Sir Isaac Newton was not discussing the sensation of color, but rather the subvisible mechanical processes that give rise to colored sensations. This is a fundamental redefinition of the subject at hand. And thus when Goethe, more inclined to examine the experience of color, takes Newton to task for his innovative conclusions, the two of them are actually talking about entirely different things; they are speaking past each other. Imagine a conversation in which two young art students discuss a 1974 Cadillac they see on the street. One of them refers to it as red. The other objects, saying it is pink. The first is right, from a formalist and/or objective point of view. She might say “That red Cadillac, having some white mixed into the paint, is just as red as a robin’s egg is blue.” To which her friend could roll his eyes and insist this doesn’t matter: “You still can’t call 3

Color Theory

that car red.” He is wrong if color, and theory relating to color, is properly restricted to that which we can objectively measure. But this book proposes that such a limitation is unwarranted. We argue that a contextual color theory is more suited to creating and understanding both contemporary art and the broader scope of world historical art. Take a flake of pink Cadillac paint to your local Sherwin Williams to have them scan it and you will discover that color is indeed measurable. But then find the color sample chip in the store’s display that matches your paint flake and you will discover an evocative name very like “Cadillac Pink.” Those who market color know they must be able to reproduce the color you want but they also know your ideas about color are tied up in cultural and linguistic associations. A landmark linguistic study on color, by Berlin and Kay, takes a new approach to the question of how many primary colors there are. They explored the color vocabularies of various cultures to determine a linguistic set of basic colors. These being color words the speakers felt they couldn’t do without. The number of course varied, with greater numbers of colors being associated with more complex, industrialized societies. Modern English has one of the longest lists of basic color terms. And pink— pink is a color we cannot do without. Yes—we can say “light red”—but we find this artificial or wrong. Linguistically, pink is a primary color. But how do we create a color theory that accounts for whatever property of pink makes it basic to our culture? What color wheel might reveal that property? Does the pinkness of pink “mix” with the brownness of brown to make some secondary quality? There is no doubt that expanding color theory to include the ways color meaning is affected by culture greatly complicates any effort at a comprehensive theory. But if we live in complicated times we might also reflect that the global history of color theory is equally complex and provides a rich reserve of approaches to the subject. Indeed, a global perspective awakens us to the necessity of the contextual approach. The alternative is saying we give up; color theory is a dead field of inquiry unequal to the demands of our present use of color. We can teach students how to mix green, and viewers of art and design can note that some patch of green has been placed in contrast with some patch of red. But without a contextual theory of color we would be saying to that student and viewer—those users of color—“Good luck.” Good luck deciding which green to mix or why to mix it. Good luck weighing the reasons the green has been contrasted with red—and why it is that particular red rather than another, pinker, red. As we undertake this historical overview, it would be good to carry with us a few critical principles to help us along the way. We might do well to laminate these and carry them in our pocket, or use them as a bookmark so they can easily be reviewed as we approach each new example of color theorizing. Most of these guidelines are transparently derived from evidence of a lack of critical self-examination in much that passes for color theory. They are principles designed to help us doubt our own assumptions. They are bookended by another list,“Approaches to Color Use,” to be found in the final chapter. That series of suggestions for how to approach the use of color is co-dependent on these suggestions for how to approach thinking about color.

Critical principles

4

●

Color is always new and never wholly separable from a given experience.

●

Color constructs reflect cultural biases, theological narratives, and latent ideologies.

●

Any color system that strikes us as natural must ignore empirical data to adjust itself to our linguistic and cultural preconceptions.

Introduction ●

No color assumption is more culturally indicative than the one that holds that Western color theory is free from cultural bias.

●

The disparagement of color as it relates to reason is a central aspect of Western color theory.

●

Color is information.

●

Dealing with color in context involves both cultural and historical factors as well as the ways color is embedded in the physical world.

●

Color is different when reproduced, because it is reproduced.

●

Color theory is a site where critical cultural markers, such as race, sex, and gender, are encoded.

●

Color theory is in danger of becoming irrelevant, but is a potentially fertile field of study.

What is color? We end this introduction with the question that all color theory asks: What is color? Admittedly, we do not know. Color lies at the juncture between mind and body, consciousness and external reality, science and theology. Consequently any philosophical system, even if it never mentions color directly, has its own implicit color theory. For the ancient Greeks, color was wondrous and dangerous. She was Iris, the rainbow, and so a link between ourselves and the divine. As such she was both worshipped and feared. Let us take warning, then, and watch that even as we try on one theory and then another, we never presume to force color absolutely within any box. And let us take inspiration as well. Color will be our muse, a powerful goad to more imaginative thinking. With color in mind, we will not find ourselves gathering ideological moss.

References Berns, R. S., 2000. Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley. Vejar, K. and S. Remington, 2015. The Modern Natural Dyer: A Comprehensive Guide to Dyeing Silk, Wool, Linen, and Cotton at Home. New York: STC Craft. Winawer, Jonathan et al., 2007. “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1977. Remarks on Colour. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zollinger, H., 1999. Color: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Zürich, Weinheim, and New York: Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta; Wiley-VCH.

5

CHAPTER 1 NATURAL RESOURCES AND TRADE: COLOR USE IN TRADITIONAL CULTURES

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and earth, The earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. Genesis 1.1–6 NRSV It is a key proposition of this book that passages such as these memorable opening lines from the ancient Israelites are not only worthy of inclusion in any discussion of the history of color theory, but are actually far more central to both the theory and use of color than anything the great Newton ever wrote. The symbolic and pragmatic good that is the light and white, and the contrasting negative status of darkness and black are to be seen in virtually any culture one wishes to examine. And the paradoxical interdependence of light and dark— the ambiguity that arises from their necessary connection and the fact that both are blinding when they dominate—is likewise universally experienced and acknowledged. That sense of balance and order is evident in the cycle of day and night referred to inGenesis as well as in the whole approach to life’s mysteries seen in Chapter 2 of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, written one or two millennia later: “Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil” (1972, 3). And in Chapter 28 he proclaims, “Know the white, But keep the black!” (Tzu 1972, 56). Every person with the capacity for sight and thought shares the basic visual experience of night and day, light and dark (see Figure 1.1). We all understand without need for elaboration the appeal and sharpness of the light, the danger and comfort of darkness. Those dichotomies, in all their myriad interactions, lay at the base of visual experience and set the background for the understanding and use of color. Further reflection on those things that are innate to all human experience reveals close connections, whether necessarily so or in our cultural imagination, between the various dichotomies we discover, the sense of number, of direction, of time—and a common association between these elements of our world and color. That the most basic dichotomies of our perceived world also superimpose over our current cultural constructions of race in pernicious ways poses a challenge for us, but also may serve as a clue to the power and limitations of such paradigms. Our task of framing color theory outside of its Western traditions—to place all discussion of color on an even ground unfiltered by the more recent claims of color science—has many pitfalls. For any alternative list of basic truths about color smacks of the very Western assumption of universality that we are seeking to call into doubt. Any master narrative for non-Western color theory is of course reductionist regarding all those various cultures—as if all that is non-Western is monolithic. More likely, and infinitely more desirable, is to provide one or more individual and parallel accounts of the same scope as our Western narrative. Though this is not that book, versions of it may be hoped for from those with the cultural familiarity, the in-depth knowledge, and the 7

Color Theory

Figure 1.1 William Turner’s Shade and Darkness: The Evening of the Deluge is a nineteenth-century interpretation of the way light and darkness are cast as primary forces in the Book of Genesis. Getty Images. language skills the task calls for. The narrative of this book considers the attitudes towards color that arise from non-industrial contexts to be basic or foundational to the history of the subject, thus handing them the greater claim to universality. By contrast, we treat the color theory that develops in the West after the scientific revolution, and as a result of modernization and industrialization, as relatively quixotic. Although Western color theory frames itself as universally true it is in fact a theory you could only arrive at under particular cultural circumstances nowhere near as universal to human experience as those we are calling traditional. Very few world cultures have used the term “color theory” and this fact may reinforce the prejudice that privileges our own self-avowed color theory over the color theories of other cultures that do not identify it as such. Nonetheless, all cultures do have their own particular ways of thinking about color and this, we assert, deserves the term “color theory.” What sort of definition does that leave us with in the end? A rather broad one, to be sure, but understandable enough as this: color theory is what we make of color—in the intellectual sense—as opposed to the visual creations we might produce with it. Visit India today and ask an art student what they have learned about color theory in school and they will tell you about the same color wheel, the same primary colors, the same stale dogma that a student in Europe 8

Natural Resources and Trade

or America would describe. The impacts of colonization, industrialization, and globalization have leveled color theory pedagogy in this way. On the other hand what the student knows that they know is not exhaustive of what they know potentially. For even as that Indian art student is telling you these things you might look around you at the streets of Mumbai, or the villages of Rajasthan, and see for yourself that people in different contexts consistently do not make the same use of color as those in other contexts. And this means that when Indians make use of color they know on some level what is expected in that setting and are able to deliver on that need for a particular way of using color. For the most part, then, this book will have to satisfy itself with drawing attention to the gaps and obfuscations, the various inadequacies in Western color theory, to which we are blind. There will not be equity nor a panacea. But we will also find that the awareness of those inadequacies is itself enriching—providing drama and tension to the study and use of color, and awakening us to the doubt and faith with which all dealings with color are imbued. To begin with, as our epigraph from the Book of Genesis illustrates, Western traditions, when traced to their roots, are very much like those of any other ancient culture. This chapter is not the non-Western chapter. Nor is it the ancient chapter, since the aspects of color experience we will draw out in these initial pages apply today just as they did in the time of Abraham. And there are cultures alive in the world today that might best be described in these terms. Essentially we are seeking first to frame color in terms that stand outside of our industrial context; the context of mass media and consumer culture; and the context of the modern world. This is the context that assumes that color science is the gold standard of color theory, and then pretends that color science is what contemporary color theory texts are providing. Our chapter title describes the alternative as “traditional” in an effort to convey the lasting legacy of these aspects of color theory and to frame the color theory of the modern world as idiosyncratic. This move in turn sets up the possibility of describing the Western tradition as anything but the universal truth it pretends to be. Rather, we will argue that the traditional has the stronger claim to universality—to centrality. And the Western may be described as provincial, or peripheral to the broader human effort to make sense of color.

Faber Birren Color theory as a distinct enterprise arose in the nineteenth century alongside Art History and a general division of scholarly inquiry into increasingly divergent disciplines. Names like Goethe, Chevreul, and Munsell can be accurately accompanied by the descriptor “color theorist.” Increasingly however the field has been cut off from itself, each of the many diverse disciplines which deal with color taking little or no note of color as it is understood outside of that paradigm. Physicists and chemists, philosophers and artists, psychologists and anthropologists—each have a lot to say about color but are generally unable to take in what the others might offer. Perhaps the last true color theorist was Faber Birren, a man who was polytheistic about color’s ultimate reality and meaning. He certainly had faith in the latest color science, but he also gave credence to almost any of the more esoteric aspects of color; such as the color of each human being’s aura, the role the lost civilization of Atlantis may have played in the development of ancient wisdom, and the practice of healing with color (Birren 1963). All were germane to the topic as far as Birren was concerned. He was also incredibly prolific, if a bit repetitive. He probably published more books on color theory than this author has read. Like other color theorists he developed his own color system, the Birren Color Equation, grounded in empirical measurement but adapted to the needs of the artist and designer (Birren 1934). Birren was also one of the first of a kind of color professional that today comes closest to the old interdisciplinary color theorist—the color consultant. He famously advised a billiard table manufacturer, seeking to sell pool tables for the home, to stop using the traditional green felt covering and switch to purple—a color he argued the lady of the home would find less 9

Color Theory

reminiscent of a bar or gambling den (Kaufmann 1974, 73). Sales for the company are said to have multiplied upon their taking this advice (Kaufmann 1974, 73). It is clear that from the perspective of marketing, no color notion is too unscientific if it motivates consumer behavior. So, given that Faber Birren shared our interest in color theory conceived well outside the boundaries of our current standard textbook, where did he begin his survey? He began where we would begin ourselves— exploring the most ancient uses of color and digging within the oldest texts for any color reference. In Color: A Survey in Words and Pictures, Birren describes a litany of color associations, symbol systems, and magical properties (1963). Though he generally does not cite his sources, jumps about from example to example, and often refers rather vaguely to “the Chinese” or any other culture that comes to mind, his conclusions are useful and his research is generally deemed accurate. Our approach will perhaps reverse his procedure of anecdotal accumulation and begin instead with the broad consistencies among cultures and provide the anecdotes, as best we can, in their proper places. There will necessarily be a lot that is passed over, and many areas that might fruitfully have been explored will be left for other laborers. The goal will simply be to not misspeak, and to assemble a set of truly general color properties—color as it is received by human societies.

Dark and light It might task the reader’s patience to belabor the point introduced above that the phenomena of dark and light, and their manifestations of black and white, are uniquely important aspects of color. While we no longer uphold Aristotle’s assertion that all colors are created by the interaction of light and dark, there is no escaping the boundaries these set for all visual experience. And there is no denying that humans of all cultures have organized their thinking about any number of issues, including many that are not remotely visual, in terms of these binaries. But belabor it we must, as we contend with the common assertion that white and black are “not colors,” that there is only one true white and one true black, and that white and/or black are “pure.” Each of these are assertions that come from a particular perspective and carry with them a certain amount of cultural baggage. Likewise, the primacy of light and dark, and the association of that binary with our most cherished prejudices, hopes, and ideals—about the good, the truth, the structure of the cosmos, and the spiritual world—are equally cultural. The difference, we assert, is that they are far more universal than our current color theory’s pronouncements on color. An artist or designer can accept or deny the notion that black and white are not colors with minimal impact on their practice. But none can ignore, from the Paleolithic cave painter to the game designer, the potency of light and dark to drive a narrative, manipulate emotions, or upend expectations. We may begin with blackness, as the Book of Genesis does, equating the void with the dark and only introducing the light after the stage is set. This is not unusual. Michel Pastoureau notes in his book Black: A History of a Color that the darkness is both dangerous and fecund, associated with caves, earth, the womb, and—in a salient example from ancient Egypt—with the life-giving eluvial soil of the Nile (2009). As Toni Morrison puts it in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, her book on blackness as a trope in literature, black is “this and that,” “one thing, and another.” This trait, she argues, is one of the reasons that “the black” (and here she means an American notion of Africanism) is such an effective, if sloppily used, trope in our literature (Morrison 1992). We should also note that this traditional understanding of black as a color also conceives of darkness as an active principle. It is not the mere absence of light but rather it is something in itself—a force diametrically opposed to the light. At any event, an even handed discussion of color in human cultures begins with black if it is to begin anywhere at all. After we have black we have, throughout world literature and arguably in lived experience, the introduction of white or light—or else the separation of light from dark. Here there is a paradox. The darkness that existed 10

Natural Resources and Trade

before the light was in some ways no thing, undefined until brought into contrast by the light. This paradox parallels the cosmological paradox in all origin stories which seek to tell of the beginning of all things and thus must start, with legs flailing in the void, before time itself. In the traditions of the Society Islanders we are told: The first being, Ta’aroa, had long existed in an absolute void, but after an eternity broke out through his shell to differentiate the heavens and the earth, light and darkness and a succession of foundations for the rock and earth. Thomas 1995, 155 As with Abraham’s God, we are left wondering about this situation before the creation of the world. We imagine a god and a lot of nothing; existing, or not, for an eternity or for no duration as such. And we wonder how it got there. At any rate these things are not the world, and so cannot be pictured; they do not have color. Such imponderables were a particular focus of much of the very oldest Hindu scriptures, for example. They seem to have been asking these exact same questions when writing about the state of things before the origin of the universe, a non-state in which even the gods were absent, in these three brief sections of “The Hymn of Creation”: Existence was not, nor its opposite, Nor earth, nor heaven’s blue vault, nor aught beyond. Death was not yet, nor deathlessness; the day Was night, night day, for neither day nor night Had come to birth . . . Nay, even the gods were not! Who, then, can know? The source from which this universe hath sprung, That source, and that alone, which bears it up— Johnson 1971, 11–12 Thus light, whether invoked by words or simply separated out of the dark, is a creative spark both in general terms and as an agent of color. And it is the prelude to all further complexity. All artists experience this dynamic in the creation of a new artwork. The challenge that the blank canvas (or blank slate, cave wall, etc.) presents is its very undifferentiated nothingness. The first dash of the brush—the first mark upon the surface— sets the course for the ensuing composition and vastly constrains what that new thing may be. Here we must ground ourselves, if only via an exercise of the imagination, in the experience of the cave painter in Paleolithic times. The images they created when viewed online or in print are only too easily removed from the context in which they were created. Always dark and often tortuously hard to reach, the cave may well have been a sacred space, as later cultures would deem it. In one way or another it was special, set apart from the surface world by danger, by temperature, by disorientation, and by utter darkness. Into this zone the artist brings fire, a light quite unlike our still and uniform electric lights. This light is active, dancing—revealing the cave walls even as it sets their uneven surfaces into undulating motion. And the artist brings something else along with the light—the pigments they have dug out of the earth and the ones they have created with that same fire. With light as the precondition for the creation of the image, the pigments are the stuff of that creation; a palette that forms a rich panorama of closely observed animals, dramatically abstracted humans, and possibly—magic. The dualities of dark and light, black and white are, as we’ve noted, built into human visual experience. They also are the substance of our daily, monthly, and annual experience of periodicity. As Ronald Calinger says in 11

Color Theory

A Contextual History of Mathematics, these are among the proto-mathematical concepts that appear to be coeval with the human. Other such concepts are an extension into space along with the proto-geometric notion of the four cardinal directions, measurement and exactness, and the proto-numerical sense of one, another, and many. As we noted above, black and white frequently appear as bad and good respectively in ways that align uncomfortably with race and skin color in many cultures, but also as combining to form a whole that is beneficial and healthy when appropriately balanced. Painted on the rock-cut temple walls of Ajanta in India, is a scene of the Buddha’s enlightenment—providing a literal and colorist image of a series of images of his face, each succeeding image is “more enlightened,” with pigments closer to white than the previous one. But in the yin-yang symbol, a basis of Chinese science, we see an early and apt summation of the contrary understanding, that black and white, as well as all other binaries such as male and female, are “married.”

Red After light and darkness, white and black, the next color to appear in the Book of Genesis is red. The color comes up quite often, both in potential evocations of the color and explicit naming of the color. In the creation of man we have both the evocative red we may picture at the mention of the clay from which Adam is formed, but we also have his name, which literally means “red.” One could also say it is evoked when Eve first gives birth, and in the many scenes of childbirth that fill the book’s pages. Or again when Cain murders Abel, and in the many subsequent scenes of bloodshed. Perhaps it is also a presence in the forbidden fruit which is “delight to the eyes” (Genesis 3.6, NRSV). Red is named again with the two twin births the book narrates. First we have Esau and Jacob, with Esau (meaning “hairy”) coming forth “red, all over like a hairy garment” (Genesis 25.25, NRSV). And then later red is the color of the thread the midwife tied around the wrist of Zerah, thrust out of the womb, only to be supplanted by his twin sibling Perez, who subsequently moved into the lead position and became first-born. The place of red in this tentative color order is perhaps complicated by its association with light in fire and in the sunrise. Certainly the translation of color terms is fraught, and many cultures seem to frame color first in terms of brightness, muddiness, or even flashing or sparkling qualities—before they consider the various hues of the rainbow. But the case for red as a separate color term alongside or just after black and white has other supports besides its use in ancient texts. The prominent use of the color red in early Judeo-Christian scripture, named far more than any other hue, is only one instance of the primacy of that color in all traditional cultures. Irresistible yet alarming, it is a color seemingly meant by nature to stand out; as blood, as a flower to the bee, as a male bird to its mate. Our attunement to red is thought to have evolutionary benefits, as we distinguish the wound in need of attention, the ripe fruit from the unripe, the safe meat from the spoiled, and so on. As we will note below, red seems to have pride of place, just after white and black, across world languages. We can also note that the red of the element iron is abundant in nature. In fact it is abundant throughout the universe, as iron is the final byproduct of nuclear fusion in stars. Thus extra-terrestrial aesthetics may be expected to employ ample amounts of red.

Environment and trade The natural world provides us with a dazzling array of color-rich experiences to gaze upon, but color use for our own creations is constrained by the relative availability of suitable colored materials. Generally these materials include dyes and pigments—but substances with distinctive colors such as gold or feathers are also 12

Natural Resources and Trade

used to adorn important personages, sacred objects, and other artifacts. Color meaning is accordingly inflected by the rarity or expense of the colored materials used. Though this is a constant in color use, the final chapters of this book will explore that a hallmark of our current cultural context and prevailing color theory is the way in which those issues of scarcity and wealth are obscured by the directives of marketing and the seamlessness of promotional materials about color products. Because of this ever present constraint on color use, all colored art and design can serve as an indicator of the relationship between the person creating it and their environment. The palette we see the artist using is a record of the natural resources they had access to, as filtered through the material demands of the medium of expression. And, increasingly over time, the technological capacities of the culture are added to that visual record. Looking briefly at Paleolithic cave paintings, for example, quickly tells us the limits of that culture’s technological accomplishments and their dependence on the simplest materials they could find in their immediate vicinity. A rich but brownish red is a common color in these paintings because the iron with which it is made is plentiful in the soil (David 2017, 101). The mustard-like pigment yellow ochre is similarly easy to find in the earth (David 2017, 101–2). Black substances may of course be found in nature, but the caves of Lascaux feature an early example of the manufacture of a pigment—that being carbon resulting from burning with fire (David 2017, 183–8). Thus the relationship to one’s environment which is documented in all color use is expanded by our interventions in that environment and is not merely limited to the colors that may be gathered. In fact the manufacture of pigments predates the famous paintings in the cave at Lascaux by hundreds of thousands of years. Not only Homo sapiens (modern humans) but also Neanderthals and other hominids left evidence of pigment use associated with burials and other purposes that appear to be cultural. Neanderthals left such evidence at Twin Cave in Zambia 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. And 100,000 years ago Homo sapiens at Blombos Cave in South Africa left behind an intact workshop for pigment manufacture, with tools and materials for grinding raw materials into powder stacked neatly as though they had merely packed up for the night and intended to return to work the next morning. An interdisciplinary team working at Puritjarra in central Australia with the archaeologist Mike Smith developed a method for “finger-printing” the ochre pigments used in cave art and thus identifying the quarries from which they were mined (David 2017, 80). These mines were located at various distances and in all directions from the site. They found that the sources for the pigments varied over time, suggesting shifting relationships between our ancestors and their environment as the Ice Age climate became increasingly arid (David 2017, 81). Changes in colors used, such as the waxing and waning importance of a greasy, more purplish red ochre, may therefore be related to climate as much as to aesthetics. We have called this environmental factor a constraint on color use, and thus implied a lack of freedom. But as the so-called “Chinese Horse” depicted at Lascaux might persuade us, the artist may use those limited means to nearly infinite effect (see Figure 1.2). All color mixture prior to the digital revolution at the end of the last century has resulted from an analog process of combining one or more pigments—along with various media, binders, and solvents—to achieve a mixed color that is always unique to that artwork. Today we may select a color from a seemingly total palette of colors in a digitized array, but those colors on our computer screens are in fact profoundly if invisibly constrained; a coordinate system is laid down and we may only land at the intersections, never in the spaces between. In a given prehistoric cave painting, the lush experience and individual artistic exploration of analog color mixing may be combined with the usual possibilities of composition—the placement and juxtaposition of contrasting colors and shapes. This provides a limitless context for experiencing the few, but well-mastered, pigments in the Paleolithic artist’s palette of colors. The archaeological record also shows that trade occurred, and cultural innovations spread far and wide, long before humans settled down into permanent settlements. But once they did settle down and built urban centers, they quickly obtained new materials for creating art. This period, called the Neolithic (“new stone”) Age in contrast to the Paleolithic (“old stone”) Age, coincided with the agricultural revolution—the planting 13

Color Theory

Figure 1.2 The so-called “Chinese Horse” at Lascaux demonstrates the great range, balance, and subtlety achievable even with very limited color options, with subtle mixture and masterful application of pigments. Glasshouse Images / Alamy Stock Photo.

and harvesting of crops and the husbandry of animals in order to take control of the food supply and free up labor for other pursuits. These societies—in Mesopotamia, along China’s Yellow River, the Indus valley, the Nile, and elsewhere—were typified by clear hierarchies, division of labor, early writing, counting, and time reckoning systems, and several other features of civilizations that had profound impacts on art making. Many of the color issues discussed in this chapter—especially those connecting color to cycles, staple crops, the elements, and so on—may be seen as reflecting the efforts of Neolithic cultures to control their environment. More intensive mining, and widespread trade networks (or opportunities for plunder in times of war) brought many new materials to the artist’s workshop, including gold, precious and semi-precious stones, and rare pigments. The invention of glass and glazed ceramics allowed for bright durable colors not otherwise available in a lasting form. In the rhetoric of a ruler’s palace, or the inner sanctum of a temple, the surprise and delight in these new, more exotic colors would become a mechanism for conveying wealth, power, and special status. The traditional attitude towards color in human cultures has not distinguished between a color and the material it is made from. Much of a color’s significance arises from the rarity, expense, and quality of its material substance. This aspect of color meaning is evoked in this passage from Exodus 25.3–7: 14

Natural Resources and Trade

This is the offering that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, blue, purple, and crimson yarns and fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, fine leather, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and gems to be set in the ephod and for the breast piece. NRSV Grandiose color and material gestures also become intertwined with their symbolism. The perfection of the color blue and its symbolic association with the holy mother of God and with the vaults of heaven was reinforced by the great cost of the material. The amazing blue tiles of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate, a vast expanse of a brilliant color generally quite rare in ancient art, must have been an astounding sight to visitors from other cities. In the economics of aesthetic interest, novelty, cost, and volume all may add value in terms of visual delight (see Figure 1.3). Brighter more saturated colors also are traditionally valued more highly than duller ones. As a general rule, colors fade, and brighter colors fade more than muted ones. So, though we may be hard-wired to like bright colors anyway (think of the attraction of brilliantly colored flowers and birds in nature), colors that are less fugitive—that hold their original brilliance longer—will often be seen as more unusual and more desirable. We sometimes are tempted to associate muted palettes with a more primitive aesthetics, but we have seen that when so-called primitive cultures gain access to brighter color options (again through trade, conquest, etc.), they generally adopt the new colors into their traditions with little hesitation. A more recent historical example

Figure 1.3 The unique properties of ceramic glazes allows for dramatic use of the color blue, a color otherwise difficult and expensive to produce before modern chemistry. The appeal of the color would have been even more dramatic for its novelty and scale in the case of the Ishtar Gate in ancient Babylon. B. O’Kane / Alamy Stock Photo. 15

Color Theory

Figure 1.4 In this Navajo Germantown Eye-Dazzler blanket (circa 1885) we see an example of the rapid adoption by traditional weavers of new chemical process dyes available from German manufacturers. Anthony SOUTER / Alamy Stock Photo. can be seen in the colors used by Navajo weavers in their valuable textiles. Initially limited to a more muted spectrum of relatively grey and brown dyes, Navajo weavers quickly adopted the brighter colors that became available in the nineteenth century due to advances in chemistry and via trade with European settlers (see Figure 1.4). In cases like this, however, tradition and authenticity become complicated by the commercial pressure of Anglo collectors who may prefer their own idealization of a traditional native culture frozen at a certain point in time. Thus a post-colonial color theory may read meaning in the color palettes, whether muted or bright, available for purchase in the collector’s market. Another cross-current that complicates the appeal of bright colors is the appeal of simplicity and an asceticism founded in frugality. In the fifth century bce the Chinese philosopher Mozi said: Moreover, when the benevolent man plans for the benefit of the world, he does not consider merely what will please the eye, delight the ear, gratify the mouth, and give ease to the body. If in order to gratify the senses he has to deprive the people of the wealth needed for their food and clothing, then the benevolent man will not do so . . . but though the body finds comfort, the mouth gratification, the eye pleasure, and the ear delight, yet if we examine the matter, we will find that such things are not in accordance with the ways of the sage kings, and if we consider the welfare of the world we will find that they bring no benefit to the common people. Therefore Mozi said: Making music is wrong! Mo 2003, 113–14 16

Natural Resources and Trade

The sentiment here arises from a desire for a more equitable society. Similarly, a rhetoric may at times attend to the idea of the cloth that is unstained. A single blemish may be thought of as ruining the whole cloth, rendering it unclean. Such vocabulary may easily become pernicious as it was when applied in the past century in terms of both visual and racial purity; “one drop” making the blood impure. Here, however, we risk anachronistically imposing our own concepts of race where they do not apply. More practically and perhaps more universally, the quality of a bolt of cloth or a length of wool fiber may be more easily assessed, and therefore enjoyed, in its un-dyed state. Because color palettes reflect the always shifting relationship between artists and the environment, different cultures and art historical periods have characteristic color palettes. If we were to apply their palette to one of our modern color wheels we might become convinced it has many gaps, is unbalanced, and is not whole. But the artist is a resourceful person and seemingly untroubled by these possible deficiencies. Colorful religious mandalas are the closest we might come to an ancient color wheel (and color wheels may be said to be modern mandalas). These mandalas tend to arrange colors in ways that make it clear that each color has its assigned place in a coherent whole. And in the design of a more figurative image, say an ancient Minoan fresco, the properties of colors are delightfully balanced against each other, providing contrast and relief and no sign that the work is not whole, that it lacks a particular blue or green which the artist was unable to acquire. Indeed, the silliness of such an anachronistic judgment is immediately apparent. A costume designer today often uses their knowledge of these various cultural palettes to evoke, or tweak, the period required for a stage production. Or a painter may borrow the gravitas of the old masters, or whimsically deploy an anachronistic palette, by adopting a certain set of colors in their composition. The environmental, industrial, political, and economic context leave their imprint on the color palette of any culture, providing the field within which its artists have played, and helping to create that culture’s uniquely recognizable style

Mandalas The mandala of the Hindu-Buddhist tradition is an instructive instance of several overlapping tendencies of thought traditional to cultures throughout the world. In the mandala—a sacred image of the cosmos (macro and micro) and tool for gaining enlightenment—we can locate proto-mathematical, proto-scientific, proto-medical, and sacred wisdom as it is inscribed in color and pattern. Carl Jung attributes the universality of these patterns of thought to the level of instinct. They serve a need to reconcile or heal the disparities of the changing world around us, as well as our internal conflicts and traumas, by creating an image of wholeness out of multiplicity. This impulse, he argues, is like the other universal archetypes in his psychological theory—appearing everywhere in culture because they are in fact rooted in our nature. In Mandala Symbolism he states: [A] fundamental schema is made use of, an archetype which, so to speak, occurs everywhere and by no means owes its individual existence to tradition, any more than the instinct would need to be transmitted in that way . . . Therefore, despite external differences, we find a fundamental conformity in mandalas regardless of their origin in time and space. The “squaring of the circle” is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness. Leidy and Thurman 1997, 162 17

Color Theory

The mandala makes the most basic numerical notions visible in geometric space in terms of the singular or identity (in the whole unitary form of the mandala, and in the central motif), duality and polarity (in the bilateral reflective symmetry of the figure—seen also in the human body), triads or more frequently the four cardinal directions or seasons (in the secondary splitting of the figure, usually into quarters), and often in further elaboration and detail implying diversity and complexity sometimes halting at twelve divisions and other times hinting at infinity. Time is also modeled in these forms as cycles of day and night, the hours, months, seasons, and years. Such thinking is not yet fully mathematical as number is not yet abstracted from the world it enumerates. One is instinctively the self. Two is the other, or the other half of one’s nature. Beyond that are the myriad products of the union of the two. Each of these numerical stages is accompanied by additional categorizations of the world that have been referred to as “Vedic logic” and are inscribed with colors. From its earliest manifestations, Vedic logic involved the association of the Aryan privileged class with brightness and of non-Aryans with darkness (Mittal and Thursby 2004, 358–9). This duality was further distinguished into three and then four varnas—which would become the caste system of historical Indian culture. Varna literally means “color” and it divided the population into a ranked sequence of the highest priestly class followed by the warrior class and then the workers (Mittal and Thursby 2004, 358–9). At some stage the non-Aryan or otherwise outcaste individuals were included as a fourth varna. Other than the basic light–dark duality, it is still debated in what sense the varnas were “colored.” Regardless, “colorism”—a generalized discriminatory attitude towards darker skinned people—is an enduring social challenge in India as elsewhere. Though the Indian constitution now explicitly prohibits discrimination of many kinds including the caste system, commercial interests in India still find profit is to be made both in selling skin whiteners and reinforcing habits of association between fair skin and anything else proposed as desirable (Mittal and Thursby 2004, 380–1). The mandala itself may order color in any number of ways. We might devote an entire book to noting the various and contradictory symbolic associations of colors in innumerable contexts throughout history — without learning anything more fundamental than this: crucial to an understanding of traditional color theory is not which colors have which associations. Rather it is essential to grasp the impulse to order color in some way, in line with other basic categorizations of the world into genders, elements, natural kingdoms, phases of each cycle, and so on—and with a faith in the ability of color to communicate inner reality. Furthermore, even in cases that are sufficiently isolated to allow us to identify each of say, four colors, with an element, a season, a class of human, and so on—this does not dramatically restrict the culture’s artists in their color selections. Yes, if red is considered auspicious that will generate a taste for red, but artists in these cases will still make use of the palette of colors available to them, using those supposedly less auspicious under that system, if only for contrast and visual delight. Mandalas may be made of paint but also of sand or other colored powder, butter, textiles, and so on (Leidy and Thurman 1997, 17) (see Figure 1.5). And just as number is not initially abstracted from the world it enumerates, color is traditionally linked to the physical world. It is seen as conveying the nature of its substance. An examination of Tibetan mandalas, the most well known example of the form, reveals a tendency in that culture to associate red and yellow with the upper and left-hand quadrants respectively, with the other two quadrants being variously white and black, green and blue, or other pairs and in other orders (Gold 1994, 153–4). One can look elsewhere, such as to Navajo sand painting, and find color again associated with direction, with supernatural forces, with staple crops, and very importantly with healing properties (Gold 1994, 145–50). The mandala is a map of an ideal world and the ideal self or microcosm. It is used as a means of connecting with a higher reality and/or restoring the patient to their healthy balanced condition. As Robert A. F. Thurman puts it, a mandala is “a matrix or model of a perfected universe . . . It is a blueprint for buddha-hood” (Leidy 18

Natural Resources and Trade

Figure 1.5 Tibbetan Buddhist mandalas often follow patterns associating color with direction, number, and other basic categories of cosmology. agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo. and Thurman 1997, 127). We may add that the schematic diagram itself is rarely seen to be fully potent in itself: rather the ordering of colors—each with their own potencies, as the medium in which the diagram is inscribed—is part and parcel of its efficacy. As beautiful as we may find mandalas to be, color is not seen as decorative or pretty in these contexts. Color is efficacious and practical—an instrument through which order may be restored and maintained. In both the Tibetan and Navajo examples the creation of the mandala has a beneficial effect that then requires the destruction of the powerful image upon completion of the ceremony. To understand these healing or enlightening properties completely we must return to the paradoxes within traditional thought. These are traditions which both allow that good and evil are among the polarities that we inscribe with color, and also require an accommodation of all elements of the cosmos into a harmonious whole in order to achieve balance. We add death to the three ages of man and find we must do so with other superficially negative elements in order to restore a beneficial cycle. In his discussion of mandalas, Thurman describes the more nuanced position: Enlightenment is often expressed as twofold to suit our habit of binary thinking . . . When we focus on enlightenment primarily as union with absolute reality . . . we see only one side of its inconceivability. We also must discover enlightenment as endarkenment . . . Thus the transparency of enlightenment is a clear light, not a white light, but a light that integrates black and white, a light that penetrates everything, including shadows. Leidy and Thurman 1997, 129 19

Color Theory

Race, gender, and class As we have mentioned in passing, not all cultures construct race as ours does. Indeed “race” is a term with its own strange Western origin. The Oxford English Dictionary cites numerous sixteenth-century uses of race to denote various groupings of animals or people—one’s race might be all of one’s progeny for instance, or race may simply denote our mutual belonging to the human race. It was more than two centuries later that the first instances are found of “race” as a distinct subset of humanity and still another century before the pseudoscientific notion of “One of the great divisions of mankind, having certain physical peculiarities in common” was established and elaborated—with notoriously varied results (no two natural historians ever seem to arrive at the same number or description of these supposedly innate groupings). Our constructs of race are uniquely stamped by the spurious credibility of their seemingly scientific basis. They are entangled with Enlightenment efforts to categorize all of nature, and Enlightenment era imperatives to juxtapose us vs. them, culture vs. nature, civilization vs. savagery. And we are no more able to see the world in a way that is free of race than we are able to separate our experience of colors from the words we use to describe them. This is not to say that ours is the first culture to seek to fit the variation among humans into neat categories, generally beginning with “us” and “them” and comparing the out-group unfavorably with the in-group. Inevitably cultural traits are blurred with genetic ones so that the visual marker of skin color is just one of many, but possibly the most convenient visual shorthand for the rest. Faber Birren provides a handy example of ancient Egyptian artwork depicting the “four races.” Each of the four has its signature color; red Egyptians, yellow Asians, black Africans, and white Europeans (Birren 1963, 13). But the depiction of the Asians—the Mesopotamians with whom Egypt was periodically at war—follows a pictorial convention that includes a distinctive beard and other non-biological features. This raises the question of whether the color code is meant to be naturalistic, when very little else about Egyptian figurative art can be described that way. In general the Egyptian artist depicted flora and fauna with a great deal of attention to observed detail, but made human figures conform to elaborate and strict pictorial conventions rooted in the concept of the person and their status rather than their appearance to the eye (Robins 2008). So if Egyptians thought of themselves as red, they may have been observing skin tone or they may have been adhering to a code in which red is deemed more noble than the other colors, or both. While these groupings of people are not race in the modern sense, the use of color to code the boxes in which we have sought to fit ourselves and our neighbors is an impulse that proliferates throughout the world. And it is traditional to color figures in art according to their category rather than according to their actual appearance. Our own entertainment industry resorts to the same shortcuts as did the people of the ancient world. Color is a great way to clue an audience in to the allegiances and inner workings of a cast of characters. The world-building exercises of a Star Trek or Tolkien movie franchise are full of examples that might have such innocent explanations, were it not that we ourselves do see skin color, in a misguided but persistent way, as a marker of inner character. Color may also be used to denote (or confound) another binary of enduring importance to all cultures— that of gender, however it may be construed. In this the artists of the ancient Mediterranean world, including the Egyptians, the Minoans, and the Etruscans, were frequently predictable. When depicting men and women in company, and here we can often assume these are men and women of an elevated status, the men are generally darker and redder, the women lighter in color (Robins 2008, 25) (see Figure 1.6). We may be confident that biology is not a factor (and this might strengthen our supposition that the color coding of race is also not always biological). Again this may merely be a code, transmitted and imitated across millennia and over the seas. In more recent centuries an idealized notion of feminine beauty is allied to fairness of complexion in ways that reinforce the confinement of upper-class women to the domestic sphere. The comparative exposure to the elements allowed to upper-class men, just as it is so often endured by women of lower rank, may account 20

Natural Resources and Trade

Figure 1.6 This Etruscan sarcophagus uses color in ways that are common in the ancient Mediterranean, and which can be read in terms of both gender and class. North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo. for a darker masculine ideal. We may not have proof that in this same manner the men of the ancient world were seen as duskier and manlier by virtue of their exercises out in the world and under the hot sun, and the women who were spared a life of manual labor were idealized as fair and lovely, but Egyptologists such as Gay Robins, author of Egyptian Painting and Relief, do support the idea that an idealization of this side effect of patriarchy combined with social privilege was likely idealized in this color code (2008). Assuming this is so, we can add that color has long served not only as a code for the varieties of human populations and the poles of gender, but also for the hierarchies of class.

Color Use Activity 1.1 For all people in all cultures their interaction with the environment has been a basic factor in the meaningfulness of color. Cycles of night and day and seasonality, mineral and plant resources available locally, and resources made available through trade networks form recurring features of approaches to color in any culture including our own. However, an idiosyncratic feature of contemporary culture is

21

Color Theory

that these factors are considered as limitations on expression rather than sources of meaning, and are hidden behind an illusion of seamless access to all colors at the point of purchase. The following exercises are meant to allow for an imaginative reintroduction to the most universal elements of color meaning. If working in a group setting, compare and contrast your work. Environmental color 1 Find a room with no windows or one in which you can easily block off the windows. Attempt to block all light from entering the room by sealing off gaps under doors, covering indicator lights on electronic devices, and so on. Using tape and thickly layered newspaper can be effective. For windows you may want to use blackout paper or blackout curtains – or aluminum foil. Prepare for, and observe, that it takes a fair amount of labor to completely block out the light of the sun. Once this task is done, make yourself comfortable and shut out all lights. You are attempting to experience total darkness. This is not the commonplace darkness of human experience, nor is it the rich night-time filled with soft light and sound which now must be sought far from human settlement. It is instead the sort of darkness which prehistoric artists sought out in caves, and which other spiritual searchers and shamans would seek at multiple points throughout history. You may wish to extend this moment by some means of contemplative practice, but for our purposes the point is to at least experience this unusual situation with an openness to learning what it is like. After you have taken this in, light a match, observing the way light emerges in the darkness, creates a visual world complete with light and shadow, makes color appear, and so on. Use the match to light a candle for steadier, but still moving, illumination. Read from ancient religious texts in which light and dark are invoked to describe the origin of the world. Environmental color 2 Find a location out in the country or in a big yard where you may have a bonfire. Invite friends, plan food and drink, gather wood and build your fire. The next day examine the debris in the fire pit. What colored materials can you find? Try drawing with the blackened end of a wooden stick. See if there is some other way to obtain the black pigment by crushing it or flaking it off. Gather the white or grey ash and attempt to draw or paint with it. Experiment by combining it with water, other liquids, or fatty substances such as oil or butter. Make art with the colors you find in the fire pit. You may work on paper, canvas, or wooden panel. A driveway or sidewalk may serve you well. Or you may find your face or body make good surfaces to decorate. Environmental color 3 Spend a day on a large property where you have permission to search, dig a little, pick nuts and berries, and smash rocks together. Expend some energy trying to expand the range of colors in your palette beyond a single source of black and of white. An eroded bank may provide earth colors in a variety of materials. Berry juice may not turn out to give the color of the berry but is worth exploring for its potential. Broken-up rock may suggest to you that some rocks may produce chalk-like powders.

22

Natural Resources and Trade

You will recognize that you do not have the benefit of millennia of ancestors carrying out such experiments on this land and passing on to you what has worked. Therefore substituting your own research into less site specific means of creating pigments and dyes naturally is an appropriate next step. Kristine Vejar’s The Modern Natural Dyerr is a good recent guide in this area. If you can find a source for black walnuts, there are recipes for using them to make a traditional ink. There are also garden vegetables you can use to make dyes. Soon the line may blur between locally sourced and commercially obtained coloring materials as we order up such commonplace natural colors as burnt umber and yellow ochre. Many natural pigments are still used in commercially available art supplies. The Daniel Smith paint company has scoured the world for a limited but brilliant line of colors derived from minerals which they sell in their Prima Tek line. As we have seen, traditional cultures have almost always had access to trade networks or mines where unusual and exotic colors can be found. Your goal here, however, is to experience the meaning of color under traditional limitations and unaided by modern chemistry. To this end, if you have a black, white, red, and yellow you can stop gathering. But you may also find it interesting to add a surprising blue, green, or even gold or silver.

Other colors—color as substance After black and white and red, a wide array of other colors are given special significance across traditional cultures, often owing to their connection with a substance also deemed important. As mentioned above, color is like number in that it is not initially abstracted out from our experiences. This is evident in language and in the examples that we will cite now. The chief among the substance colors is gold—a name for both a substance and a color. Gold is universally valued in both material and spiritual terms. Associated with the sun and with divine light, its color is both bright and warm. It is easy to shape and because it is not susceptible to corrosion, it is both well suited to decorative uses as in jewelry and religious objects, as well as benefiting from a metaphorical superiority to the “baser metals.” Its incorruptibility comes to stand for a transcendence of the all too corruptible world of flesh. In our own period, color has become separated in our minds from the experience of colored things. Thus “gold” is no longer a color; the painter renders golden objects by artfully juxtaposing the highlights and shadows observed on its brilliantly reflective surface, breaking gold down into whites, blacks, and a range of yellows. Gold is a perfect case for learning the distinction between the concrete color of traditional cultures and the abstracted color of what has lately become standard color theory. Gold is followed by a long train of other colors tied to substances. Silver is the most obvious, with other metals coming in behind that in order of salience. Precious and semi-precious stones are also excellent examples of this concrete color. The ruby and its red are identified with one another—there is no such thing as a white ruby, and the redness of the ruby is a part of its potency—to beguile and also to heal, enchant, or act as a talisman of luck. In the American Southwest, turquoise and silver have particular significance, as coral, pearls, and other more regional materials do elsewhere. Certain stones and their colors are credited with healing properties, sometimes associated with zodiacal signs. Healing and poisoning are often paradoxically linked, as yellow stones carved with the scorpion of the zodiac are seen as powerful medicines because of their associated venom. In India the color term saffron applies broadly to a range of rich oranges and orangey yellows and is associated with the sacred and with renunciation in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Saffron is also a substance, the pollen fibers of the poppy plant which are variously tinged from red to yellow and are used as a luxurious 23

Color Theory

spice in Eastern cooking (Finlay 2004, 223–4). In practice, saffron the color may be the orange or red of monks’ robes throughout Asia, or the garlands of marigolds draped over people and objects, or the orange pigment and orange paint used in ritual practices (Finlay 2004, 224). Often thick orange paint or mounds of orange powder are simply piled onto a sacred object such as a statue of a god, lingam representing Shiva, or an interesting natural rock formation or knot on a tree. In these practices especially we see the direct connection between the substance itself and the faith in the potency of the color. Color is not an illusion in traditional cultures, as it is sometimes interpreted under the paradigm of modern physics. Rather, color is part and parcel of the inner nature of the substance and can even be identical with the very potency of the substance. Particularly in a pantheistic context, in which the divine pervades the natural world, we can see saffron as sacred in itself and making sacred that which it adorns. Another color whose physical associations are clear is green. The association with verdure, with nature, life and growth, is frequently cited at least among later historical cultures. It is a puzzle, however, that less is made of the color green in the most ancient sources. Green pigments can be difficult to come by, especially greens of a satisfactory intensity and permanence. And green may be too much of a color backdrop—a sort of neutral color in the eyes of hunter gatherers. As we will see in later chapters, green takes on greater significance as a color to be remarked upon in two contexts. It is significant to Mohammed in whose desert environment, after all, green is not the backdrop but rather a standout feature. And green is a costly dye for fabrics, and so becomes a sign of wealth and luxury. Purple is the most famous dye color in antiquity. This now almost legendary dye was called Tyrian purple because of its association with the city of Tyre on the coast between Lebanon and Jerusalem (Finlay 2004, 366). It was made by the ancient Phoenicians from shellfish, and the secret of manufacturing this rich deep purple dye, and the rarity of its effect, made purple the color most associated with royal and then priestly garments throughout the ancient Mediterranean world (Finlay 2004, 354–66). Two blue colors make a useful contrast in terms of rarity and meaning. Lapis Lazuli, from which the color ultramarine (literally “over the water”) is made, comes only from certain mines in Afghanistan (Finlay 2004, 281). Over time this most intense of the blue pigments will become prized both for its beauty and its expense. The indigo dye, by contrast, was a common, easily produced color in India (Finlay 2004, 319). Its dark blue, almost black color was derived from the indigo plant and is a cheap and practical means of dyeing fabric. The color had the added benefit of hiding dirt and stains, making it useful for the clothes of laborers. In time, indigo became associated with the Dalits of India, often known as the untouchables. The two blues, ultramarine and indigo, are opposite in their relative rarity and expense, but humble indigo has its own aura of power, at least in India’s political sphere. These examples descend into anecdote but serve the purpose of underscoring the connection between color and substance in what we term traditional color theory. Unlike the frequently arbitrary method of assigning symbolic meaning to colors, a color’s association with the nature of the substances it appears in is direct and consistent. And the meaning given to this conjoined entity of color-substance is guided by the role that entity plays in the lives of the people who use it. Again, the color user’s relationship to their environment is discernible in these patterns. How and where the substance is obtained, its practical utility for uses both sacred and mundane, and the other pleasures and benefits that substance may confer are all examples of this dynamic.

Berlin and Kay, and the absence of blue Linguistics and anthropology have offered new insights into the history of color in culture, with the most important analysis being Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. Their landmark study of the color vocabularies of various cultures was published in 1969 and has since 24

Natural Resources and Trade

undergone important revisions. Though not without its critics, particularly for its potentially colonialist blind-spots, this remains the study that frames discussion of color in world languages. Their results draw broad conclusions about the use of color words in all cultures and demonstrates complexity in color vocabulary in proportion to the complexity of the culture. Thus many hunter-gatherer cultures have only a few basic color terms while English has one of the longest lists. These “basic color terms” are defined by Berlin and Kay using two criteria. The term needs to be independent of a colored substance in the world—so in English “grey” is a color term but “woolly” is not (Berlin and Kay 1991). And the term has to be one without an acceptable substitute, as with words compounded of two other color words—so “orange” is a basic color term in English because “reddish-yellow” is not readily accepted as a substitute (Berlin and Kay 1991). Berlin and Kay found that some cultures get by with only two such terms. In those cases the terms may be translated as black (or dark) and white (or light), but perhaps encompassing more than we commonly think of as black and white (Berlin and Kay 1991). By encompassing dark and light colors very broadly, and adding in words for colored substances as well as compound terms, we might imagine how such a vocabulary would function. Berlin and Kay then found that if a culture had three basic color terms the third one was invariably red (Berlin and Kay 1991). Again, perhaps red would be construed more broadly in these contexts, distinguishing many colors more bright and saturated and standing out distinctively from black and white. After that the sequence in which color terms are added to increasingly complex vocabularies has a bit more variation, as seen in the figure here, with Berlin and Kay’s seven stages of color vocabularies: I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Black (Dark)

Red

Green or Yellow

Yellow or → Green

Blue

Brown

Purple, Pink, Orange, or Grey

→ White (Light)

→

→

→

→

The general trend indicates an apparent need for more color terms in more industrialized contexts. Inversely we may see it as less interest in abstract thinking about color, and a preference for describing the world in terms of its concrete substances, among non-industrial cultures. But this conclusion leaves out the significant consistency of the order in which color terms arise in vocabularies and suggests fundamental priorities among colors across the range of cultures. The black, white, red sequence we have noted may be seen as a set of three primary colors, if we care to use that term. Those are always followed by green and yellow in either order and only then comes blue, which is today widely deemed one of the three most basic colors. This simply was not so during the vast expanse of human history. The notion some have advanced that certain cultures “did not see” certain colors is oversimplified, but it is also clear that language organizes how we categorize the world and has a profound impact on how we perceive phenomena. Analyzing ancient Greek literature and noting a lack of blue terms, for instance, does not get us into the mind of the ancient Greek artist. The translator’s decisions are potential stumbling blocks, as is the small sample we have of any culture’s writings in the ancient period. Many Greek color words, for instance, have been translated in terms of their bright flashy qualities— the way it feels to see them, rather than as simple hues as we think of them. We know that Greek artists could and would select and apply blue in a manner distinct from other colors. But we also may suppose some lack of distinction, perhaps between blueness and darkness, in commonplace thought processes. Color vocabularies reflect needs and interests, and traditional cultures need fewer basic color terms than we rely upon today. Traditional cultures also appear more interested in the experience of the visual world and the substances, seen as resources or dangers, that produce those experiences. 25

Color Theory

Ancient Egyptian color Ancient Egyptian art is a convenient case study in the study of color theory in traditional cultures. The culture had its roots in pre-historical times and continued with unique consistency for several millennia of recorded history. The dry climate and the conservative instincts of the culture add to the amazing wealth of art and writings that are preserved for study. The Egyptians used a limited range of colors that stood the test of time and remain remarkably fresh. Their palette of colors was made up of durable mineral pigments providing black, white, red, yellow, green, and blue (see Figure 1.7). The colors are light, clean, and generally slightly pastel or chalky—perhaps informing our own perception of them as a sort of desert palette. Compare, for instance, your mental image of certain Egyptian tomb paintings with Hopi Kachina dolls and note the turquoise or pale sky blues, sandy tones of yellow and green, coral tendency of the reds, and the use of black to delineate and accent—rather than as a body color filling in large areas. These colors were either found naturally in the region or could be synthesized by Egyptian artisans. They were also early innovators in glass production, a medium which allows for more adventurous color creation and may add to the sophistication of the artisans’ abilities as chemists. Their blacks were carbons, including soot, lampblack, and charcoal. Their whites—gypsum and whiting, which are calcium sulphate and calcium carbonate respectively— are both found widely in Egypt. Ancient Egyptian reds and yellows were ochre colors, an iron oxide, found naturally in Egypt. Another yellow was an orpiment—a natural oxide of arsenic. Some blue came from azurite, a carbonite of copper found in the deserts east of the Nile river valley. But a more common blue, as well as a green, were created from an artificial frit, combining silica, copper, and calcium. Green was also derived from malachite, a copper carbonite from the region’s deserts. Paintings were made directly on stone walls, or on plaster in the dry fresco manner, or on papyrus. The pigments were ground with a stone pestle and mixed with a binder, which was likely a water soluble gum, and then applied with brushes and reed pens. This consistent and distinctive palette speaks to the ancient Egyptian preference for things that are enduring and seems to eschew the use of exotic pigments from great distances in favor of a color palette that is more readily maintained and standardized, in keeping with the almost bizarre consistency of Egyptian art over thousands of years. But this restrained palette is belied by the incredible richness of the treasures buried in the

Figure 1.7 Egyptian tomb paintings used a limited palette applied in clearly delineated areas to convey a range of information about the given subject matter, including race, gender, class, and location within a cosmos that encompasses the afterlife. 1 Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

26

Natural Resources and Trade

tombs of Egyptian rulers. Gold, here, would be the primary color substance, inset with glass and semi-precious stones of astonishing clarity and brilliance. Even in the relatively modest tomb of the boy-King Tutankhamun the effect is clearly intended to be one of shock and awe. The wealth and power of the divine rulers of Egypt is unmistakably communicated alongside the seemingly timeless stability of one dynasty after another, and always an instinct to adopt visual forms that refer to their most ancient precedents. Artists worked mainly in flat colors, filling in crisply defined spaces without shading or texture. The interest here was not in depicting objects as they might happen to appear to a given spectator but rather as they were understood to be within the conceptual framework of a hierarchical society. Formulas were adopted for depicting all manner of figures and objects, and these were more strict the more important the subject matter. Color became just one of these formulaic tools and, as discussed above, helped indicate a human figure’s status, gender, and ethnicity. The Egyptologist Melinda Hartwig notes the ways in which color became part of a code and one of the ways in which the mind orders information. Such information directly connects color to the true nature of reality: According to the ancient Egyptian worldview, color reflected the character of all things made by the Creator. Color originated from the divine power and strengthened contact with it. In religious terms, color conveyed concepts through the properties of its minerals that the Egyptian mind could not grasp. Color also conveyed information about an object’s actual state, and through the underlying magical powers associated with color, gave it supernatural qualities. Thus, color represented the visible world and conveyed symbolic concepts. Colored minerals and stones replicated and reinforced the perception of Egypt’s natural environment, which were codified and utilized in painting. Yet, color symbolism often reflected complicated religious concepts with meanings that were often contradictory. Hartwig 2016, 38 Hartwig also notes the ways in which Egyptian color terminology lines up with Berlin and Kay’s study of basic color terms. The Egyptians used four basic terms: black, white, red, and green—and, as she also notes, these terms do not correspond to the range of colors employed by Egyptian artists, indicating the limited application of this vocabulary (Hartwig 2016, 38). She concludes that “most scholars agree that the ancient Egyptians did not have an absolute definition of color terms in the European sense because the range of color usage was not always anchored in language” (Hartwig 2016, 38). Finally, Hartwig discusses some of the ways visual formulas encoded what we might term race—distinctions between Egyptians and various groups of foreigners (2016, 35). Since, after 1,000 bce , Egyptian kings themselves were often foreigners, combinations of formulae preserved “distinct racial identities while merging them with existing Egyptian royal templates” (Hartwig 2016, 35). Hartwig lists political realities, cultural climate, and traditional theological notions among the factors that impacted ambiguous visual codes (2016). Color was one of many tools the Egyptian artist would use in teasing out the precise status of the subject depicted. Thus Egyptian art provides a panorama of several features of color theory common to traditional cultures. These include use of pigments and substances that bear associations with the natural environment and the wealth, power, and divinity of Egypt’s ruling class as amplified by the incredible technological and design know-how of their craftsmen. They also include a basic attitude towards color that is pragmatic and concrete. It takes color as real—conveying the true nature of the world we see as well as unseen, supernatural truths. Such color is not merely skin deep. It is bound up with the elemental substances of the world and is inseparable from the potency of those materials. Nevertheless, direct observation of color was overruled by considerations of deeper reality or conceptual frameworks. Color, like Egyptian art considered generally, was a means of representing the divinely ordered nature of the world and connecting to the supernatural. And while the color black was associated with death as well as rebirth, as it is in the depiction of the god 27

Color Theory

Anubis, the fluctuating demands of context require that simple color symbol equivalencies were set aside in much actual practice.

Esoteric color and the decline of the senses In 1949 the German Philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the thesis that there was a great “axial age” in human thought during the mid-first millennium bce . Of this pivotal period he wrote: Confucius and Lao-Tse were living in China, all the schools of Chinese philosophy came into being, including those of Mo Ti, Chuang Tse, Lieh Tzu and a host of others; India produced the Upanishads and Buddha and, like China, ran the whole gamut of philosophical possibilities down to materialism, scepticism and nihilism; in Iran Zarathustra taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil; in Palestine the prophets made their appearance from Elijah by way of Isaiah and Jeremiah to Deutero-Isaiah; Greece witnessed the appearance of  Homer, of the philosophers—Parmenides, Heraclitus and Plato,—of the tragedians, of Thucydides and Archimedes. Everything implied by these names developed during these few centuries almost simultaneously in China, India and the West. Jaspers 1953, 2 Though there are plenty of critiques of Jaspers’ effort to paint such diverse cultures with so broad a brush, the various philosophical traditions he points to do present certain themes in common. Those critiques of Jaspers might emphasize that we don’t know enough about societies prior to his axial age to set them up as rigidly hierarchical societies whose color truths are very simplistic. It is certainly tempting to look at an ancient ziggurat and see confirmation of that view of Neolithic cultures, but whether or not this applies across the board, the texts Jaspers points to represent a rejection of simple color equations and categories as we might find them in the thought processes of any culture in any period. One aspect of this rejection is a turning away from the pragmatic acceptance of the senses as reliable guides to the truth. In China, India, the Middle East, and Greece ways of thinking arose which consider the senses in some way fallen, impure, or dangerous—often along with the “world of the senses” that they present to us. Some other world—some other reality or truth—would stake a higher claim to reality. Whether that world is Plato’s realm of forms, the Buddhist’s transcendental escape from the cycle of life and death, or simply paradise, we find that across the board, the senses are no path to knowledge. Often lauded as chief among the senses, vision falls precipitously in the context of these new world views. Though in practice these world cultures continue to use color much as other traditional cultures had, the ground is laid during this axial age for what we will term (following David Batchelor’s coinage) in later chapters “chromophobia”—a genuine fear and distrust of bright or excessive color. Though we don’t yet see iconoclastic or puritanical purgings of color, nor any widespread acceptance of muted color palettes, we do see these ideas formed in the words of scripture and philosophy. The Hindu Upanishads often use colorful terminology and contrast the multicolored world around us with the eternal and insensible higher realities (Olivelle 1998). They include the kinds of color symbolism we see in many traditional cultures, such as various connections between seven colors and seven planets, chakras, days of the week, and so on. But these conventions are layered over in the vast literature with an idea that the true colors of the world are perceived by the eye assisted by an inner eye. In Yoga Art, Ajit Mookerjee says of this inward vision, “It is not the eye alone that perceives light, but the eye married to the mind: antar jyotih. The inner illumination is jyotisam jyotih: the Light of Light. It is this that is the object of contemplation” (Mookerjee 1975, 39). And he cites this evocative passage from the Svetasvatara Upanishad: IV; 1–4 (1) which describes a causal relationship between the un-colored and the colorful: 28

Natural Resources and Trade

The One without colour appears by the manifold applications of His power. With many colours in His hidden purpose. May the Being of Splendour, in Whom the world dissolves and from Whom it rises, Grant us a clear understanding! Mookerjee 1975, 39 In such cases color is not in itself fallen or evil, and it may lead us to contemplation of the truth, but that truth is a higher reality beyond the senses. Even more ambiguous are passages from the Tao Te Ching in which Lao Tzu discusses “The image of the imageless” and asserts that ultimate reality is as immaterial as it is indefinable: Look, it cannot be seen—it is beyond form. Listen, it cannot be heard—it is beyond sound. Grasp, it cannot be held—it is intangible. Tzu 1972, 26 Others, however, developed attitudes of genuine antipathy towards color. As we will see in Chapter 2, Plato articulates a deep distrust of the senses, and a polemical antagonism to the arts as a dangerous means of manipulating the emotions and overruling the reasoning soul of the individual. And in Chapter 3 we will consider how Augustine cautioned that the world of the flesh represented a grave danger to the souls of Christians. Finally, consider this discussion of Buddhist philosophy: What then, is meant by pure perception? The way we usually experience the outer world, our bodies and our feelings is impure, in the sense that we perceive them as ordinary, substantially existing entities. From this erroneous perception comes the negative emotions that perpetuate suffering. Leidy and Thurman 1998, 157 In such commentaries it is difficult to determine what is original to Buddhist philosophy and what is our perception of that philosophy as filtered through an understanding of the world based on modern physics. But the effort to detach from the world of suffering is obviously antithetical to an attachment to sensuous colors. We will term this wide ranging set of color theories “esoteric color” as they constitute a general turning away from a pragmatic and straightforward approach to color in various ways. These esoteric approaches are traditional in the sense in which this chapter is framed because they are widespread attitudes in pre-modern and non-industrial cultures. In general these are efforts to contemplate ideas, concepts, beings, or realities that are simply not visible. These new categories are deemed real despite their inaccessibility to the senses and it is that inaccessibility that makes them esoteric. In some cases these new categories are seen as compatible with but greater than the visible world. In others the acceptance of the unseen world requires a renunciation of that which we can see around us. As a widespread element of traditional color theory, esoteric color is a strong cross-current to the general trend of attitudes towards color, which is otherwise broadly popular and celebrated. And we will see that esoteric color concepts plant a seed of chromophobia in world philosophy that will grow and flourish during the modern period.

29

Color Theory

Color Use Activity 1.2 Environmental color 4 Picking up where the previous exercises left off, and assuming you have settled on a palette of colors, in your own exploration of traditional color meaning you should experiment with your own color ordering systems. Are three, or four, or five of these colors most basic somehow? Can you arrange them in a line or circle? You will want to think through what it means for colors to be neighbors, or to be placed opposite from each other. Remember not to assume black and white are unlike any other color. They may certainly be very important, owing to their connection to the darkness and the light, but in most times and places they are still colors. Consider the world around you stripped of its industrial context. You would still have a culture, plenty of which would not be “natural” or preordained. But the schedule of the year and the day might be closer to that of the seasons, dawn, dusk, and so on. And without GPS the cardinal directions might assume more meaning. Take some time to note where and when the sun rises and sets. Your activities during the day might be less independent, more in line with the needs of others. Consider your family or friend group and categories of gender, status, and insider/outsider. Do you have different skills, areas of expertise, and roles? All of these elements of your imagined non-industrial culture may now be imaginatively applied to the color palette you have assembled. Create a mandala using your colors. It may be a simple arrangement of colors in a square or circle, or it may be more complex and even maze-like. It is meant to represent the whole of the world as well as the order within each individual person. Each color should play its role in terms of the categories you have assigned to it, though these may capable of transformation, union, inversion, and so on. Destroy your mandala. Environmental color 5 Use your colors to create art, beautify your world, decorate your objects, and so on. Do not regard the colors as a limited set. These are the colors of your culture, appropriate to your setting and well suited to your task. Each composition using these colors has the potential for unity, harmony, and pleasing contrast. And the resulting creations make manifest the meaning and power of each color. Environmental color 6 Now break the mold of your traditional color palette. Select one object, piece of furniture, wall, or room to imbue with extraordinary or supernatural significance. This is reserved for the ancestors, to convey unimaginable wealth and power, or for your god or gods. Imagine that by some fluke new colors and materials have entered your world (fallen from the sky, washed up on shore, arrived in a stranger’s pack, etc.). You could go to a dollar store and collect things that are bright, colorful, sparkly, or otherwise a delight to the senses. Or else you could obtain some costume jewelry, gold foil, or other item that suits your imagination. Use these things to adorn, embellish, and make your selected surfaces shine. Make sure that the things you have embellished using your traditional palette are the only other artifacts around, to provide the necessary contrast. Here is the impact of Babylon’s blue gates, of the rarest Tyrian purple, of precious stones, and gold leaf.

30

Natural Resources and Trade

Conclusion In Provincializing Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty explains his reasons for discarding the scholarly methodology which would treat matters of gods and spirits as secondary to societies. Rejecting the notion that a rational discussion of history must be carried on in a secular context, he argues instead that the supernatural is a constant of the human world: The second assumption running through modern European political thought and the social sciences is that the human is ontologically singular, that gods and spirits are in the end “social facts,” that the social somehow exists prior to them . . . One empirically knows of no society in which humans have existed without gods and spirits accompanying them . . . I take gods and spirits to be existentially coeval with the human, and think from the assumption that the question of being human involves the question of being with gods and spirits. Chakrabarty 2000, 16 Chakrabarty’s approach here, and the title of his book, indicate a similar goal to that of our project—to recenter the object of our study within global cultures, and place European approaches among all other regional variations, at the periphery or—as he would have it—in the provinces. As a culture, even those of us who are actively religious tend to think of science as definitive in many areas of inquiry. But we need to be aware just how unusual that is, and how much more common would be the notion that colors are not merely symbolic of, but actually constitute the power of things unseen. And that word “coeval” is one we also saw Ronald Clainger use in discussing the omnipresence of certain proto-mathematical habits of thought in human cultures. Linguists also debate the origins of language in ways that find the line between human nature and human culture blurred. The earliest efforts at representation—of painting or carving a presence that otherwise is distant in time or space—are themselves proto-languages, but it is difficult or impossible to know what the state of spoken languages was at that time. We would offer that, color being an inherent part of human perception, it is entangled with these three coeval human phenomena: of gods, spirits, and supernatural forces; of quantity, direction, and measurement (see Figure 1.8); and of spoken words and written symbols. We are arguing a kind of syllogism that says if the human is coeval with color, and with gods, and with representation—then those things are coeval with each other. That, for instance, color is coeval with the gods and spirits. This then requires that color theory must grapple with that dimension of color. From the earliest examples of aesthetic embellishment, abstract mark-making, and representational imagemaking—and in mentions of color in the earliest world literatures—we see color aligned with these other thought processes to make order out of our world. Traditional color theory begins with these alliances between color and the divine, color and the ordered world, color and symbol. And through color, hominids have found the power of re-presentation; the magic of making something that is absent be present nonetheless. The first elements of a traditional and global theory of color are linked to stories of the creation of the cosmos in the manifestation of dark and light and their corollaries black and white. This is in distinct contrast to Newtonian color theory in which these elements are frequently deemed “not colors.” Also of seemingly immediate salience is red, which joins with black and white to form a set of primary colors which we may directly contrast with the latter-day set of red, yellow, and blue primaries. Black, white, and red are primary in a broader context than that of modern society, providing the backdrop of all visual experience and nature’s loudest signal set against that backdrop. We will see in the final chapter that even in contemporary art and design the use of these colors establishes an authoritative and powerful tone. The sourcing of pigments from the environment forms the primary context in which further aspects of color significance arise. At all times and in all cultures, color palettes reflect the relationships between humans and 31

Color Theory

Figure 1.8 Aztec images, like this one of the god Xiuhtecuhtli, reinforce connections between color, the divine, and both the cardinal directions and the seasons. Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo. their environment. And just as those relationships must be balanced to be sustained, prehistoric and ancient color palettes that may seem incomplete to us are whole and balanced in the practice of those artists; each artifact providing for a calibration of the contrasting properties of the pigments available. This calibration may be achieved by bold patterning and juxtaposition or by a richly tactile analog experience of color mixture and discovery. Bright and durable color traits, climate factors, rarity and abundance, human intervention through advancing technological skill, and beneficial properties of colored materials are among the aspects that inflect the meaning found in color palettes. When considered alongside patterns of thought that seek to create conceptual order in the world, color takes on more complex and variable associations with the dominant dichotomies and categories of human experience such as gender, class, the seasons, and so on. There are abundant cases where scriptures and other texts tie a set of colors to divisions of the macro and microcosms, but despite those symbolic meanings the practice of artists is generally unconstrained by these theoretical systems. Rather, the association of color with substance, as a direct indicator of the real potency of the materials of the world around us, is a potentially more reliable indicator of the purposes to which a color may be put owing to its ritual and therapeutic uses. In terms of broad conclusions from the confusing array of color associations, we may draw the basic lesson 32

Natural Resources and Trade

that color is ubiquitously used in systems of codes as part of the human effort to make sense of the world, and color is traditionally viewed pragmatically as concretely real and indicative of the natural and supernatural powers of the colored substances we find around us. And while traditional color may well be a visual delight, it is not merely decorative or pretty, but is rather a practical and efficacious tool. This broad acceptance of color as real is, however, significantly complicated by the revolutionary developments in world philosophy during the so-called axial age. In the course of the first millennium bce , new ways of thinking emerged in a variety of ancient civilizations that made possible a more systematic study of the invisible world. In many cases a world of unseen ideals became theoretically more important than the world of the senses, and led to the development of more esoteric approaches to color. Some of these approaches would dismiss color as part and parcel of a world of illusion or sin. Others would make color a link between these worlds. As we will see in the remaining chapters, this broad trend would endure as a counterpoint to a more traditional faith in the realness of color until being taken in a more chromophobic direction in the context of European Modernism.

References Berlin, B. and P. Kay, 1991. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Birren, F., 1963. Color: A Survey in Words and Pictures, From Ancient Mysticism to Modern Science. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books Inc. Birren, F., 1969. Principles of Color: A Review of Past Traditions and Modern Theories of Color Harmony. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Calinger, R. and T. R. West, 1999. A Contextual History of Mathematics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Chakrabarty, D., 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. David, B., 2017. Cave Art, World of art. London: Thames & Hudson. Finlay, V., 2004. Color: A Natural History of the Palette. New York: Random House. Gold, P., 1994. Navajo and Tibetan Sacred Wisdom: The Circle of the Spirit. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Hartwig, M., 2016. “Method in Ancient Egyptian Painting.” In V. Angenot and F. Tiradtitti (eds.), Artists and Colour in Ancient Egypt, Proceedings of the Colloquium Held in Montepulciano, August 22nd – 24th, 2008, Monografie Poliziane di Egittologia 1. Montepulciano: Missione Archeologica Italiana a Luxor. Jaspers, K., 1953. The Origin and Goal of History, 1st English ed. London Routledge & Keegan Paul. Johnson, C., 1971. Vedanta: An Anthology of Hindu Scripture, Commentary and Poetry, 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row. Kaufmann, R. C., 1974. “A Biographical Note on Faber Birren.” Yale University Library Gazette 49: 73–5. Lao Tsu, 1972. Tao te ching. New York: Vintage Books. Leidy, D. P. and R. A. F. Thurman, 1997. Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment. Shambhala, New York, and Boston: Asia Society Galleries; Tibet House. Mittal, S. and G. R. Thursby (eds.), 2004. The Hindu World, The Routledge worlds. New York: Routledge. Mo, D. and B. Watson, 2003. Mozi: Basic Writings, Translations from the Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press. Mookerjee, A. and P. S. Rawson, 1975. Yoga Art. Boston: New York Graphic Society. Morrison, T., 1992. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, The William E. Massey, Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. New Revised Standard Version Bible, 1989. Washington, DC: Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Olivelle, P. (ed.), 1998. The Early Upanisads: ̣ Annotated Text and Translation. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers. Pastoureau, M., 2009. Black: The History of a Color, English language ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Robins, G., 2008. Egyptian Painting and Relief, Shire Egyptology. Oxford: Shire Publications. Thomas, N., 1995. Oceanic Art, World of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson.

33

CHAPTER 2 KNOWING AT A DISTANCE: COLOR PROBLEMS IN ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT

Iris—“O thou unwedded child of murky Night: With madness thrill this man, with soul-turmoil Child-murdering, with wild bounding of the feet: Goad him; the sheets of murder’s sails let out That, when o’er Acheron’s ferry his own hand In blood hath sped his crown of goodly sons. Then may he learn how dread is Hera’s wrath, And mine, against him:” Euripides, The Madness of Herakles In ancient Greek religion the rainbow, whom they called Iris, was a goddess associated with Hera, and a messenger between the gods and humanity. It is easy to see how the rainbow would present a particularly wondrous and remarkably manifest link to the Olympian skies. Iris is said to appear suddenly, out of the blue and according to rules that are difficult to predict—and in a manner that is all business. The Greek gods were much like the implacable random shocks of the natural world, and the messages they sent were as likely to destroy a life as save it (see Figure 2.1). Euripides gives us a chilling example of this trait in the play Herakles, first performed in 416 bce at the City Dionysia festival in Athens. The play is a blunt rumination on the terrible irony of post-traumatic stress disorder, in which a warrior survives all the mortal dangers of combat, only to return to his own home as a murderous monster. At first the play is a mixture of happy homecoming for Herakles and revenge taken on those who threatened his family in his absence. The chorus is celebrating this event when the “specters” of Iris and Lyssa, the incarnations of the rainbow and of madness, arrive in the heavens. Lyssa, born of night, questions their mission from Hera. But Iris rebuffs this appeal to good conscience. She says of Hera “she and I are one” and bids Madness to twist Herakles’ mind so that he will think that his family are his enemy. She does so and the gory scene, which occurs offstage, is recounted by a messenger. Taking up his bow and his club, the great hero has murdered his own wife and children, sparing only his father as a consequence of a late intervention by Athena. In a certain sense such Greek tragedies do not so much explain the horrible events they portray as simply remind us of their presence in our world. Q: Why does Herakles slay his family? A: Because the god’s willed it. The purported answer is no better than “Because he did.” And we see in Iris a parallel with ideas about color as a startling link between us and the heavens, a manifestation of wonder and chance, and a powerful force that defies rational explanation. The philosophers of ancient Greece do attempt to explain the rainbow rationally, describing it as a result or cause of weather phenomena—accurately noting its connection with water and light. And Aristotle’s Meteorologica would work out the geometry of the rainbow’s fixed angle, showing that Iris is susceptible to mathematical analysis (1923). But Greek philosophers also tended to see color as a treacherous property. For many it would represent all that is shifting and unreliable in the world of the senses. This suspicion often led 35

Color Theory

Figure 2.1 Iris, Greek goddess of the rainbow, is a link between gods and humans who—in Euripides’ telling—brings madness to Herakles. agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo. to the assertion that color is in fact an irrational and dangerous factor in our world. For Plato the senses were no kind of path to knowledge, and the arts thought of more broadly were something quite dangerous. Because such aesthetic appeals could move the emotions without the filter of rational thought, he saw all art as dangerous to the state, whose citizens are easily turned to destructive ends by eloquent but unscrupulous playwrights, poets, sculptors, painters, and politicians (Plato 1902). As a result of these basic attitudes, Greek philosophy is often about color even when color is not its stated topic. It is at the center of Greek preoccupations with what is real, how we come to know what is real, and how we ought to conduct ourselves in the world. Introduction Ancient Greek culture can seem both alien and familiar to the twenty-first-century Westerner. In many ways we consider ourselves to be the heirs of traditions that began in Athens’ Golden Age. And, more certainly, Greek philosophy has had a lasting impact on our own, even if that impact is mediated by many layers of reinterpretation. 36

Knowing at a Distance

We valorize ancient Greek culture for its distinctive turn towards modes of inquiry divorced from religious doctrine even as we adopt Platonic and Aristotilean theories through a Christian theological lens. Though naturally they did not label themselves as color theorists, Greek philosophers often concerned themselves with discussions of aesthetics, light, and the process or mechanisms of perception. Furthermore, as we see throughout history, philosophies that do not directly form color theories nevertheless hold implications constraining how a theory of color might take shape. Finally, archaeological remains and references to color in Greek literature allow us to glean inferences about their cultural attitudes towards, and practical relationships with, color. Greek attitudes about color afford us a thought exercise where we may attempt to see color from a different perspective than we are accustomed to. We might have chosen any other specific culture to start our narrative, but here is where we acknowledge certain limitations that draw us to select ancient Greece as the specific culture to begin a narrative arc (as contrasted with the more episodic and global considerations of Chapter 1). We are reckoning first of all with the profound influence of Greek thought which came to dominate the ancient Mediterranean world. This was due arguably to the unique power of the new modes of inquiry and dialectical give-and-take that it employed, but also to Alexander the Great’s stunning conquests and later the imprimatur of Roman imperial orthodoxy. Thus, Greek thought is simply too influential to leave out of a history of color theory. Another reason for starting here arises from that issue of retrospective influence. As Western culture has looked back at history, and especially as Art History formed itself as a discipline in the early nineteenth century, a narrative has been formed which claims the ancient Greeks as the founders of that Western tradition. At the end of this chapter we will look at some of the ways such a narrative may be in error, but we acknowledge at the outset the weight that lineage has on our work.

General notes on color in ancient Greek philosophy As Greek philosophers sought to understand vision, the context in which we hear the most from them about color, they understood it as a process by which we come to know of things at a distance. In other words, they sought to examine how we come to have an image in our eye of something that is not immediately pressing itself upon it. This “knowing at a distance,” they reasoned, comes about by some subtle yet fundamentally mechanical process and thus was caught up in Greek debates about how processes or changes occur. This links color to a fundamental preoccupation of the Pre-Socratic philosophers—the problem of change or becoming. We will follow the conventional narrative, beginning with Pre-Socratic philosophers who were primarily concerned with cosmological and metaphysical questions of what is real and how it came into being. The Greeks did have a color system based on a set of basic colors: black, white, red, and yellow. Empedocles would suggest a cosmology whereby the illusion of a lush and complex world is conjured up out of the four classical elements just as painters create their illusion out of the four basic colors (Wheelwright 1986, 122–3). At the end of our narrative we will see Aristotle insisting both that all colors are created by the interaction of white and black, and that of those colors the most basic are red, green, and violet. He also gives color its first thorough study as a legitimate means to gain knowledge of the world. Along the way we will find numerous other propositions on the subject including a general ability to imagine the world in achromatic terms. We will also discuss the great confrontation between the Sophists and Socrates on what the proper use of wisdom is. That debate will help us to expand from questions about the what and how of color to the deeper question of why: to what end do we perceive color and make use of it in art and design? In addition to following the mainstream of Greek philosophy, however, categories such as mathematics, theology, and medicine can also tell us about color. Then there are the literary arts: the works of Homer and 37

Color Theory

the playwrights of the Golden Age of Greek culture, although these may fall under the category of theology, having at least a nominal affiliation with religious scripture or ritual.

Attitudes to color in ancient Greek culture Before delving further into what ancient Greek philosophers had to say about color, we need to take note of the broader cultural and religious aspects of Greek thought. We have noted that the work of philosophy, as the Greeks conceived it, was divorced from religion. But often the patterns of thought found in the one rhymes with the other. Religious narratives full of drama, eros and strife, and so on play out very often in terms of binary oppositions including that of light and dark. And insofar as color was a topic, it generally reinforces such patterns or is itself portrayed as being in cosmological conflict. Besides the connections between philosophy and religion, we should note the fact that ancient Greek religion had multiple strands. The writings of Homer, for instance, were understood by Socrates and his contemporaries as being historically more recent and “modern” than more ancient traditions (Plato and Segal 1986, ix–x). And the sky gods of the Olympian traditions are to be contrasted to the earth-focused or chthonic tradition, with its emphasis on growth and death, and its mysterious initiations (Wheelwright 1986, 2–5). Likewise, as we examine Greek thought on color we should expect to find not a single tradition but multiple ways of thinking about color. It is worth contending with recent popular reports of studies that conclude that the Greeks “did not possess” the color blue. Some go so far as to say they didn’t see blue. Such conclusions are hard to square with the very brief evolutionary interval between them and us. The lack of blue in Greek language is precisely a linguistic issue. As noted in the Chapter 1, Berlin and Kay’s landmark linguistic survey supports the idea that color words increase as a society’s needs for color differentiation grow more complex. Typically this tracks with the technological ability to generate suitable colored pigments. And, as is assumed of any culture with smaller sets of basic color terms, the ancient Greeks are assumed to see the same portions of the spectrum as we do. There are lots of colors that we see, for instance, and simply describe as “brown.” That is until we need to pick a certain brown for our kitchen counter-top, at which point we might differentiate between “truffle” and “walnut.” Thus it can be argued that the Greek perception of the sky was dominated by notions of brightness and darkness. When Homer refers to “grey eyed Athena” and her Olympian home which we associate with the sky, he might have been describing a goddess with what we would call blue eyes (Gladstone 1858). Likewise, his “wine dark sea” may not have been red or purple as the word wine suggest to us, but merely akin to wine in its degree of darkness, which struck the poet as its primary color trait (Gladstone 1858). Furthermore, some optical qualities we don’t think of as color, such as iridescence and translucence, are often used by the Greeks as color terms. So the sea’s darkness may have been a feature of its opacity—a sea which conceals its depths. Indeed we do know that the ancient Greeks had a sort of set of primary colors—though very alien to our notions. They numbered the basic colors at four: black, white, red, and yellow. Imagine yourself describing the visual world with just these words, their combinations, and the occasional reference to a particular object (say “wool” or “raspberry”) and you get a sense of how the boundaries of color words are flexible. “Black,” in the Greek imagination, was not limited to the things we would call black because it must account for enough more of the visible world, in league with those other four terms, to make up for the colors we feel are missing (orange, blue, green, etc.). Perhaps the leaves of a tree would be dark yellow, or maybe “leaf yellow.” In truth, we can only speculate as to how those using a more limited color vocabulary used those words to discuss the same

38

Knowing at a Distance

color spectrum all cultures see. We are setting aside for now arguments that will be discussed in Chapter 8 about how culture and language might truly shape our mind’s perception of what our eyes see. Holding that thought, we can say that the Greeks saw blue, but likely discounted its significance as an experience distinct from other colors and optical effects. One more prejudice we must disabuse ourselves of is that Greek aesthetics were what we might call “refined” and generally achromatic. That is to say, our idealized notion of classical art as dominated by pristine white marble statues and temples—geometrically perfect forms, regarded by the intellect and not distracted by what we might also consider the more emotional colors. The entire nature of the preceding sentence reveals our own fantasy of classical art and culture. Trace elements of pigment in the archaeological record, along with textual evidence, indicate that those statues and buildings were brightly colored—to a degree that we might consider “gaudy.” Evidently then, Greek attitudes towards color were rather more exuberant than our own—or at least more so than we had previously considered theirs to be.

Pre-Socratic philosophy, a brief overview The Pre-Socratic philosophers practiced mostly along the coast of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) as well as Greek colonies in the Western Mediterranean (Italy and nearby islands) from the seventh century through the fifth century bce . These locations were trading hubs on the boundaries of the Greek world, where contact with diverse cultures, it has been argued, led to an awareness of the diverse and inconsistent doctrines represented by the religious and intellectual traditions of the broader world. The philosophies they developed asked some of the most basic questions about the world. Their answers were diverse and often at odds with each other, inaugurating not a single philosophy but a tradition of inquiry given to vigorous debate and laying the foundations for later standards of logical argument. Much of what we know about their teachings comes to us second hand from commentaries by later philosophers, supplemented by scattered fragments of their original writings. Given largely to inquiries into metaphysics (the origin and fundamental nature of the world), Pre-Socratic philosophers therefore wrestled with questions of ontology (what is real?—and what is not real?). These questions then raised doubts about epistemology (what do we know?—and how do we know it?). But there was relatively little concern with ethics (questions of how one should live one’s life), at least not at the level that Socrates would develop it. Central problems included the question of how change occurs in that which is real, and the relationship between the One and the Many—both struggles to understand how the unitary reality that they saw as fundamental relates to the diverse and shifting world we see around us (Armstrong 1989, 8). Typical techniques employed were the invocation of Opposites (light and dark, moist and dry, etc.) as forces at work in the cosmos, and categorization (of things and properties alike) into the four elements of fire, air, earth, and water (Armstrong 1989, 4). J. L. Benson has argued that those four elements, as understood by the philosopher Empedocles, were explicitly tied to the four basic colors of black, white, red, and yellow (though conceding that it is unclear which element was tied to which color) (2000). Often, the search for that which is most fundamental in the world led to the selection of one of those four elements as primary—Thales specified “the moist” as giving rise to all other forms, while Anaximenes specified air, or breath, as being the primal force of the cosmos (Armstrong 1989, 3). Finally, mathematical inquiry by nearly all Greek philosophers, but especially in the work of the Pythagoreans, supported an ability to generalize from specific cases and see patterns at work in nature, and may have combined fortuitously with a general atmosphere of debate to establish rudimentary standards of logic, proof, and reasoning (Armstrong 1989,

39

Color Theory

5–8). We can see nearly all of these aspects of Pre-Socratic philosophy, and become acquainted with a central theme of Greek color theory, in the teachings of one particularly influential philosopher; Parmenides.

Is/Becomes Parmenides was the first Greek philosopher to relentlessly apply reasoning in his quest to understand reality. His key tenet, that there only is that which is, and that nonbeing is a nonsensical object of contemplation, led him to many conclusions that run contrary to our everyday experience of the world (Armstrong 1989, 12). He reasoned that what is cannot have come from nothing nor can it ever become nothing—that being is complete and sufficient to itself (Armstrong 1989, 13). He then drew the conclusion that the only true ultimate reality is a bounded (not limitless) and perfect sphere with absolutely homogeneous substance throughout(Armstrong 1989, 13). There are no organs or parts of this entity, as these parts would imply a lack elsewhere, and there is no change or movement. Whereas it is natural in English to say “It is,” Greek grammar allows for the rather bald assertion “Is.” This “Is” is contrasted in the Greek mind with “Becomes.” We quote the scholar Philip Wheelwright, in part because of his serendipitous use of color in this illustration: “Becomes” (genetai) taken absolutely means “comes to be”; taken copulatively it means “turns into,” as when we might say of the sky at sunset “the blue becomes red.” The meanings . . . are never entirely separable, for when blue changes into red there is a coming to be of red. 1986, 93 As may already be apparent, Parmenides dismisses all becoming as mere illusion. What is real does not change. What changes is not real. All sensory evidence to the contrary, this swirling world of color, taste, pain, pleasure, birth, death, and so on—is simply false. As Parmenides writes, again invoking color, speaking in the voice of “The Goddess”: Accordingly, all the usual notions that mortals accept and rely on as true—coming to-be and perishing, being and not-being, change of place and variegated shades of color—these are nothing more than names. Wheelwright 1985, 98 Parmenides’ philosophy represents an extreme of what is known as Monism—the belief in the singular and the whole, and the construal of divisions, qualities, and so on as—at best—the means by which our limited intelligence can engage with that whole. At worst, of course, we labor in utter ignorance. Parmenides was extremely influential in his day and well beyond it, both in positive and negative ways. Positively, his insistence on following reason wherever it leads was widely admired and emulated. Also, notions of perfection clung to his conception of an ideal, homogenous, geometrically rigorous form—even among the many who did not subscribe to his Monism. Negatively, even his followers took the problem of the One and the Many not as settled by his efforts but as a logical puzzle raised by them. They accepted the essential truth of his reasoning but sought to reconcile that truth with the manifest reality of experience. Meanwhile, those who rejected his theories found in them an almost quaint example of the philosopher whose efforts have no connection with reality. Many who find the whole project of metaphysics suspect would reject his work out of hand. But the work remained, impactful in subtle ways, and insisting on accommodation or refutation. For color in Pre-Socratic thought, the 40

Knowing at a Distance

achromatic nature of that which is and the false nature of all that becomes would contribute to a lasting stigma and denigration of all sensory information in relation to the products of pure reason.

The opposites In Chapter 1 we acknowledged the broad tendency across cultures to think in terms of opposites, apparent in many cultures including our own. We saw that the ancient Hebrew book of Genesis implies either no color theory at all or else a color theory absolutely fundamental to their cosmology—depending on how we read the statement “God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1.4, NRSV). We can argue that statements about light and dark, made in parallel with other binaries such as good and evil or wet and dry, are foundational to Greek color theory. They are an effort to explain the world of light and color—the world of visual appearance—at its most primal level. “What is color?” they ask. And they reply, “It began with night and day.” Their religious tradition, as found in Hesiod’s Theogony, tells us that “first Chaos came to be” and goes on to state, “From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bore from union in love with Erebus” (lines 115–26). Thus darkness, in this cosmology, gives rise to light—or, the light emerges from the darkness. Many Pre-Socratic philosophers follow similar patterns, postulating some singular fundamental state and then a mechanism by which the opposites arise from that One. For Xenophanes the primal pair of opposites were earth and water, or dryness and moisture (Wheelwright 1986, 33–4). Anaximander specified a sort of vast undifferentiated repository of qualities, which we translate as “The Boundless,” from which pairs of opposites arise sequentially (Wheelwright 1986, 52–4). He describes each apparent quality as a usurper, overthrowing its opposite in an endless process governed by justice (Wheelwright 1986, 54–9). Although we too use binary thinking as a shorthand technique for understanding the world, Anaximander’s cosmology points up the degree to which the qualities are not seen by the Pre-Socratics as fleeting variations of the substances and conditions around us—but as abstract principles whose natures cannot reasonably be said to shift to their opposing principles. Perhaps for us this thinking still applies to good and evil, as we might argue that good does not become evil nor does what is evil become good. For an ancient Greek philosopher the other binaries are equally immutable. The darkness is a real thing—a principle—not simply an absence of light. And the phrase “turn out the dark” makes just as much sense as its opposite. There is therefore some question as to how darkness can give way to light. As we will see later, this problem of light and dark is transformed into a full-fledged color theory in the work of Aristotle. Parmenides’ most immediate follower was Empedocles, who advanced a notion that there are four basic parts to being, understood in terms of the four classical elements: air, earth, fire, and water (Wheelwright 1986, 122). Though the pairings are not consistently applied (water being opposed to fire by some—to earth by others), it was part of the overall pattern of Greek thought to imagine sets of four as evolving out of binary oppositions. Empedocles also sets his four elements (and as J. L. Benson (2000) argues, the four colors) in motion by means of another set of opposites, love and strife, which combine elements and bind them together in harmony, and divide and separate them in discord (Wheelwright 1986, 128–30). Thus the essential dynamic of Opposites gives rise to increasingly complex manifestations in the world and, potentially, to increasingly subtle color mixtures in art. Empedocles makes the analogy between nature’s creations and those of the painter explicit with these lines: When painters wise and skilled in their craft are preparing sumptuous votive altars in a temple, they use pigments of many colors and blend them judiciously, now a little more of this and now of that; thereby 41

Color Theory

they produce likenesses of all things—of trees, of men and women, of beasts and birds and underdwelling fishes, and even of such honored beings as the long-lived gods. The way in which all of the actual things of the world have come into existence, although they are incalculably more numerous, is essentially no different from this . . . Wheelwright 1986, 130–1 So Empedocles gives us a cosmology built upon an analogy with painting, and thereby suggests that he and his contemporaries might view painting as a re-enactment of cosmic principles. He also notes the sumptuousness of the painter’s finished product, telling us something about Greek tastes. And he endorses a representational role for art. Very little remains of Greek painting, but circumstantial evidence suggests a style that combined great talent for verisimilitude with certain stylizations we might consider unrealistic. This doctrine of Opposites is realized in one of its most rigid forms by the Pythagorean Brotherhood—a quasi-religious and secretive order of philosopher mathematicians whose founder, Pythagoras, is shrouded by incredible legends. Inspired by the one-to-two ratio of the octave (and the ratios of other harmonies) in music, they came to see all reality as being mathematical (Wheelwright 1986, 202–3). Their watchword was “Things are numbers” and one of the first observations they make about number is that it appears in repeating series of odd and even, which they characterized as masculine and feminine, respectively (Armstrong 1989, 7). They believed the world was composed of interactions between ten pairs of opposites including good and evil and light and dark (Armstrong 1989, 8). The Pythagoreans decidedly “took sides” in this world of opposition, promising initiates into their mystery cult a path to escape the prison of this world, to which our immortal souls have been doomed in a cycle of reincarnation. Just as good was preferred to evil, so masculine, odd, and light were preferred above feminine, even, and dark. Despite this misogyny, Pythagoras may have been the first founder of a philosophical school to accept female initiates. Let us record here the name of Theano, as she may be the first woman of Greek philosophy, and color theory is not blessed with many female protagonists (Plant 2004, 68–74). One of Parmenides’ followers, Anaxagoras, developed a mechanism by which the appearance of becoming is at least explained. A “pluralist,” he posited that there were innumerably various and infinitely divisible bits of qualities all mixed up in absolute being, but that Mind sets this mixture in motion, indeed in rotation, and separates the qualities out from one another in much the same manner as a centrifuge (Wheelwright 1986, 157–8). In our experience, he posits, we never come across any perfectly pure quantity of any of these fundamental qualities—including the various colors—but always come upon them in some degree of mixture. He writes: Such being the case, we must suppose that composite things contain many ingredients of the very greatest variety—the seeds of everything, having all kinds of characteristics, colors, and ways of affecting the sensitivities. Wheelwright 1986, 160 Here we may have come across our first, nearly explicit, Greek color theory. Colors are among these basic sets of qualities that are spun out of the great mixture that is being—or at least some colors, understood as pairs of opposites, are of this fundamentally “real” nature. For we are given to understand that we never experience a color that is not to some degree a mixture of qualities and we now know that qualitatively distinct colors can indeed arise from mixtures of other colors. Possibly, and in line with other Greek thought, the only fundamental pair of color opposites is an unimaginably dark darkness and an unimaginably light lightness. Or, given that Anaxagoras emphasizes the vast range of qualities in the mix and their infinitesimal capacity for subdivision, it is quite plausible that he would argue that all the colors we might care to name do exist in the mix as absolute purities no mortal can conceive of. 42

Knowing at a Distance

Color Use Activity 2.1 The ancient Greeks had no color wheel as we know it, but they did often categorize and set things in order relative to one another. We have the classical elements (fire, air, earth, and water) as well as the four humors or “flowing liquids” of the human organism (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm), and of course the four basic colors (black, white, red, and yellow). There is reason to believe that all of these systems were linked one to the other and that all were governed by ideas of proportion and balance so that health, beauty, and cosmic order all required the four parts to be in their proper relationship. Another aspect of Greek ordering systems includes a reduction of the four to a single most essential element—as water is for Thales for instance—but also as darkness is sometimes said to give birth to the light. Then there is the emphasis on eternal opposites as a means of explaining dynamic change. Finally, processes of rarification (or strife) and condensation (or eros) sometimes lead them to verbalize a vertical ordering rather than a circular one. Bearing the above in mind, and citing the words and concepts of the ancient Greeks in this chapter or from your own research, create six color ordering systems (quite hypothetical and probably anachronistic) for ancient Greek artists. These color ordering systems will be employed in later color use activities. If working in a group setting, compare and critique your work. Color ordering system 1 Create a four-part vertical ordering system for the basic colors black, white, red, and yellow by coloring in the squares of a column, divided into four perfect squares, in the order you think best corresponds to Greek color notions. Annotate your ordering system with an explanation of why the colors are in this order—what properties are indicated by the relative position of each color? Color ordering system 2 Create a four-part circular ordering system for the basic colors black, white, red, and yellow by coloring in the wedges of a circle, divided into four equal slices, in the order you think best corresponds to Greek color notions. Annotate your ordering system with an explanation of why the colors are in this order—what properties are indicated by the relative position of each color? If you are working in a group setting, compare and critique your results. Color ordering system 3 Create a seven-part vertical ordering system for the basic colors black, white, red, and yellow plus Plato’s additions of “bright,” “translucent,” and “gold” by coloring in the squares in a column, divided into seven perfect squares, in the order you think best corresponds to Platonic color notions. Bright and translucent are contrasted by Plato as being, respectively, very noticeable and very hard for the eye to detect. Gold apparently partakes in, or is akin to, bright. While you may read ahead to get a better idea of Plato’s conception of these three additions, regardless you will have to resort to some creative interpretation in order to “color” them in. Annotate your ordering system with an explanation of why the colors are in this order—what properties are indicated by the relative position of each color?

43

Color Theory

Color ordering system 4 Create a seven-part circular ordering system for the basic colors black, white, red, and yellow plus Plato’s addition of “bright,” “translucent,” and “gold” by coloring in the wedges of a circle, divided into seven equal pie slices, in the order you think best corresponds to Platonic color notions. Annotate your ordering system with an explanation of why the colors are in this order—what properties are indicated by the relative position of each color? Color ordering system 5 Create a five-part vertical ordering system for black and white, which (as light and dark) Aristotle considered to be responsible for the creation of all colors, as well as the red, green, and violet he observed in the rainbow and also considered primary by coloring in a vertical column, divided into five perfect squares, in the order you think best corresponds to Aristotilian color notions. Annotate your ordering system with an explanation of why the colors are in this order—what properties are indicated by the relative position of each color? Color ordering system 6 Create a five-part circular ordering system for black and white, which (as light and dark) Aristotle considered to be responsible for the creation of all colors as well as the red, green, and violet he observed in the rainbow and also considered primary, by coloring in the wedges of a circle, divided into five equal pie wedges, in the order you think best corresponds to Aristotilian color notions. Annotate your ordering system with an explanation of why the colors are in this order—what properties are indicated by the relative position of each color?

The achromatic imagination Central to all ancient Greek philosophy is an abiding faith in an underlying order in the universe. Even the apparently anarchic vision of such thinkers as Heraclitus, famous for the statement that we paraphrase today as “No man steps into the same river twice,” claims that the constant flux which is our world is controlled by “the Logos” (Wheelwright 1986, 69–71). A useful Greek term here is “Entelechy”—an ordering principle that makes a rational whole of the world’s apparent chaos. For the Pythagoreans, of course, that ordering principle is number, not merely permeating but actually constituting the world. But we can go back further in time to Thales, whose cosmology begins with moisture, but who also predicted eclipses, measured the distance of ships at sea by the angle of declination, and the heights of pyramids by their shadows (Wheelwright 1986, 6–9). Such experiences, relying on Babylonian astronomical tables and on instruction from Egyptian priestly geometers, would teach a person that there is a predictable order to the spatial reality we occupy and this reality can be abstracted from particular sets of circumstances. We may gaze out to sea from different watch towers at different boats on different days, but the same process yields an accurate measurement each time we apply it. It is important to note the oddly qualitative manner in which the Pythagoreans, for instance, considered number. They thought of integers as actual dots on a surface, so one dot ( * ) equals the number one and three dots ( *** ) equals the number three (Wheelwright 44

Knowing at a Distance

1986, 203–5). And fractions were not integers broken apart, but were instead expressed as the ratio between two integers, as one to two is the ratio that expresses the octave (Wheelwright 1986, 205–6). Indeed for all Greeks, geometry—that uniquely concrete branch of mathematics—was virtually the whole of mathematics. But this corporeal sense of number notwithstanding, mathematical thinking and perhaps especially geometrical thinking, allows us to imagine the world around us as intelligible as pure quantity (threedimensional space). The qualitative aspects of substance—taste, texture, and color for instance—need not be present. Distinctively colorless visions are produced by the Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, as well as Anaxagoras. Leucippus and Democritus, lately become famous for seemingly forecasting something like the actual atomic theory we subscribe to today, combine a brute materialism with a disdain for the evidence of the senses. Their theory, opposed to Anaxagoras’ notion that the qualities are infinitely divisible, proposes a fundamental indivisible building block of nature—the atom (Armstrong 1989, 18). Observing that some find the taste of a given substance sweet and others say it is bitter, they would conclude it is neither. Democritus goes on to assert that we are “divorced from reality” and that our perceptions are “nothing reliable” (Wheelwright 1986, 182). Indeed it is nearly mandatory for historians of color theory to cite him thus: “By convention there is sweet, by convention there is bitter, by convention hot and cold, by convention color; but in reality there are only atoms and the void” (Chirimuuta 2015, 10). We might describe this tendency or even talent as the “achromatic imagination.” It is the ability to dissociate reality from color. This is precisely what the Historian of Science M. Chirimuta describes as the “coloring-in model” of perception, which we could also call a coloring book model (2015). And while it is associated with new intellectual achievements in Greek thought, Chirimuuta describes well in her book Outside Color the kind of errors it leads to in how we imagine perception to take place (2015). To put it simply this is the error of considering color perception to be an error. This is a postulation we are indeed familiar with today: a Newtonian model of the universe as something like a vast game of mechanically determined billiard balls racing about and colliding. These objects are so minute as to escape detection except by way of the vast illusion that they give rise to. An illusion that is the world as we perceive it. We have already looked at Anaxagoras’ philosophy with its infinite qualities arising in turns from the primordial mixture of being. Though his theory allows for some reality to color, it also exercises our imaginations around another, more fundamental, reality that is that mixture. And in the interpretation that Aristotle provides for that theory we see this achromatic imagination at last explicitly described: “For in the so-called mixture before separation there clearly could not have been any white or black or grey or any other color, but everything must have been colorless” (Metaphysics 1.8). Among the other things the Pre-Socratics said or implied about color, they strongly tended towards an achromatic vision of ultimate reality. They subscribed to the coloring book model of reality—having a faith that the world is intelligible in the absence of its particular manifestations and that color is something that can be added to or subtracted from the form of a thing without altering it. This intellectual capacity has gone hand in hand with a comparative denigration of color as inessential, and possibly dangerously irrational, in many cultures. Not all of Greek philosophy was so resolutely disinterested in a role for color in describing ultimate reality. For instance, we are tempted to impart a greater commitment to the shifting qualities of the senses in the work of Heraclitus, who of course saw change itself as being the most basic fact of our world. Thus there is a plausible, if only implicit, Heraclitean theory that color’s many manifestations are among the fundamental elements of reality. More consistently, those philosophers who practiced, or were familiar with, medical science (including Empedocles, the Pythagoreans, Hippocrates, and Aristotle) were given to noting the colors of 45

Color Theory

things as significant to their nature. An achromatic world would therefore simply have been less intelligible to them.

The invalidity of the senses We risk redundancy here, in addressing the general invalidation of sensory information again. But thus far we have simply discussed trends that have contributed to that decline in status, and not to the fall itself. Developing the ability, for instance, of conceiving of the world in the absence of color does not necessitate the assumption that color has no claim on our intelligence. Nor does a basic belief that all being is one require us to dismiss color altogether. We might, for instance, combine our current knowledge of the ways pigments combine to create darker and darker colors with the Theogeny’s description of light coming from darkness and create a theory of the world in which color is a major player. But these trends in intellectual history have facilitated dismissals of color that range from mere irrelevancy to active hostility. Later chapters will discuss the deep-seated chromophobia in Western culture. The association of color with all that is irrational, dangerous, and evil has some roots here but becomes a fixture in later cultures. We can say of the Greeks that negative value judgments hovered around that combination of binary thinking (light and dark/good and evil), misogyny, tribalism (Greeks and Barbarians), achromatic imagination, and the reduction of reality to a single being. The invalidation of the senses was facilitated and rendered convenient by these multiple strands of thought. It leads Parmenides to claim that all the shades of color are “nothing more than names” (Wheelwright 1986, 98). Anaxagoras blames our inability to judge the truth on the weakness of our senses (Wheelwright 1986, 160). And Empedocles worries that our sensory equipment is “meagerly scattered throughout the body” (Wheelwright 1986, 126). One last, more vivid, image is given to us by Democritus the atomist. He is said to have isolated himself in a cave to “make trial of his senses.” This image—of seekers of truth shutting themselves in dark caves—resonates throughout the history of color theory. The more earth-focused Greek religious traditions saw caves as places of revelation—the Oracle at Delphi being most familiar to us. Plato would famously use a cave as a metaphor for ignorance in his famous allegory in The Republic. And at the onset of the scientific revolution, Descartes would allegedly shut himself inside a bread oven in order to combat the lies spread by his hypothetical Deceiving Demon (1988, 77). What did Democritus see inside his cave? And how did he put his senses to trial? Perhaps he was simply shutting out the sense data, as Descartes would do, in order to discover what reason alone could achieve. Or perhaps he attended to the sometimes rhythmic and orderly flashes of color and pattern which those experiencing sensory deprivation report. We are told that he wrote a book entitled On Flavors and another called On Colors, making him potentially the first self-avowed color theorist in history. Alas these treatises are lost to us. But if they follow his other philosophical statements with any kind of consistency then they would have thoroughly repudiated the senses as a path to any true knowledge. His description of knowledge divides it into two kinds. One kind he calls “genuine” and the other “obscure” (Wheelwright 1986, 182). The obscure knowledge is all that is given by sight, hearing, and so on. For Democritus the genuine truth of the world came down to a simple set of quantifiable properties describing the shape, size, and motion of the atoms. Color, in other words, is simply invalid.

Ancient Greek epistemology We have already encountered both explicit and implicit theories about how it is that we come to know what we know—and how we can know the truth. These epistemological approaches certainly include ones that deny 46

Knowing at a Distance

the value of sensory information. But on the whole, once the Pre-Socratics moved on from their big metaphysical wonderings and realized that the viability of knowledge is actually a question much closer to home, those approaches gained a greater level of nuance. Those who believed, as Parmenides did, that reason is the only true path to knowledge found they had to explain just how we come to possess reason and how it operates. And attention to the questions of epistemology may have brought the senses back into more legitimate consideration. For the Pythagoreans, who certainly favored knowledge gained through reasoning and abstraction, reincarnation became the proposed means by which we manage to arrive in the world already endowed with the wisdom to evaluate arguments logically and conduct mathematical inquiries. They concluded that the student who works out the answer to a new math problem is actually rehearsing knowledge learned in a past life—in what turns out to be a kind of delayed empirical process. This of course begs the question of how that earlier incarnation of the student learned what it did—the idea seems to be one of continuous improvement over multiple incarnations, until the mind reaches a pure reasoning state of sufficient excellence to escape the cycle of rebirth. But nonetheless the insight of reason is thereby built upon a framework of previous experience potentially including sense experience. For Anaxagoras, whose cosmology involved opposites arising from a primordial mixture, there is a connection, albeit tenuous, between the colors, scents, sounds and so on that we experience and some underlying truth. As he puts it, “Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen” (Wheelwright 1986, 160). As was noted in the previous section, those acquainted with medical thinking have been less dismissive of sensory data. Empedocles, who practiced both medicine and philosophy, advocated a balanced approach to evaluating all kinds of evidence. He seems almost to speak imploringly to his fellow philosophers: Come now, with all your powers discern how each thing manifests itself, trusting no more to sight than to hearing, and no more to the echoing ear than to the tongue’s taste: rejecting none of the body’s parts that might be a means to knowledge, but attending to each particular manifestation. Wheelwright 1986, 126–7 Of all the Pre-Socratics however, it is the physician Hippocrates (or rather it is writers from that school of medicine, whose work is recorded in his legendary name) who most comprehensively constructs a methodology for gaining knowledge. With the practical constraints of his profession he warns us not to rely on theory divorced from actual practice and experience. He tells us instead to join reason to those practical realities: He who would be a healer should be guided not primarily by plausible-looking theories, but by practice combined with reason. Properly, a theory is a sort of composite memory of data that have been received by sense-perception. After the phantasms of sense have been received by us their details are sent up to the intellect, which, receiving them again and again and noting what kind they are, stores them up in itself—which is to say, remembers them. Wheelwright 1986, 273 Thus Hypocrates gives us a concept of how reasoning—or theorizing—occurs, and he grounds proper theory in the senses. Though he acknowledges the “phantasmic” nature of that data, he asserts that this is the source from which the intellect must ground its theories. These theories seem to amount primarily to the detection of patterns from as large a set of facts as possible. This growing pool of nuanced epistemological speculation has implicit ramifications for color, bringing the colors of the things around us into serious consideration as clues to both fundamental nature and the patterns 47

Color Theory

and processes of the natural world. But such progress in considering how we know did not head off the skeptical relativism of the Sophists, whose critique of the grand pronouncements of the Pre-Socratic philosophers would bring not merely color, but all knowledge, into doubt.

Optics We have come a long way in our analysis primarily by teasing out how Pre-Socratic philosophy leads one to certain attitudes about color. These implicit color theories are often simply constraints the philosopher has placed on what counts as real or how we interface with the world. But as mentioned in the chapter introduction, Greek philosophers did engage directly with vision and color as such. Though sporadic, there is much ingenuity and novelty in these efforts. And, despite the more than twenty centuries that have elapsed, they will perhaps seem less bizarre or idiosyncratic to us now that we are familiar with Pre-Socratic patterns of thought in general. We can begin with several discussions of the rainbow, which serve to remind us that despite their love of abstract reasoning, there was plenty of practical inquiry into the natural world. Xenophanes gives us “She whom men call Iris is a cloud of such a nature as to cause the appearance of violet, red, and yellow-green” (Wheelwright 1986, 34). Empedocles argues, “Iris brings from the sea a wind and a great storm” (Wheelwright 1986, 134). The association of Iris with storms is fair science, even if the cause and effect relation seems backwards to us. Anaxagoras is a bit more subtle and thorough with his discussion: What we call Iris is a glimmer of the sun reflected on the clouds. It is therefore the sign of a storm; for the water flowing about it in the cloud may produce wind and may pour forth as rain. Wheelwright 1986, 164 There are two competing Pre-Socratic ideas for how we sense the qualities around us. One is sensation by contrast, in which we sense the cold by the warmth in us, and vice versa. Heraclitus is said to have believed this, based partly on his doctrine that it is “by disease that health is pleasant” to us (Wheelwright 1986, 77). Similarly Anaxagoras was said to assert that the eye perceives the light by virtue of the darkness of the pupil (Wheelwright 1986, 173). The idea of sensation by contrast appeals to a Greek concept of the mean—of a rightness in finding ultimate balance and proportion between opposites. The competing theory is that “like knows like” so that we perceive sense data by virtue of the affinity between parts of ourselves and what is in the world. Empedocles, for whom the four elements are the irreducible qualities in the world, says it is by portions of fire in us that we perceive fire, water for water, and so on (Armstrong 1983, 17–18). Empedocles also makes a lasting contribution to theories about the mechanics of vision. He presents the doctrine of “extramissionism” which is that the eye sees in an active manner by means of “effluences” (Wheelwright 1986, 143–4). Put in more familiar terms, this is akin to saying the eye sends out rays which, striking the objects in view, facilitates our seeing them. However our term “ray” is based in a physics that distinguishes energy from mass. The Greek effluences were more akin to streams of particles in a fully mechanical system. He gives a complex accounting of the eye’s construction and function on the analogy of a lantern: As when someone preparing to set forth on a journey through a stormy night procures a lantern and lights it at the brightly blazing hearth-fire, a lantern fitted with protection against the blowing winds, which its flashing beams scatter, being finer than they, so it is that the primal fire was originally entrapped within the membranes and delicate tissues of the round eyeball. Wheelwright 1986, 136 48

Knowing at a Distance

The idea of extramission proves to be an enduring one, and for some persuasive reasons. It is easier to attribute the power of sight to the eye than to each and every object around us in the universe; easier to imagine the eye having some means of knowing things at a distance than to imagine rocks and trees as having some complementary power to be known. Nonetheless, such a power is posited by the Pre-Socratics in a more “intramissionist” frame of mind. A common metaphor for sight, and sense impressions generally, is that of an impression being made in wax. Wax casting was a technology they had attained, and wax tablets were used as temporary writing surfaces, being erased by heat or pressure. Such a process implies that the image comes to the eye rather than vice versa. Another analogy for the process of vision was to reflection, as can be observed in a mirror or in water. They saw that those surfaces have the ability to capture the image of what is before them in just the way the eye does.

Conclusions about Pre-Socratic color theory We have discovered several ideas about color that can now be assembled into a general description of PreSocratic color theory. The most important of these are in line with many of the cultures noted in Chapter 1. As a foundation we can be confident in asserting that across religious and philosophical perspectives light and dark, and thus white and black, were seen as the most basic aspects of color. Furthermore, at this primary level, color is central to cosmology and consistently tied to other binary modes of thinking. Importantly those Opposites were often value-laden so that color understood as white and black was likely to be connected to good and evil, male and female, Greek and Barbarian, and so on. Thus, in applying and viewing colors, the Greeks of the eighth to the fifth centuries bce were likely to read them as playing out the same sorts of dramas we note in their theology and metaphysics: arising from chaotic mixture, pulling apart in strife and coming together in eros, enacting the interplay of the four elements as they manifest in our world. The deep conviction among many of these philosophers, that reason leads us to a vision of ultimate reality as stable and whole, is a trait that may be more peculiar to this culture in particular. In part this arises from an assumption that the world is basically orderly even in all its apparent disorder. This amounted to an article of faith even as it seemed justified by the manifest order seen in mathematics, music, and in the patterns of the natural world. We do not have a Greek book of color theory or artist’s manual to confirm it, but it is nearly impossible to imagine that an artist’s use of color—or a commissioning priest or politician’s anticipated reception of that color—would not have been influenced by generally accepted doctrines of harmony, order, and the mean. We have noted numerous ways this faith in reason entailed a consequent dismissal of the realm of the senses. It is possible to overplay the significance of that trend. One supposes that daily life and even daily artmaking, with all their practical demands, tended to set aside notions that the world we see around us is an illusion. Indeed we have the evidence of writings by physicians to show us that thoughtful Greeks whose work was constrained by outcomes in practice were fully sensitive to the rich source of information found in color, especially when investigating the natural world. This can be inferred by the very insistence of philosophers such as Parmenides that true knowledge requires turning away from that world of opinion. It would be odd for a philosopher to devote themselves to constructing a wisdom already attained by the laborer or craftsperson. But the likelihood that daily color use would have had its pragmatic enjoyments does not alter the fact that Pre-Socratic philosophy was broadly dismissive of the world perceived by the senses. Nor does it lessen the influence of these philosophies on later thinkers, who would come to see color as irrelevant to rational understanding or even as a dangerously emotional force leading us into error. Finally, we should note the various proto scientific efforts to understand the mechanism of vision. These tended towards a blunt mechanical relationship between the object of our observation, its image, and the 49

Color Theory

sensitive material of our eyes. One way or another, by extramission or intramission, this knowing at a distance required a physical impact between the eye and the image. And, since the means of this chain reaction are not visible to us, hypotheses of minute, subtle, and sub-visible particles began to proliferate. These hypotheses, in turn, foreshadow Newtonian physics and reinforce the idea that when we see color we are not seeing what is really going on there. There is a reality imagined that lies beneath color and cannot be discovered by the senses.

Color Use Activity 2.2 For the ancient Greeks it was an open question how we might best arrive at knowledge of the truth. Divine revelation was one possible source of evidence, as Socrates is reported to have taken the Oracle at Delphi at her word when she pronounced him the wisest man in the world—despite his puzzlement given that he felt that he knew nothing for certain. However, there was a strong tradition of disdain for both theological explanations as well as the evidence of the senses—often only those ideas we can arrive at by means of contemplation guided by logic, mathematics, and reason were given credence. Many Greek philosophers, but Parmenides and Plato especially, considered this approach essential to finding the truth. Finally, some considered the evidence of the senses to be an important guide, particularly those like Empedocles, Hypocrates, and Aristotle, who were involved in or acquainted with the practice of medicine. Bearing this in mind, attempt to give the following three exercises in contemplation the greatest possible credence as you consider the topic of color. Contemplation exercise 1 Emulate Democritus, who is said to have shut himself in a cave to “make trial of his senses.” Find the darkest place in your home, far from natural light. Even better, find or create a sensory deprivation chamber—possibly a bathtub full of body-temperature water, with earplugs in place. Then turn out the lights, and blindfold yourself, before assuming a comfortable position. If you are familiar with meditative practices, those might help you to settle yourself and collect your thoughts. Now simply contemplate color. Can you “see” colors in this condition? If so, given that you cannot see in the normal sense, what does this indicate? Conduct experiments (trials) on color—attempting to conjure colors, mix them, control them, and so on. Are they stable? Can they be controlled? Are they information about something else as we commonly consider them to be when observing the world? Did you fall asleep? If so, does the relationship between the colors you see and the truth change in any way while dreaming? Be as thorough as you can, taking long enough to examine and re-examine the questions that arise. Emerge from your darkened chamber to write notes about your observations. Consider resuming the experiment if your note-taking causes you to discover new questions, or to see if your results are consistent. Contemplation exercise 2 Emulate Socrates, who was essentially agnostic about the various supposed truths his fellow philosophers had staked out, but had faith in what he called “the Good” and in the existence of our soul. He turned the focus of philosophy from asking questions about what is real to asking questions about how we ought to conduct ourselves in this life given what we know (or don’t know), given that there is something we call the good, and given that we have a soul.

50

Knowing at a Distance

Ask yourself questions, or with the assistance of someone else, propose questions, about color and the use of color. These questions might include: what do you know about color? How do you know it? How does color make you feel? If it sometimes elicits positive or negative responses in you, what might be the explanation for that response? Is it a physical effect? A reminder of something else? Is the response innate or learned? Contemplate times you have felt something was visually beautiful, exciting, or revolting. If you are a creator of visual things, contemplate why you color them as you do. If you are an appreciator of colors in nature or art, contemplate what those colors mean to you. In all this enquiry you should circle about—covering the topic from many points of view and returning to questions already posed to see if new insights have emerged—but always striving to know what is the point of color for your soul, and how color might play a role in the proper conduct of your soul, in line with the good. Write a dialogue, in the manner of Socrates’ student Plato, reproducing for the reader the journey your queries took you on, but in a fictional form. It is nice if one character in the story discovers something new to them about color. But, given the dialectical nature of this activity, it is also fine if the ending is ambiguous, simply providing the reader with a notion of the mystery at hand and prompting them to doubt their own assumptions about color. If you are working in a group setting, compare and critique your results. Contemplation exercise 3 Emulate Aristotle, for whom it was a maxim that nature does nothing in vain. Given that maxim, you can assume that color is as it is for some reason—a reason in line with the healthy functioning of the eyes and the purpose of our having access to sensory information. Thus pleasant and unpleasant effects of light and color ought to tell us something about our own state of wellbeing and/or the good or bad qualities of what we are seeing. All of this tends to be governed by an assumption that good, beautiful, and healthy things are balanced, harmonious, and well proportioned. Gaze at the sun, stopping before you are harmed but noting the sensation it provokes. Observe also your subsequent visual experiences. Walk about in an unfamiliar house at night with the blinds closed, shutting off the lights (or better, having an assistant shut them off without warning) before you are through exploring. After time elapses and your eyes adjust, flick the lights back on. Note any results whether physical or accidental or in terms of your sensations. Wake up early and seek out a good place from which to observe the sunrise. Note carefully the changes in color and other changes such as temperature, weather, moods, and so on. Do the same while observing the sunset. Take a walk in a garden at various times of day, in different weather, and at night under various degrees of moonlight. Note the play of light and shadow, the contrast of foliage to blossoms and also to root systems in individual plants, the contrast in color between new sprouts or buds and mature specimens or dead limbs. Consider the response you have to these colors as well as that of insects, squirrels, birds, and so on. Begin a journal of color observations, pursuing the above prompts as well as others that suggest themselves in the course of your work. If possible, compare your results to those found by others engaged in this process, and continue this work indefinitely. If you are working in a group setting, compare and critique your results.

51

Color Theory

Socrates and the Sophists Here we arrive at the exhaustion of the Pre-Socratic project. Many have said that project began from a growing awareness that the world’s various competing religious doctrines did not add up. But, by the time the Athens of Socrates rose to prominence in political, creative, and philosophical realms, it was evident that there were as many supposed truths as there were philosophers claiming to know the truth. Color, and all the qualities detectable by the senses, had once been denigrated by many of those philosophers as an illusory counterfeit for ultimate reality. Now all ultimate reality was held in contempt by this new school of thinkers. Such doubts, which come in many varieties, often fall under the broad term relativism—which we use to describe the idea that truth is not absolute and is instead dependent on circumstance or point of view. And there was some precedent for relativism within Pre-Socratic thought itself. Even Xenophanes, Parmenides’ teacher, had stated, “If God had not created yellow honey, men would regard figs as sweeter than now” (Wheelwright 1986, 33). So when the Sophists proposed some form of relativism, they were not the first. But their questioning of that ultimate truth—which everyone from Parmenides to Hippocrates was seeking either through reason, observation, or both—was more thorough and more foundational to their approach to the world. It also set the stage for the teachings of Socrates and his followers. The most famous Sophist quote, given by their leading light Protagoras, is “Man is the measure of all things” (Wheelwright 1986, 239). We often stop the quotation there, reveling in this early endorsement of humanist values. But he goes on to say that Man is the measure “of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not” (Wheelwright 1986, 239). By which he seemingly means if I say it is blue, it is blue. But also if you say it is green, then it is green. The reasoning continues to assert that the final truth will be decided by whichever of us is most able to wield persuasive speech to convince the other of our point of view. Thus the measure of the value of the teacher was not the student’s attainment of wisdom, but the student’s ability to convince others that they were wise. A talented and well-educated citizen of Athens was able to select from a buffet of counter-intuitive arguments and paradoxical discoveries to support nearly any point of view they found convenient. And in the absence of certain truth the Sophists embraced that battle of wits as being the only game that mattered. In their midst came the singular character of Socrates who resembled them in many ways but, of course, stood apart. Socrates did not leave any writings, so we only know of him through the work of others, primarily his star pupil, Plato. He also did not advance a philosophical doctrine about the way things are in the world—at least not one like we got from the Pre-Socratics, nor like the more sophisticated structures of Plato and Aristotle. This was probably a matter of purposeful restraint on his part. It was his acknowledgment of the difficulty— perhaps impossibility—of constructing a model of the universe that is definitely true. And it is of course a hallmark of what we call “Socratic wisdom”: his unique insight that while others know nothing but think that they do, he at least knows nothing but is aware of that fact. So, instead of proposing to lecture others on the nature of the world, he engages his interlocutors in a subtle cross-examination in order to turn their minds inward—to reflect upon their own nature and purpose in life. Thus, from the metaphysical and ontological musings of the Pre-Socratics, then their emerging epistemological concerns and the subsequent relativism of the Sophists, we come to the Socratic turn towards ethics. In a certain way, Socrates benefitted from the fact that the Sophists had clarified the challenge that limitless theoretical options create for society. For Socrates and his followers, our soul—which had been vaguely understood as a sort of life-breath dwelling in our bodies—is more properly understood as our moral and intellectual personality. The purpose of our lives is to realize that soul’s best potential. And virtue lies in knowledge, but knowledge of a certain kind: knowledge of the good. We are told that Socrates’ mother was an 52

Knowing at a Distance

accomplished midwife, and his method is described as a sort of midwifery by which he allows the true purpose of his pupil’s soul to emerge in their own consciousness (Armstrong 1983, 31). All of this has little to do with color, but is the historic pivot between the Pre-Socratics and the incredibly influential work of Plato and Aristotle. Socrates proposed a new method and aim of philosophy, rather than a new world system. His effect on color theory is to reset the problems Pre-Socratics had with the reality of the senses and thus the value of color as a means to knowledge. He was agnostic about the truth of what is out there, neither denying nor seeking to prove common-sense notions about the world we see around us. But he preserved a faith in a truth of a certain kind, which is the goal of all our work in this world; that truth he called the good. If we were to imagine a dialogue between him and an artist, he would have set aside the technical questions of how to work with color, in favor of more pressing questions. Why do we make art? What are these colors for? And what is the effect of these colors upon the soul? This is important for us because, as noted in the introduction, this book takes the question of “why” to use a certain green to be more crucial than “how” to mix it.

Plato We owe Plato both for preserving the method and insights of his beloved teacher Socrates, and for proposing a comprehensive philosophical system of his own. This system adheres to the basic Socratic faith in the good, in the process of dialogue, and in the path of inner contemplation. But he lays aside doubts about what we can know, establishing a robust ontology, epistemology, and numerous consequent insights into the nature of the world, including vision and color. His conclusions in the realm of ethics and political science leave many of us cold—in that he proposes an ideal state in which philosophers rule as kings. These philosopher kings should, he argues, strictly control the arts precisely because he views the arts as being a crucial part of the proper development of the soul (Armstrong 1983, 57). He would have a ready answer to our imagined questions from Socrates for the aspiring artist; art is powerful or even dangerous, and can change its audience for good or ill. Plato’s ontology, his doctrine of the forms, is the most famous element of his philosophical system. He asserts that there is an ultimate reality—the world of the forms—the contemplation of which is our highest calling as reasoning animals. The world we see around us, he argues, is separate from that ultimate reality and only shares some measure of truth with it by virtue of the degree to which it “participates” in those forms (Armstrong 1983, 39–40). The highest form of all, one that transcends all others, is “the good” (Armstrong 1983, 39). We can think of the good as the sun of that ideal, unchanging world—illuminating it and providing its center. The easiest forms for us to imagine here are such mathematical certainties as geometric figures. While we see many more-or-less spherical objects in the world around us, they are only real insofar as they participate in the ideal form of the sphere—the one we can contemplate by considering that geometrical object defined as the set of all points equidistant from a common center point. But there are ideal forms of many other things in our world—perhaps all things. Chairs, for instance, all participate in the ideal of “chair” which one supposes is that object that allows us to sit in comfort. The chair I sit on now really has no reality beyond its participation in that ideal. Plato does occasionally list the things of which there are forms, and color arrives early on that list. So, while the color I see is not real, it may participate in the ideal color of which it is an imperfect example. Color is real then, but the color we see is not. Plato’s doctrine of the forms owes a lot to the world view advanced by the Pythagorean Brotherhood, as does the epistemology he generates to support it. He saw that we seem to gain knowledge of the world through our observations of it, but given that he denied the reality of the world we receive through the senses, he found it impossible that that would be a valid path to true knowledge. He took the soul to be immortal and far more real than the bodies occupied by the soul. And he believed in some form of reincarnation, but one that included 53

Color Theory

a life outside the body—a life as an ideal form in company with the other forms. Like the Pythagoreans he attributed our ability to attain true knowledge to “anamnesis” or memory (Segal 1986, x). These are memories from before our present incarnation but, he specified, these are not memories of other incarnations in this world. Indeed he took our ability to know truth at all as proof of our soul’s immortality. So, when we observe an apple and come to an understanding of “sphere,” we are able to make that leap by virtue of our soul’s familiarity with that form. Likewise, when we gaze at a particular apple we also recognize its redness from our soul’s familiarity with the true red. Despite his insistence that no real knowledge is possible of and through the world of the senses, and that only thinking of the forms leads to truth, Plato did develop a theory of vision. This theory he described as being mere probability but it was nonetheless inventive and elaborate (153). He postulated a complex, threeway dynamic of effluences. He saw that the eye was crucial in the formation of images so he posited that effluences do pour forth from the eye. But he also saw that Empedocles’ notion of eyes as lanterns did not explain our night blindness, so he asserted that effluences from a light source are also required. Finally, he concluded that each object must pour forth a “continuous stream of subtle particles” in order to be seen. These three effluences interact in a manner that is hard to interpret and likely considered unknowable by Plato, but he specifies the relative size and speed of the particles required for their interaction with each other and the ultimate penetration, through the pores of the eyes, of the particles that make up the image. He cites the traditional four Greek basic colors of black, white, red, and yellow—but with qualifications. Yellow seems to be demoted by him to a kind of red, so he is distinguishing between the seemingly qualitative difference we see amongst black, white, and red—and the difference between red and yellow which might be taken as a matter of degree. To these colors he adds gold as well as bright and translucent. Here we come across a common distinction between our own color theory and that of other cultures, that is the discrimination we make between color as it might be represented on a paint chip and other phenomena of vision. Bright seems to be an aspect of the sun’s light or other very intense light sources. Plato describes it as being made of a particle so swift that it pierces the eye with an especially dangerous fierceness, causing water to pour forth in the form of tears and threatening blindness. Translucence he gives as the color of the air, water to a lesser degree, and as something our eyes partake of. It is made up of particles that are equal to those emitted by the eye, and therefore being unable to penetrate one another, are invisible to it. Thus brightness and translucence are a new pair of opposites—that of being extremely noticeable or unnoticeable to the eye. So what is this world of appearances around us and what is its purpose? There is an analogy that he provided on the subject. As a craftsman consults a pattern in shaping his material, so the visible world is shaped in accordance with the forms. The world that results is not perfect but it is not utterly fallen or hellish either. Simply put, the world of irrational and shifting qualities we perceive by these senses provided to our bodies is the best world that can be formed of the intractable, difficult material that is manifest. At its best it reminds us (our souls) of the higher reality we truly belong to. So Plato’s color theory starts with a theme familiar from Pre-Socratics such as Parmenides and Pythagoras— that the color we see with our eyes is unreal and is no path to knowledge in itself. He also passes an atomistic attitude towards physics on to later thinkers—supporting the idea that there is a reality underlying the one we see—itself achromatic but giving rise to our perception of color. However, Plato’s color does, or can, participate in an eternally true form of color that it behooves our souls to contemplate. Our souls can, when observing this world’s imperfect colors, remember the ideal colors of the world of forms. We can extrapolate that those more real colors are fixed, unchanging, and good. The artist can plausibly take from this that colors handled well, and perhaps arranged in ideal ways, can affect the soul of the viewer in laudable ways. Indeed, given his sense of the power of art (and the need for the state to restrain and control that power for the benefit of its citizens), it is likely that Plato would rank color as a tool of great potency. 54

Knowing at a Distance

Aristotle While Plato was devoted to the world of unseen ideal forms, his most famous student, Aristotle, was equally devoted to the world of concrete individual things. Though we know of no tension between the two while Aristotle was engaged as a student at the academy, he later came to say he loved both Plato and the truth but “must prefer the truth” (Bambrough 1963, 17). While providing ample theoretical space for “universals,” his primary focus was on the natural world and the things we can observe with the senses. It is worth noting that his father was the latest in a family line of physicians—very likely adopting the pragmatic attitude towards the senses we noted amongst Pre-Socratics familiar with that art (Bambrough 1963, 16). As the world we see around us was more pertinent to his philosophy, Aristotle’s account of vision itself attained a new level of nuance, and his color theory was unchallenged for the 2,000 years before Newton arrived on the scene. His account of how the eye sees is thus an excellent discourse on his theories of what is real and how we come to know what is real. Here Plato’s work is instrumental in that he had dismissed many of the paradoxes about being that troubled the Pre-Socratics, by teasing out the logical consistency of multiple meanings of the word “Is.” Aristotle then distinguished between things that exist potentially and things that exist actually. For him the material reality of individual things around us is logically separable from any given form, but always joined with form in actuality. Matter may take any form, it may be round or straight, red or green—it is in essence pure potential. But as we experience it, matter is always actualized as some thing— actualized by the form it is married to. In this way he acknowledges the importance of Plato’s forms but also validates the world available to us through our perceptions. Likewise, vision is a matter of potentiality and actuality. Noting that we can see an apple from each and every point in space around it, he acknowledges that the image of the apple exists potentially in all those places. But those images are dependent upon the eye, which must be in some place around the apple in order to see, and thus actualize, that particular image. When this occurs the image provides the form of the apple to the eye, which then takes on that form. Noting the debate amongst Pre-Socratics between those who say we perceive qualities by virtue of a lack of that quality in us, and those who say we “perceive like by like,” Aristotle splits the difference. He tells us the eye is unlike what it sees, until it sees it, at which point it becomes like the things observed. He argues that something in the eye really does take on the form of the apple—its roundness and redness—while perceiving. His theory of knowledge parallels this, making objects of thought like objects of perception, and saying that our mind takes on the form of its objects of thought while thinking of them. Aristotle’s theory of vision was intramissionist, arguing that objects provide their image to the eye, but the eye is far from passive in its crucial role as actualizer. Perception, within this model, is a property of the sentient observer. As a naturalist, Aristotle focused on the eye as an organism. He noted that extremes of light or dark are bad for it, while a balance of sensations—the mean—is good and pleasing. This insistence on balance, paired with careful observation of all the individual cases available to him, runs throughout his philosophy. These practices govern his metaphysics, physics, political science, ethics, and his aesthetics. Therefore he would look at color in nature and in art and argue that just as flowers balance the colors of the other foliage in a pleasing manner, so art well executed will balance color to achieve a pleasing effect on the viewer. He also codified earlier Greek intuitions by making all colors a result of the interaction of light and dark. Observing the sunrise, for example, he saw a small but growing light enter the darkness, drawing out countless intermediate colors before achieving full daylight—with the reverse process occurring at night, restoring balance over time. For the Pre-Socratics the Opposites, such as light and dark, were principles incapable of compromise. Aristotle’s more subtle use of logic allows for black and white to mix and change into the full spectrum of colors. The matter itself, of what we see in the world, is potentially any color. Light and dark interact in various ratios to give that matter form—a specific actualized color. 55

Color Theory

This brings us to Aristotle’s explanation of the rainbow, alongside many related optical phenomena, in his book on Meteorology. He correctly identified several aspects of the puzzle of the rainbow: that it is a reflection of light from the sun off the moisture in the air when we are standing between the sun and the area of moist air. And that the angle of these reflections is fixed. Through a careful analysis of the resulting conic sections, he then proved that all points set at a fixed angle from the shadow of our head will appear brightest and— those points forming a circle—he thereby explained the rainbow’s arc. The fixed angle also allowed him to demonstrate why as we move, the rainbow moves, and thus we can never approach “the end of the rainbow.” Each position in space—and so each viewer—actualizes their own unique rainbow (see Figure 2.2). His explanation of the colors themselves, and their order, rested on his premise that colors arise from combinations of light and dark, and thus is the one aspect of his rainbow theory that doesn’t match with our current explanation. In addition to his remarkable geometric analysis of the rainbow, his discussion of the colors in the bow bring up many fine tuned observations of color phenomena. He reports that artists cannot mix the three colors of the rainbow (he says these are red, green, and violet, with yellow arising from the contrast between red and green). And he reports on the experiences of embroiderers, saying that purple thread looks different on a black fabric than it does on white, and also that those who work at night by lamplight are prone to make mistakes in color selection. These observations show an awareness of the relative nature of color—its tendency to shift depending on circumstance. These were precisely the kind of observations that led earlier Greeks to dismiss color as unreliable and unreal—but which simply led to more subtle analysis in Aristotle’s comprehensive study. To future scientists, Aristotle gave many useful legacies. The foundations of systematic logic and careful observation of a wide range of data are probably the most important. Guiding principles to find balance and seek the simplest solution to all the data were also widely successful. And finally his principle that “nature . . . makes nothing in vain” helped win the day for the senses having some role in a philosophical system (Aristotle 1941, 1128). Yes, the philosopher concedes, it is logically possible that our senses fool us, but to what end? Why would nature waste such vast effort? Aristotle concluded that in fact the senses cannot be wrong, but rather error arises in how we process what we sense and what we conclude about it. If we see red, we see red. If we smell sweetness, we smell sweetness. But when we conclude “It is an apple,” we may be in error. Likewise, objects of thought are never false in and of themselves, only potentially in how we combine those objects in our thought processes. Socrates is real, and so are horses, but Socrates is not a horse. In general, Aristotle’s written work was not as delightfully written, not nearly so literary, as Plato’s. Plato gave us artfully crafted and dramatic conversations. Aristotle’s work may essentially be lecture notes. But his appreciation for the efforts of nature, none of which are in vain, allows for a certain amount of rapture. The opening lines of his Metaphysics are a ringing endorsement of the value of the senses (and sight above all) in attaining knowledge and thereby living virtuously: All men by nature desire to have knowledge. An indication of this is the delight that we take in the senses; quite apart from the use that we make of them, we take delight in them for their own sake, and more than of any other this is true of the sense of sight. Aristotle and Bambrough 1963, 40 Summing up, the most important trait of Aristotle’s philosophy for those interested in color theory is his open embrace of the evidence of the senses. In this he is bucking the general trend in Greek philosophy and the strongest doctrines of his beloved teacher. He embraces the senses, and vision especially, both as a delight in themselves and as a source of knowledge—and links them to each other. That which adds to knowledge is a delight. That which delights does so by nature’s good design. And all these benefits are to be enjoyed and explored with proper deference to balance and the mean. 56

Knowing at a Distance

Figure 2.2 Aristotle’s correct explanation of the geometry governing the rainbow showed that it appears at a fixed angle from the shadow of the perceiver’s head—which helps explain both its curved bow shape and why it is forever out of reach. Illustration by Aaron Fine.

This notion of balance is anchored in the theory that color emerges from the interplay of those theological opposites light and dark, black and white. That theory is made up of very traditional Greek patterns of thought but it is also supported, Aristotle argued, by countless observed cases in nature. His faith in the rationality of nature’s design was rewarded in part by his discovery that phenomena such as the rainbow are susceptible to mathematical analysis. His many other observations give us interpretations of color’s relative nature, and he presents us with a new set of three basic colors—the rainbow’s red, green, and violet. This set comes closer than ever to our own idea of “primary” colors in that he introduces the idea that some colors cannot be mixed. Finally, and linked back to his embrace of color as a real and good thing, Aristotle gives us a theory of vision that brings the organism of the viewer into active communion with the world it views. That world exists in kaleidoscopic potential but is only brought into focus for the soul by the agency of the eye.

Color use in Greek art At length we have arrived at a discussion of the use of color in Greek art, of which we know relatively little. We can first of all review the passing references to color practice in this culture we have already made. We have seen Empedocles’ description of painters decorating religious altars, in which he describes the work both as “sumptuous” and as bearing a likeness to all the things in creation. This makes it clear that the ancient Greeks enjoyed color for its innate sensuous appeal as well as for its ability to depict things in a lifelike manner. This also confirms our intuition that, philosophical doubts notwithstanding, practical and popular considerations ruled people’s everyday attitudes towards color. Then we learned from Aristotle that textile arts included 57

Color Theory

embroidery work of some sophistication and that those hands-on activities with color had made the Greeks aware of color’s unusual properties. These include the interaction of colors so that their appearance varies depending on the colors they are seen with, and the ways our perception of color changes with the light we view it in. Other uses of color in Greek art include a rich legacy of vase painting, a Greek mosaic tradition that extends into Roman times, color embellishment on statuary and architecture, as well as panel painting and wall painting of which there are written records but almost no surviving examples. Finally, we can glean some notions of Greek painting traditions through the influence we know cultures such as the Minoan civilization had on them, and through Roman copies of Greek art. Throughout these periods and across media we do see the four colors of black, white, red, and yellow dominating palettes, though punctuated often enough by greens, purples, and blues of a slightly aquamarine nature. The general outlines of this knowledge tell us that earlier Greek art was more abstract (geometric patterning, etc.), two-dimensional, and decorative. Much Greek painting uses color in large unmixed masses, being based upon starkly solid profiles set against equally solid backgrounds and relieved by economically descriptive line work. But as the so-called Golden Age of classical Athens unfolded, there were increasing developments in the ability of painters to imitate reality, and increasing preference among those who wrote about art for works that were convincingly lifelike. This trend tracks roughly with the transition in Greek sculpture from stiffer, more otherworldly figures towards dynamic forms that seem to breathe with life. One of the crowning achievements, and best preserved aspects, of Greek art is the body of ceramics the ancient Greeks produced. The refined integration of the decorative and illustrative painting with the overall three-dimensional form of the pottery is remarkable. It is aided, arguably, by the stark clarity of the Greek color palette. In this case “painting” mostly refers to the application and manipulation of ceramic slips of various chemical make-up that change color upon firing in the kiln. The traditional four colors are paired down to just three—black, white, and red—which dominate the scenes in which yellow, green, and purple may occasionally be added as details. The precise chronology of styles need not concern us here, but a simple examination of the use of geometric and oriental styles, “black figure style,” “red figure style,” and white ground painting illustrate the general historical movement from flatter, more geometric work towards increasing anatomical accuracy and deeper pictorial spaces (see Figures 2.3–2.5). Throughout these periods, but especially in the black and red figure phases, the use of black, red, and white creates great drama. The limited color choices lend themselves to stark visual statements, and depictions of gods and heroes in a shallow, otherworldly space of perpetual dusk. The spare use of white creates a startling spot-lit counterpoint to the overall uncanny environment. In contrast, efforts at greater verisimilitude which is partly achievable with white ground painting—an attempt to keep up with innovations seen in other forms of painting—tends to defeat the effort to integrate the painting with the pottery form, except in the hands of the most accomplished painters. In general, Greek pottery painters showed a keen understanding of the uses of a limited palette in achieving dramatic effects conformable with the specific formal and technical demands of their medium. That temples and even sculptures were painted we know both from trace elements of paint on their surfaces and from the Greeks’ own descriptions of the practice. Our understanding of the sculptures is further clouded by the fact that many of them are only known to us now through Roman copies—and many of these marble copies were bronze in the originals. Our retrospective appreciation of the pure unadorned form of such works as the Kritios Boy or the Nike of Samothrace (see Figures 2.6–2.7) are not totally inaccurate—we are appreciating form that is really worthy of consideration—but we have great difficulty imagining these works as they were in their day. Our achromatic conception of Greek art adds to our romanticized notion of Greek culture being highly rational and refined—a misleading oversimplification. Aside from what philosophers might have

58

Figure 2.3 Red figure style ceramics such as this one provide dramatic statements in highly contrasting colors. agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 2.4 Black figure style ceramics convey a drama similar to red figure style, with an effect of perpetual dusk. agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo. 59

Color Theory

Figure 2.5 White ground painting allowed greater verisimilitude with a wider range of colors, but presented more of a challenge to the painters in reconciling their imagery with the three-dimensional form it was painted on. Azoor Photo / Alamy Stock Photo.

thought of their work, ancient Greek artists knew that their patrons wanted both the visual excitement and the compelling vivacity that color can provide. One set of artifacts that helps us imaginatively step back into time and see the painted sculptures as the Greeks did are the extraordinary bronze statues known as the Riace Warriors (see Figure 2.8). Though not painted, the use of multiple materials gives us some sense of the vivid lifelike effects the Greeks must have coveted. The two muscular warriors are rendered in a bronze whose high polish and texture variations brings skin and hair to life. The addition of ivory and glass paste for eyes, ivory for teeth, applied bronze eyelashes, and copper lips and nipples make these a far cry from our conception of Greek art as a collection of platonically perfect forms separated from the mundane world of ephemeral qualities. The intent of these artists is to convince the viewer that the god or hero in question is truly immanent in the work of art, and color is a vital aspect of that indwelling spirit. Of Greek panel painting we have no known examples, and of Greek wall painting actually in Greece we have only the tiniest example in the funerary mural The Abduction of Persephone (see Figure 2.9). Despite its fragmentary nature and questionable quality, we see much in this painting to confirm the written accounts of the period and allow cautious assumptions to be drawn from Roman paintings—some of which are thought to have been copied from or painted by Greek artists. In The Abduction we see the use of shading to model three-dimensional drapery, the drama of violent action, the foreshortened wheel of a chariot, and the limited palette. There is also a familiar emphasis on contour line placed in an attempted balance with large color

60

Knowing at a Distance

Figures 2.6 and 2.7 The famed Nike of Samothrace and Kritios Boy are misleading in their current state as pure white marble forms, and it is difficult for us to imagine such examples of Greek art as richly colored. Azoor Photo / Alamy Stock Photo. PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo. blocks. Similar observations can be made of the floor mosaic depicting the Battle of Issus,a Roman work believed to have been made by Greek artists and copied from a Greek original (see Figure 2.10). Pliny the Elder, in the oldest surviving art history text, tells us much about ancient Greek art. He recites the four basic colors, giving us their sources thus: “Four colors only—white from Melos, Attic yellow, red from Sinope on the Black Sea, and the black called ‘atramentum’ ” (1855). He also lists numerous great painters— whose work brought them fame and fortune, and who excelled one another at creating a perfect illusion. Polygnotos is famed for placing figures at various heights in a landscape as a method of indicating spatial depth and for depicting women in transparent drapery. Furthermore he portrayed emotions in figures and faces, going beyond mere figure studies. Perhaps most entertaining is the tale which Pliny gives us in his Natural History regarding a competition between the painters Parrhasios and Zeuxis—a variation on the innocent eye test. Zeuxis’ depiction of grapes was unveiled in the presence of birds who then flew to them as though they were the real thing. The exultant Zeuxis strode over to his competitor’s veiled painting and, seeking to draw back the fabric found that the fabric was itself a painted illusion created by Parrhasios, who

61

Color Theory

Figure 2.8 This bronze Riace Warrior, with its inlaid copper nipples and eyes of ivory and glass paste, may provide insight into the more sensuously polychrome reality of Greek sculpture in its original context. funkyfood London—Paul Williams / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 2.9 Rare remaining examples of Greek painting, such as this image of the abduction of Persephone, confirm what is seen in ancient tile mosaics and in Pliny’s testimony—that ancient Greek two-dimensional artists used light and shadow, along with perspective effects, to create the illusion of three-dimensional form. Historic Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. 62

Knowing at a Distance

Figure 2.10 As Pliny indicated, Greek artists were concerned to use color to create the impression that one is really seeing the image depicted as if one were there. This mosaic brings us to Alexander’s victory in the Battle of Issus, complete with the chaos of broken equipment and a horse’s galloping rump. Adam Eastland Art + Architecture / Alamy Stock Photo. thereby won the contest. Unfortunately, we are largely left to imagine these virtuosic illusions, or intuit them from the Roman art believed to be derived from them. From these stories and many other bits of evidence it is clear that for many Greek artists and patrons, the purpose of color was to enhance the illusion that what we see is real. Such illusions depend upon the elimination of most contour line and the use of light and dark not as colors but as a means of modeling three-dimensional form. As we shall see in Chapter 3, such preferences lead to a diminished role for color as color—the apple’s redness has a role to play but is secondary to the shadows and highlights that convince us of its spheroid form. It is noteworthy that the trend towards greater verisimilitude, with the task of the painter increasingly turning towards the creation of an illusion, accompanies the counterbalancing trend in philosophy, from Parmenides to Plato, to discredit the things we see around us as being no kind of reality. In his Republic, Plato makes it clear that he regards painting of this sort as a long way removed from anything worth pondering. He notes that there is a true and universal idea, or form, of a couch and then there is the less real creation of a couch created by a furniture maker—a kind of shadow of the true idea. Next there is the mere appearance of that already doubtful physical couch—the way the couch appears from a particular angle. And finally there is the painter’s imitation of the appearance of the couch—as far from truth as one can get. But this contradiction of ideology illustrates a broader unifying Greek genius for investigating the world around us with logical precision. In order to create an illusion the painter has to be just as aware as Plato is that the swirling bits of color we see are not very much like the physical nature of what we see. Light and shadow play across the surface of forms, changing their colors even as they make them appear solid and real to us. It is because of this disconnect between patches of color and the forms they indicate that painters can create the illusion of form on a flat surface. 63

Color Theory

True to his more outward focused philosophy, Aristotle sees some, slight, moral virtue in contemplating the images of beautiful figures that painters and sculptors create. In arguing that instruction in drawing should be part of the Greek citizen’s liberal arts education he carries on his prejudice elevating sight above the other senses, his physician’s regard for the signs our body gives of our true internal state of affairs, and his joining of aesthetics with ethics. For him, the color given by a flushed cheek is a genuine piece of knowledge about the state of a fellow human, the contemplation of which can be redeeming for the viewer (see Figure 2.11): The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representations is not far removed from the same feeling about realities . . . The objects of no other sense, such as taste and touch, have any resemblance to moral qualities; in visible objects there is only a little, for there are figures that are of a moral character, but only to a slight extent . . . Again, figures and colors are not imitations, but signs, of character, indications which the body gives of states of feeling. Aristotle 1941, 1311

Figure 2.11 Aristotle saw value in the knowledge we gain about our fellow humans and ourselves in such details as the color given by a flushed cheek. And he believed the contemplation of those details can be redeeming for the viewer. This bronze sculpture of a Boxer at Rest has some polychrome details (inlaid copper indicating blood) and more generally reveals the Greek affinity for such empathetic content, which stood apart from Egyptian and Persian exemplars. © Whirlitzer / Alamy Stock Photo.

64

Knowing at a Distance

Color Use Activity 2.3 A quick glance through any art history textbook will show that different cultures used color in distinct ways. As likely as not, these color ways have not been articulated as color theory per se. For these color application exercises, examine the illustrations of Greek art in this chapter, and feel free to conduct further image research of your own. You should also bear in mind the notions of color order, and the philosophical perspectives on color, revealed in Color Use Activities 2.1 and 2.2 without feeling that you must slavishly adhere to them. Color application 1 Decorate a piece of pottery in one of the distinct period styles of Greek tradition—geometric, red figure, black figure, or white ground. Choose one of the six color ordering systems you created, or a new one based on new insights, and challenge yourself to embrace the results of one or more of the contemplation exercises. Acrylic paints will work, but there are also media available in craft stores meant for painting on glass and ceramics, if real ceramic glazes or clay slips are not practicable. Color application 2 Color in a Greek temple pediment (photocopied from an Art History text or similar source) in order to enhance the sumptuousness of the display and inspire religious devotion. Choose or create a color ordering system that is different from the one you used in the previous color application, and consider whether this religious purpose also allows you to embrace the results of one or more of the contemplation exercises. Watercolor can work but tends to wrinkle the paper. Colored pencils are a very practical choice. If you are working in a group setting, compare and critique your results. Color application 3 Color in a Greek statue of a human figure (photocopied from this book or another source) in order to instill it with a lifelike quality and inspire what Aristotle might have considered a positive sympathetic reaction. Use a color ordering system based on either the fifth or sixth color ordering exercise (based on Aristotle’s emphasis on black and white as well as his three rainbow primaries). Also, consider observing the actual colors of human hair, eyes, flesh and so on as part of your color observation journal and using those here. For a much more palpable, almost scandalous sense of what colored Greek statuary might have been like, order a plastic or ceramic replica of some sculpture of classical antiquity and paint it with acrylic paints (a web search for “Venus de Milo replica” quickly turns up items ranging from about $20 to over $2,000). If you are working in a group setting, compare and critique your results.

Alternative narratives about Greek culture As we prepare to leave ancient Greek culture behind, and move on in a traditional Western art narrative, we need to note alternative narratives to our own. European traditions do include many obvious elements of 65

Color Theory

Greek influence, from the architecture of major institutions to secular approaches to science and math, to democratic ideals and concepts of civic engagement. But the story linking ancient Greek civilization to medieval European culture is hardly a slam dunk. As the Jansons put it in their History of Art, “if we were to spill a bucket of water in front of the cathedral of our choice, this water would eventually make its way to the English Channel rather than the Mediterranean Sea” (2004, 14). The peoples of Northern and Western Europe had a fair amount of contact with those of the Mediterranean, and were partly conquered and colonized by the Romans, but we tend to diminish the fact that they were really a distinct culture of their own. The notion of a Dark Age, between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, leaves aside the fact that most of Europe never was part of those brilliant ancient civilizations and that their own increasingly sophisticated cultural contributions and stable institutions were not so much a revival of lost glory as the beginning of new glories. More convincing is the influence the Greeks had on Roman civilization and through them on the cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East. The Byzantine Empire (an evolution of the Eastern Roman Empire) did not fall at all until it was eclipsed by the robust and scholarly emergence of Islamic civilization. There simply never was a “dark age” in that region of the world. We have of course refined our narrative of Western culture to show these facts—noting the preservation of Greek philosophy by Islamic institutions until a time when Western Europe was prepared to absorb that influence. But there still remains this idea that the West mislaid its culture for several hundred years and then found it again. It would be at least as accurate to say that a hybrid culture of formerly Western Roman holdings and Northern European tribes, politically fractious but united under the Catholic Church, came increasingly under the influence of Islamic culture and, through that conduit, discovered and adapted traditions from India, China, the Near East, and ancient Greece. In a similar manner we might examine our preconceptions about Greek culture itself. Here we tend to imagine it in all its highly original glory in terms of the contributions they made, but neglect the forces that pushed them in that direction. We know of course about the constant appeal of Greek philosophers to Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom. We also need to consider the presence of the immensely powerful Persian Empire on the border of the Aegean world. Spanning the fertile crescent and beyond, the Persians’ roots go as deep into human history as is possible while they also conveyed influences from India to the Greek world. Some have argued that Alexander’s political rise represented the absorption of the very notion of a world conquering empire, an alien political model, from the Persians. Some Greek philosophers were said to have traveled to India as well as Egypt, and there are remarkable similarities between Hindu insights and Greek thought— particularly as regards the reincarnation of the soul. Take as one example the parallels between Plato’s dialogue the Phaedrus and another dialogue in the Hindu text the Bhagavad-Gita. These two dialogues, written at about the same time, reveal remarkably similar rhetorical devices, conceptual content, and existential worries. Both even employ a chariot with driver and horses as a metaphor for the soul. We don’t know that there is a direct connection but we know that there was mutual awareness, regard, and interaction between these two introspective cultures on opposite sides of the expanse of the Persian Empire. Chapter 5 will familiarize us more with the period when Art History was formed as a discipline. For now we simply note that the Neo-Classical tone of nineteenth-century scholarship has a distorting influence on our present image of ancient Greek culture. The founders of Art History played a role in establishing the Western notion that the West is the inheritor of Greek ideals. This includes our chromophobic distaste for garish color and preference for “white bodies,” such as those found in Greek and Roman marbles. Even knowing that those bodies were originally quite colorful, it is hard to shake the overall impression that our most cherished cultural traditions, inherited from ancient Greek civilization, are exemplified by achromatic buildings and monuments. 66

Knowing at a Distance

Conclusion We have already summarized, above, the color concepts of the Pre-Socratics. Diverse and incompatible, those theories provided the basic materials from which Plato and Aristotle borrowed to create their more nuanced systems. Color for the Greeks emerges from primal nothingness first as the opposites of light and dark. It is a particularly clear example of that unreal flux they saw in the world around them. Their four basic colors provided a framework for starkly dramatic scenes even as they reveled in the lushness and illusionism color could provide. And they understood optics as an essentially mechanical process in which images are imprinted on the eye. Plato’s take on color as essentially unreal sits in the mainstream of Greek thought. And insofar as he seeks to explain the merely probable underlying process of vision he leans towards an atomistic notion of sub-visible particles streaming forth from eye, sun, and object in complex but invisible interactions. On the other hand there is something deeply moving about his vision of a higher reality, the perfect model of which our world is as good a version as can be. The notion that there truly is a color—in which the colors we see can participate, but such as it must be in eternity—is arresting. Given that he says our souls have dwelled in that realm of forms, we may hope, even as we contemplate the colors before us, to gaze inwards and recall that perfection. Aristotle requires a less strenuous meditative feat on our part, but also evokes an inner response to the outer reality. For him the colors are real and allow us to know true things. Nature has provided us with an eye that is designed to respond to the impressions it receives. It is active in its role of selecting among the infinite potential images around us and it allows the form of the objects we see to be actualized within us. Returning now to our prologue, we recall the wondrous and dangerous nature of the goddess Iris, embodying implacable forces of fate and necessity. For all their logic and proto-scientific thinking, the ancient Greeks were also spiritually inclined. If the rainbow is a message from the gods, what are the gods trying to tell us through color? This brings us, by way of spiritual introspection, to Socrates—of whom we know so little. He countered the Sophists’ cynicism about the existence of an objective truth with a turn towards the soul. If the Sophists would have been happy to argue for, or against, any color theory, Socrates would have been content to acknowledge the limits of what he knew for certain. Then he would ask us what we are doing with all this talk and theorizing, and how best we might martial those mental resources. In the twentieth century we came to a stage where color theory could tell us much about the mechanics of color mixing, but offered next to no guidance as to what color we might mix, and why. Though Socrates has no color theory he has an important new idea of the use of theory. The philosopher’s task, but also anyone’s task and the task of the artist working with color, is to attend to their souls.

References Aristotle, 1923. Meteorology. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Aristotle, 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House. Aristotle, 1963. The Philosophy of Aristotle, A Mentor Classic. Edited by R. Bambrough. New York: New American Library. Armstrong, A. H., 1965. An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 4th ed. London: Methuen. Benson, J. L., 2000. Greek Color Theory and the Four Elements. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Chirimuuta, M., 2015. Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy. London and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Descartes, R., 1988. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Euripides, 1894–8. The Tragedies of Euripides in English Verse. Edited by Arthur S. Way. London: Macmillan and Co. Gladstone, W. E., 1858. Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

67

Color Theory Hesiod, 1914. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Janson, H. W. and A. F. Janson, 2004. History of Art: The Western Tradition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Plant, I. M., 2004. Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Plato, 1902. The Republic of Plato. Edited by J. Adam. Cambridge Cambridge University Press. Plato, 1973. The Timaeus of Plato. Edited by R. D. Archer-Hind. New York: Arno Press. Plato, 1986. The Dialogues of Plato. Edited by E. Segal. New York: Bantam Books. Pliny the Elder, 1855. The Natural History of Pliny. Edited by J. Bostock. London: H. G. Bohn. Wheelwright, P. E. (ed.), 1986. The Presocratics, 1st ed. New York and London: Macmillan; Collier Macmillan.

68

69

CHAPTER 3 STAINED GLASS AND ILLUMINATIONS: EUROPEAN AND ISLAMIC COLOR THEORY BEFORE GALILEO

When He who is a pure spirit, without form or limit, immeasurable in the boundlessness of His own nature, existing as God, takes upon Himself the form of a servant in substance and in stature, and a body of flesh, then you may draw His likeness, and show it to anyone willing to contemplate it. Depict His ineffable condescension, His virginal birth, His baptism in the Jordan, His transfiguration on Thabor, His all-powerful sufferings, His death and miracles, the proofs of His Godhead, the deeds which He worked in the flesh through divine power, His saving Cross, His Sepulchre, and resurrection, and ascent into heaven. Give to it all the endurance of engraving and colour. Have no fear or anxiety; worship is not all of the same kind. St. John of Damascus, Apologia of St John of Damascus Against Those who Decry Holy Images The standard narrative of color theory, of which this book offers a critique and a corrective, bypasses a bit under two full millennia in a great leap from Aristotle to Newton. Indeed, most color theory texts simply begin with Newton, and then glance back—across rising and falling empires and the emergence of two major world religions—at Aristotle as the standard bearer of all that came before the seventeenth century. Though scholars of each historical period have done extensive research on the color theory within their purview, texts offering an overview of color theory simply ignore the bulk of what most Westerners have long thought of as history itself. It says something about our attachment to color science as the one true standard of what can be said about color that we are unable to grapple with other paradigms for viewing color. If we are to take seriously the attitudes and approaches of all cultures towards color as part of the history of color theory, then the period between classical philosophy and Enlightenment science is one of our most significant areas for study. Any account of this period, whether it is book length or the mere chapter we envision here, must be shockingly brief, reductive, and anecdotal. But, if the reader finds it so, then our task of exposing the inadequacies of the traditional accounts of our field will be a success. We will have to consider the color theories of three religious spheres: that of the Eastern Church, as seen particularly in the Byzantine Empire; of the Islamic world; and of Western European Christianity, particularly in the Latin Church. And we will seek to realize the unique challenges and opportunities the color users of those cultures faced by virtue of their cultural context, largely as it was shaped by religious concerns. This is not to imply that those cultures did not have other, what we might call secular, dimensions. We will examine those as they become salient to the intellectual history of the Renaissance. But for the bulk of this chapter the focus on theological perspectives will allow us to take advantage of the most overarching framework available for generalizing about what are in fact widely diverse cultures. We will also add to the general consensus among scholars which firmly counters the conception of the medieval period as a kind of historical let-down between antiquity and the Renaissance, of which the supposed gap between the color theories of Aristotle and Newton is a sort of deep echo. Several important facts are ignored in that narrative of Dark Ages and ignorant barbarians. These include the continuity of intellectual activity in the Eastern Mediterranean world from Hellenic civilization, through Byzantium, and a flourishing 71

Color Theory

under Islamic rule. They also include the fact that much of the territory that falls under what we consider medieval Europe—Northern and Western Europe—was never central to the pursuit of philosophical inquiry that was such a hallmark of Hellenistic culture. As even Janson’s fairly traditional text on Art History puts it, many of the diverse cultures that contributed to medieval history resided in a watershed region emptying into the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Mediterranean Sea. The medieval period is thus arguably not one in which those diverse cultures somehow lost their way, but rather one in which they gradually achieved the elements of greater stability, literacy, and cultural accomplishment that have traditionally (if conservatively) marked great civilizations. And regardless of such suspect metrics for evaluating cultures, all these periods and times had their arts, and had their theories and attitudes towards color embedded in them. As was the case with the diverse world cultures of Chapter 1, it is the assertion of this book that such theories and attitudes are indeed what we ought to call color theory.

Differing color needs, differing color applications This chapter opens with a quote by St John of Damascus defending the creation and use of holy images against charges of idolatry. The cultures considered in this chapter share the legacy of Hellenistic thought outlined in the previous chapter but they also share the particular concerns of monotheistic faiths. In particular they wrestle with the issue of whether images are inherently false idols and how the use of art in religious practice can be squared with the worship of their one true God. In Islam this will lead to a diminishment of figurative art and an unleashing of the potential of non-figurative uses of color and pattern. In Christianity it leads to a difficult dance around the role of the senses as both a means of contemplating God’s creation and a dangerous avenue by which deceit and corruption may enter. Teasing out the color theories of cultures that did not write about that topic per se has its challenges, but the varied ways in which Byzantine, Islamic, Western European medieval, and Renaissance cultures thought about color are readily apparent in the starkly different ways they used it. These varying color applications arise from different creative needs faced by the artists of the time. Byzantine and other medieval artists did not strive to model objects in space through the use of light and shadow, as their Roman and, according to Pliny, Greek predecessors often did and as the artists of the Renaissance would come to do, precisely because such effects did not serve the purpose of their creative project. As in most of history, depictions of divine and semidivine figures and subjects—and depictions of symbols of temporal authority ruling under divine sanction— do not require or even necessarily benefit from such treatment. The goal in these cases is to convey stature that transcends ordinary physical reality and calls for applications of color that one might call extra ordinary. And while the Islamic arts share those considerations, the demands of that faith and culture call for still more unique and transporting colored objects and environments. As we will see in the examples that follow, abstract and symbolic uses of color, often applied in ways that preclude the depiction of deep space, dominate Byzantine and medieval art. And color environments enacting light and dark are key elements of sacred spaces such as chapels, sepulchres, and crypts. Likewise the brilliance of color in illuminated manuscripts and stained glass become iconic of medieval culture. A similar interest in rich or dazzling color, conveying an otherworldly or divine perfection, pervades Islamic art. When joined with a variable but extremely influential stricture against figurative depiction, and an emphasis on functional and mobile artforms (such as architecture, weaving, ceramics, and especially book arts) over less functional and potentially more idolatrous forms (such as painting and sculpture), Islamic color use reaches new heights of abstract beauty and evocations of wonder. Partly due to Islamic translations of Hellenistic texts, as well as original Islamic thought, medieval Christian scholastic traditions form adaptations of Platonism and quasi72

Stained Glass and Illuminations

Aristotelian theories of vision. As Islamic scholarship on optics takes hold in late medieval Europe, and systematic perspective is developed, naturalistic uses of color begin to replace supernatural ones. The resulting Renaissance renderings of modeled forms in space employ light and shadow in ways that complicate the inclusion of richer, more saturated colors. This tradition has at times been over-generalized as a devaluing of the rainbow’s hues and has been an aspect of a durable division between disegno and colore; a dichotomy that contrasts the quantitatively more controllable ability of contour line paired with light and shadow to render objects in space, with the qualitatively more affecting potential of rich and suggestive color. What might we say about these three religious spheres that span the period covered by this chapter? They are of course all monotheistic, in contrast to those of Chapter 2, and like the Jewish tradition they sprang from. They are all described as “Abrahamic religions,” and also as religions “of the book.” And they all have a particular sensitivity around the issue of idolatry, which will be crucial to the ways they think about color use. And the Christian religions of Eastern Orthodoxy in the Byzantine Empire, and of Western Christianity and then Protestant faiths, have an added commitment to the incarnation of God which leads to unique and layered reappraisals of a philosophical heritage rooted in Greek and Islamic culture.

The Byzantine period In Art History surveys, Byzantine art is generally placed after Roman and before Western European medieval art because, though it overlaps both it provides a certain continuity between the ancient and Christian worlds and its heyday comes after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and before the rise of Western Europe. The Byzantine Empire was simply the continuation of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, in which Eastern Orthodox Christianity became the state religion and the power of Church and state were relatively united. Key episodes in any study of Byzantine art are the iconoclastic periods when the iconoclasts, literally the “breakers of icons,” overthrew religious orthodoxy by forbidding the production of religious images and destroying many of those that existed. They did so on the grounds that these images, and what they saw as the worship of them, were idolatrous. This idolatry was opposed both on general principles—opposition to the worship of anything other than the one true God—and the specific prohibition against making “graven images” laid down in the Second Commandment received by Moses on Mount Sinai. But those iconoclasts were possibly also responding to the vitality of the new Islamic faith, which overran much of what had been the Byzantine Empire—and to the theological challenge of its arguably more consistent doctrines against idolatry.

Iconoclasts and iconophiles The iconoclastic episodes in Byzantine culture are both problematic and helpful for our study of color. On the one hand they resulted in the destruction of much of the art we might wish to study in considering our subject, and writings by those on both sides (the iconoclasts and their opponents, the iconodules or iconophiles) were destroyed by the other side as being heretical texts. Ultimately our understanding of the period is clouded by the ultimate victory by orthodox iconophiles in restoring the use of images in religious worship, as the writings of the iconoclasts are largely lost to us. And while the principal motivation for the destruction of icons was a literal interpretation of the Ten Commandments, one wonders in what ways the legacy of ancient Greek philosophical attitudes towards the senses may also have been in play. On the other hand the disruption of what had been an orthodox practice in the Church required defenders of that 73

Color Theory

tradition to expend considerable intellectual energy on examining the role of figurative imagery and sculpture, resulting in a rich body of aesthetics. These iconophile writings provide evidence of an important trend in color attitudes. On the one hand Christian cultures generally, like many world cultures, consider the sensible things of this world to be less important, less good, or even less real than those of a higher world, ideal perfect order, or paradise. And monotheism may be especially hostile to an embrace of the things of this world, as those things are often considered in pantheistic terms or as a distraction from the one true God. But Christianity is notable among monotheisms in its embrace of the incarnation of God; His taking on human bodily form. Though other theological defenses for iconophilia will be developed in Byzantine, medieval, and later Christian contexts, the body of Christ will prove to be an enduring touchstone for those defending the use of images in worship. On these arguments hangs the devout Christian perception of color—as being alternatively a dangerous distraction or a means of redemption. The iconoclastic period (actually two episodes of iconoclasm occurred in this time, interrupted by a brief interval) began in 754 and ended in 843. Two of the chief iconophile writers were St. John of Damascus, who wrote Apologies Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images (cited in this chapter’s epigraph), and St. Theodore the Studite, who wrote Refutations of the Iconoclasts. Motivated by the violent destruction of revered artifacts and the disruption of centuries of tradition, these and other theorists articulated much that would remain constant in Christianity as to the purpose of Christian art. The purpose of Christian art that they propose, and their denial of the charge of idolatry, revolve around two main points, both of which connect the senses to more divine matters. The first is the role of the artwork in elevating the viewer to a contemplation of those things that are higher—a sort of stirring of their better nature and awakening of the inner eye by means of the portal that is provided by the senses. The second is a reclaiming of all that is “of the senses” as being potentially redeemed by God’s grace—and more particularly the incarnation of God as the Son, Jesus Christ in human form with all the senses the body possesses and perhaps more importantly sensible to those who witnessed that incarnation. These defenses, rooted in various forms of Platonist and Neo-Platonic thought, echoed in the work of Augustine in the West, and eventually given more diversity by the inclusion of Aristotilean ideas, are common themes in later debates about the Church’s use of art in its efforts to inspire devotion. The key to the defense offered by John of Damascus is the incarnation of Christ. In his Apologies he states, after discussing the phenomenon of the Word made flesh: Therefore I venture to draw an image of the invisible God, not as invisible, but as having become visible for our sakes through flesh and blood. I do not draw an image of the immortal Godhead. I paint the visible flesh of God, for it is impossible to represent the spirit, how much more God who gives breath to the spirit. Apologia of St John of Damascus Against Those who Decry Holy Images, 2001, 3 In this way St. John distinguishes between any law given to Moses and the altered state of events brought about by the Incarnation. He then goes on to provide a thorough discussion of kinds of representation, ranging from graven images to sacred texts to such artifacts as the Ark and the Holy Tabernacle—all of which he argues are “images” of things worthy of honor while not being depictions of the (impossible to depict) God. A case is made for the various kinds of reverence due to those things that are worthy of our honour and how this may be distinguished from idolatry—the adoration of parts of creation as though they were the Creator Himself. 74

Stained Glass and Illuminations

Color use in Byzantine art The question for us of course is simply what does this say about color? The answer is twofold. First, it reaffirms that all the evidence of the senses, color included, must be regarded as secondary to scriptural revelation and theological beliefs about what is real, and worthy of our attention. Second, it suggests that within that theological perspective there is a place for color and other sensory experience in the encounter with the body of Christ, and thus with all the apparatus of Church ritual which that opening into our world makes possible. From here, though the iconophiles do not provide a further discussion of the topic, we have license to consider that apparatus in terms of its sensory impact in general, and color’s role in that spectacle in particular. What we might mean by spectacle is clear at a glance at any Byzantine art: it comes in the form of magnificent architectural achievements, sparkling mosaics, and painted and gilded icons that combine otherworldly stylization with an affecting human presence. Generally, as seemed to be the case with their ancient Greek predecessors, we see color considered by Byzantine artists and thinkers first in terms of its brightness rather than as hue (James 2003). Foremost among Byzantine landmarks is the Cathedral of St. Sophia, often called the Hagia Sophia (see Figure 3.1). Numerous primary sources over the centuries have testified to the awesome splendor of the vast billowing domed space of its interior. Too large and symmetrical to allow one to focus towards any one location or speaker, the only place to look is up, at the impossibly high central dome. This

Figure 3.1 The Cathedral of St. Sophia is a prime example of Byzantine use of light and space to create a spectacle aimed at transporting our thoughts beyond the material world. Gaetner / Alamy Stock Photo. 75

Color Theory

dome, set above a circular clerestory of windows, appears to float on a halo of light. Allusions to heaven—in the form of the dome, and to heavenly light—in the form of that halo are clear cut. The first principle of Byzantine color theory would seem to be the age-old invocation of the goodness and divinity of light itself. And the first goal of color use, combined with architectural staging, appears to be the transporting of our thoughts beyond the material world. Located throughout St. Sophia, and similar church structures, were rich mosaics frequently depicting the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and his Apostles, as well as emperors, empresses, high Church officials, and their retinues. Consider the mosaic apse with Virgin and Child at St. Sophia; or, at Ravenna, the famous depictions of the Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora (see Figure 3.2). Stylized but expressive, wide-eyed faces are juxtaposed with very shallow or entirely flat pictorial spaces. These faces have a certain quickness or life to them. With their pink cheeks and lips, bold staring gazes, and heavy brows, a certain human urgency may arrest our attention despite the level of abstraction involved and even as they are contained in a timeless otherworldly domain. Those spaces serve to contain large areas of rich color, often gold, whose reflectivity entirely negates depth and refers us to a world outside of our own. Gold becomes a crucial color that is also bound into a material. As we saw in Chapter 1, gold is universally regarded as not only displaying a kind of divine light, but as bearing that quality in its very nature. And purple takes up its dual potency as both signifier of royal authority and symbol of the blood of Christ; blood, like gold, being both a color and a material. This embedding of color into materiality is also part of the nature of mosaic itself. Here the multifaceted tiled nature of mosaic is put to use in the play of light and dark. The recesses of the church allow only indirect sunlight and are illuminated by lamps whose moving lights will flicker and dance off the variously tilted tesserae. Being made up of glass, ceramic, and stone, these tiles also fuse color with material; their color cannot be separated

Figure 3.2 Color is fused with the materiality of tesserae, and light shifts and glitters off the surface of mosaics such as this one depicting the Empress Theodora and her Attendants. World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo. 76

Stained Glass and Illuminations

from the reflective nature of their substance, nor from the surface depth which vitreous materials can have. The possibility of the illusion of space is reduced, in this medium, in favor of symbolic power and a certain palpable wondrous presence. What is present here? The delight of the color itself is present in the physical artwork. And the combined power of Church and state makes itself felt through this infusion of pleasure and weight. We can see many of the same uses of color and otherworldly space in the icons of the Byzantine Church, the Vladimir Icon being the most famous example (see Figure 3.3). It bears a legendary attribution to St. Luke the evangelist, often depicted as painting the Virgin’s likeness. Icons trade the practicality of portability, and a greater degree of intimacy, for the grandeur of mosaic murals. Being avowedly not the divine presence itself, but certainly a sort of noble conduit for divine favor, the icons require the kind of wonder embedded in materiality discussed above in order to inspire devotion. Their portability invites the touch and allows them to be brought forth from the church in processions; allows their power to be felt by the public. As with the mosaics, their color cannot be separated from their physical presence. All of this connoisseurship of the materiality of color use in Byzantine art must be taken as what it is—the appreciation that we bring to the work from our vastly different cultural context. But the possibility is there to connect what we see in the work, which the Byzantines left unspoken, with what they do say about the role of imagery and Christian art. We read these words by St. John the Damascene:

Figure 3.3 Color was understood in Byzantine culture as giving images form and reality, a point that may have been all the more poignant in the case of the Vladimir Icon which was traditionally held to have been painted by Saint Luke directly from life. Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.

77

Color Theory

Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honouring that matter which works my salvation. Apologia of St. John of Damascus Against Those who Decry Holy Images, 2001, 10 And reading these words, we may gaze ourselves upon the Vladimir Icon and recall that the faithful believed it was painted directly from life, in the presence of the Holy Mother herself. The scholar of Byzantine art Liz James argues that, contrary to the supposed superiority of disegno over colore, which we will discuss in the section on Renaissance color, Byzantine thinkers had “a widely held and consistent belief that color gave an image form and reality” (James 2003, 226). Mere line and shading gave a false image or shadow of the world, while coloring was linked to God as Creator. These elements support a thesis that this form of materialized color is rendered holy, by its participation in the miracle of creation, and even the incarnation itself.

Color Use Activity 3.1 In Byzantine, medieval, and Islamic contexts the essential traits of colors were not hue, saturation, and value, but rather brightness, a connection to God incarnate, and/or their suitability as a pathway to transcend everyday experience. The following activities seek to handle color in ways consistent with this perspective—as though it were our own—and perhaps spur the imagination to see these approaches as natural, rather than exotic. As in the previous chapters, if working in a group setting, compare and contrast your work. Color as divinity incarnate 1 Create a mosaic or similarly tessellated artwork using reflective materials. If making a proper mosaic from glass, stone, or ceramic bits sunk into a mortar is not plausible then collect bits of reflective materials such as thin plastic, plastic packaging, aluminum foil, foil wrappers on candy and liquor bottles, and so on. Cheap plastic mirrors, beads, and stickers may round out the options. Sturdy clippers may help you break up some of these materials which may then be adhered to wall or panel using a hot glue gun or other means. Design your mural with stark contrasts, providing a flat background color against which figures with bold outlines, and perhaps even stark staring eyes, will stand out. Color as divinity incarnate 2 Situate your mosaic in a room that may be darkened. Then introduce flickering light with candles, or specialized electric lights that simulate the effect. Your goal is to use moving light and the variously tilted reflective surfaces of the mosaic to create a spectacle. You may also wish to carry these candles with you in the darkened room, reading the mural by moving the light about and watching as it plays across the surface.

78

Stained Glass and Illuminations

Color as divinity incarnate 3 Using flesh-toned colors, paint a nude figure. Believe that the flesh is that of God uniquely made visible in our world. And believe that in some manner the colored material has a direct connection with that flesh. Treat the painting with great reverence and respect, keeping it stored carefully in its special place and bringing it out only when you have prepared yourself to be in the presence of the divine. Bow your head before the image, make protective and our beseeching gestures with your hands. Then touch and chastely kiss the figure you have depicted.

Islam The most salient aspect of Islamic art is the variable but relatively strong prohibition against figurative art, particularly in religious contexts. This restriction is similar in origin to those found in Judaism and during the brief iconoclastic episodes in Byzantine culture. It can be argued that this tendency is pronounced among monotheistic faiths owing to a certain jealousy we can attribute to any God that forbids the acknowledgement of other gods. In this matter, however, Islam pursues the logic of its first principles more consistently than the other monotheisms. There is, after all, the standing the Quran enjoys as the central canonical text of Islam, given in a set language (Arabic) and thus generating fewer debates about translations and over what texts are canonical. And Islam pointedly does not elevate its prophet, Mohammed, as being divine or more than human—thus underscoring the otherworldly nature of the divine. The consistency of message, therefore, and perhaps the fact that Islamic artists had the opportunity to carry out the logic of non-objective religious art on the scale of empire (unlike, generally, Jewish artists), has led to uses of color and pattern that stand alone in history. One aspect of Islamic art that rivals that prohibition in significance for our study is the importance of book arts and letterforms in particular, and all of what we call the functional arts in general. This may appear to modern readers to be a reversal of the typical canon which historically in the West has placed painting and sculpture high on the scale that runs from fine art to crafts, and there is indeed a significance to the preference as it exists in Islamic culture, but we must also bear in mind the relatively artificial and recent nature of this hierarchy, which many art historians have worked hard to reframe in the context of a particular cultural history. The book arts, in Islam, benefit very clearly from the importance of the Quran and the reception of that text as being the actual words conveyed to their prophet from God (for whom the Arab word is ‘Allah’) via the Angel Gabriel. The sacred texts of other religions may include quotations attributed to God (i.e. “Let there be light,” or even one might argue “Blessed are the meek”) and are considered to be divinely inspired writings, but they are generally written in the voice of a human author. And the prohibition against idolatry may play a role in the preference for functional objects. Without the ability to depict figures, both sculpture and painting lose much of the rhetorical (some would say idolatrous) force they have in other contexts. Perhaps then the relative elevation in Islamic contexts of ceramics, textile arts, and other forms modern Western cultures have tended to diminish as “decorative,” is due to this prohibition. Islamic intellectual history and its relevance to color theory in Islamic cultures should be read in terms of a context that is both Hellenized and Abrahamic: Hellenized because Islamic rule quickly expanded into the Eastern Mediterranean world that had been colonized by Greek culture; Abrahamic in that, like Judaism and Christianity, this faith worshipped the God of Abraham and is preoccupied by the troubled relationship between that God and His creation. So Islam is the inheritor of Greek philosophical traditions we have already noted, which tend generally to disparage color as being part of a world of flux and as being an unreliable or 79

Color Theory

downright deceitful source of knowledge. Contrary to that trend, and of use to resolving its second inheritance, is the work of Aristotle. For the God of Abraham may be described as having found his most favored creatures somewhat wanting in obedience, and their tradition describes the Devil as making notable use of the sensual temptations of this world. This inheritance tends, if anything, to reinforce the disparagement of the sensory world found in Greek thought. Islam, however, may be argued to take a somewhat more conciliatory stance towards the apparent split between our world and what is real. A common way of summing up the nature of God as revealed to Mohammed, is to state that He is transcendent yet immanent. That is to say that Allah is both unimaginably more than we can conceive of from our limited perspective and immediately present to us, within us, and all around us in this world. One might reach for mental images of both the cosmos as revealed by the Hubble telescope and the beating pulse of blood in one’s jugular and say “Behold, there too is God.” Consider these two passages from the Quran for the evocation of first, the transcendental and second, the immanent: Say: “He is God, One, God the Eternal. He has not begotten, nor has He been begotten, and for Him there is no equal.” Quran 112.1–4 The East and the West (belong) to God, so wherever you turn, there is the face of God. Surely God is embracing, knowing. Quran 2.115 Insofar as the world around us is seen as the work of God, there is a natural attraction to the Aristotilean argument that there is no error in what we see, only in what we judge of it, and that nature does nothing in vain. The Quran makes it clear that nature is important evidence of God’s work in such passages as this one: Surely in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of the night and the day, and the ship which runs on the sea with what benefits the people, and the water which God sends down from the sky, and by means of it gives the earth life after its death, and He scatters on it all (kinds of) creatures, and (in the) changing of the winds, and the clouds controlled between the sky and the earth—(all these are) signs indeed for a people who understand. Quran 2.164 As Samir Mahmoud points out, in his essay “Color and the Mystics: Light, Beauty, and the Spiritual Quest,” the visible has a dignity, and that dignity is not denied by the fact that the visible is a phenomenon that comes about because of something beyond the visible (Art et al. 2011). Color is evidence of the invisible; it is a sign of the invisible making itself known to us. These, then, are the elements of Islamic thought that we might look to see in its use of color: an emphasis on non-objective ways of applying color—and an overriding need to point beyond the physical world— combined with an Aristotilean interest in the evidence of the senses as an expression of God’s power. What the artists of the Muslim world have produced in this context is a series of new approaches to color and pattern that no longer regard those elements of art and design, and their dazzling effects, as tools—but rather as the only subject the devout artist has any business depicting. The artist turns from depicting colored and patternedthings and simply depicts color and pattern itself. The result alternately reinforces the flatness of the picture plane (be it the surface of a tiled wall, ceramic vessel, manuscript, or carpet) and dissolves it in a dizzying optical puzzle. We will see at the end of this chapter that Renaissance artists are at times said to turn

80

Stained Glass and Illuminations

away from bright saturated color to the structure and definition that line and value (various shades of light and dark) provide in the quest to pursue figurative art. So it is perhaps inevitable that Islamic art would reverse this trend, dismissing efforts to carve into space and reveal the objects contained there, and instead engaging with surface, pattern, and color. The result is a body of work in color that is truly unique in the history of art— having perhaps no likeness closer than the work of minimalist artists of the late modern period.

Color in Islamic art and architecture In this briefest of overviews we will restrict ourselves to what is most salient and most unusual—leaving aside those things which seem derivative of Byzantine culture or repeat tendencies common to other world cultures. With such a limitation, we note architecture as a field where some of the most extraordinary work in color has taken place. From Andalusia to South Asia, Islamic architecture adapted to local conditions and absorbed local vocabulary, yet consistently made startling innovations whose distinctiveness is immediately recognizable. One might start to categorize these innovations in terms of pattern and underlying form. And one might furthermore look for those interactions of color and pattern that seem to assert the bold geometry of large structures, and those which serve to evaporate the buildings’ surfaces into a cloud of otherworldly glory; a kind of immanence and transcendence of form and negative space. Architectural wonders from opposite ends of the Islamic world will frame our present study. First we will consider the wonders of the Mughal Empire in northern India and then those of the Moors in Spain. We see in these examples certain commonalities sufficient to show the coherence of Muslim architectural themes but also a contrast in style expressive of great virtuosity and delight. The Mughals demonstrate an interest in monochromatic color schemes and symmetry conceived on a vast scale. The Moors, in particular the Nasrid dynasty, produced more eclectic architectural programs, moving with great dexterity from one polychrome pattern to another. The most famous example of Mughal architecture is the Taj Mahal, a mausoleum built in the midseventeenth century and housing the bodies of the Emperor Shah Jahan, who commissioned the work, and his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal (see Figure 3.4). Although at close range the building turns out to have myriad patterns and floral decorative schemes made of inlaid stone in a wide range of colors, the overall effect is of the grandeur of pure white seen at some remove. The perfect soapy whiteness of the marble acts as a dazzling surface for the light of the sun and moon to play upon. The massive balloon-like dome, which is actually a false dome built over a shallower interior dome, seems to float upwards. Such uniform coloring across a building’s surface is unusual in architectural history and underlines the “otherness” which may be seen as a goal of Islamic artistry. It may also serve a rhetorical purpose of the state. The singularity of architectural vision, the way in which the aesthetic effect is carried out consistently across the building and across the whole complex of buildings, conveys the singular authority of the emperor, as much as the transcendent uniqueness of God. Color cannot easily be divorced from form, so even non-objective artists tend to present us with a colored something—not simply color itself. So for these artists pattern and symmetry are necessary to frame the color effects they employ. In the case of the Taj Mahal we see how this symmetry is conceived at all scales, from the wall decorations to the central mausoleum, to the grounds, attendant structures, and even the surrounding landscape. In plan, the building has numerous axes of symmetry—lines for which a fold or a rotation results in an identical image. The façade seen from any side provides a perfect bilateral symmetry. And the grounds and gardens all about it multiply the effect. The use of reflecting pools in the gardens provides an even more kaleidoscopic effect as the world above ground is inverted in these strategically placed water features. This 81

Color Theory

Figure 3.4 The Taj Mahal demonstrates the Mughal interest in monochromatic color schemes and symmetry conceived on a vast scale. Dawn S / Alamy Stock Photo.

dizzying experience is enhanced by the fact that there are many other buildings, courtyards, arcades, gardens, and mosques arranged all about the structure in a perfectly executed, flawlessly symmetrical, overall architectural complex. We must add that the Taj Mahal was originally supposed to have yet another reflection, a companion mausoleum for the emperor so that the adjacent river itself provides the axis of reflection. That mausoleum, deemed too great an expense by the emperor’s heir, was to have been the equal in every way to the monument we see today, but rendered in equally perfect black marble. Dramatic color statements, achieved through vast expanses of uniform color application, achieve a signature Islamic affect not only at the Taj Mahal but throughout Mughal architecture. The nearby palace at the Red Fort of Agra, elevated on an outcrop high above the city, where breezes cool the inhabitants and grand vistas are offered in all directions, is also rendered in a pure white marble. Water features are designed both to enhance the visual effect and offer air conditioning. Here, as is typical of Mughal work, the form of negative spaces are as painstakingly crafted as the physical buildings themselves. A sequence of receding archways bears an identical scalloped cut-out profile so that the volume of the whole passage of the walkway beneath them appears to be a solid form extruded along its length. In the surrounding Red Fort, built from a uniform pink stone, a deep well plunges straight down into darkness, with no articulation from the surrounding perfectly flat plane of the floor. The floral convolutions of the well’s outline simply drop away from the clean edge on which the fort’s inhabitants walk. In all these architectural displays the crisp engagement of built forms with

82

Stained Glass and Illuminations

negative space is reinforced by the uniformity of the color application. One isn’t distracted from the interplay of stone and space by decorative flourishes within the built spaces, and the whole of the architecture seems to embrace the sky, the waters, and the world below our feet. Reaching the height of its fame under Islamic rule roughly four centuries earlier, and at the western edge of the Islamic world, the Alhambra, palace of the Nasrids, provides an interesting counterpoint to Mughal architecture. Though uniform color effects appear to apply to such spaces as the Court of the Lions and the Hall of the Two Sisters with its spectacular muqarnas dome, these are, like much classical architecture, buildings that have lost their coloration so that we may think of them, erroneously, as being restrained in color (see Figures 3.5–3.6). In fact, the Alhambra was filled with polychrome patterns that created dazzling optical effects (see Figure 3.7). In her “Designs Always Polychromed or Gilded: The Aesthetics of Color in the Alhambra” Olga Bush describes the Alhambra as having been a place of intense, even overwhelming color where the architecture embodies stability in contrast to kinetic optical effects (Art et al. 2011). Her research uses contemporary cognitive science and references recent artworks that confuse our optical perceptions (Op Art) to explain the potential effect of the architecture as it was originally conceived. She also looks at what were then state-of-theart optical theories as they dovetailed with Islamic aesthetic theories. Those theories saw beauty as dependent on the interrelation of parts, which themselves may or may not be beautiful. There was an understanding that our perceptual systems were complex, and immediate sense impressions were combined with processes of discernment and judgment—a parallel to what we now call the “what” and “where” systems of perception. Thus bright and pure colors may have been considered beautiful in themselves but this was not sufficient to create a beautiful effect; order and proportion must also be present to engage those secondary powers of discernment. In wall mosaics and painted surfaces, rich red and blue backgrounds, created with lazurite and hematite for blue and cinnabar and vermilion for red, were adorned with gold foreground patterns as well as details of black, turquoise, and green. Two signature techniques were employed to engage with, and even confound, the eye. The first is the juxtaposition of two colors of equal intensity or saturation, which seem to pulsate in contrast with one another. Both colors appear to push forward, neither one taking on the role of background color for more than a moment, and thus confounding the “where” system of our perceptual apparatus. Our minds struggle to assign location or depth to these equi-luminant colors. The second technique is to treat the same pattern of tiles (for example) with different color placements. These differences in color application cause the same pattern to be perceived differently, but also, when seen in proximity to alternative color applications, opens our perception to those shifting potentials. Thus a single display of diamond shapes may appear to offer multiple simultaneous options for figure and ground relationships. In one example, Bush describes how the different color applications emphasizes differing axis of symmetry across the same surface, causing a dynamic effect like that of an “undulating sea.” Such effects, and the use of muqarnas, complex surface treatments inside of domes, serve to evaporate the buildings’ surfaces into a cloud of otherworldly glory, evoking the transcendence of the divine. Numerous other architectural examples could easily be examined at this point. The hypostyle hall of the Great Mosque of Cordoba (now a cathedral), founded by the Umayyad dynasty, offers the dizzying repeating patterns of that form, reminiscent of the halls of Persepolis and ancient Egypt, and increases the effect with zebra-like alternating blocks of red- and cream-colored stone voussoirs (see Figure 3.8). The mosques and madrasas of Isfahan, Iran offer extraordinary use of crisply defined surface areas punctuated by negative spaces that seem to be as carefully modeled as the stone surfaces with which they are juxtaposed. This treatment, allowing richly colored and brilliantly complex mosaics to fill geometrically precise facades, demonstrates aspects of both Mughal and Iberian architecture. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the 83

Figures 3.5 and 3.6 The Hall of the Two Sisters and the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra, with spectacular muqarnas dome and beautiful symmetry, demonstrate the Nasrid dynasty’s interest in mathematically sophisticated patterns. The surfaces appear fairly monochrome now but may have had rich colors or colored hangings. B. O’Kane / Alamy Stock Photo. Luis Dafos /Alamy Stock Photo. 84

Figure 3.7 The elaborate tilework at the Alhambra was designed with both theme and variation in mind. Often color was a device for making simple patterns infinitely more complex and dazzling to the eye. Guillem Lopez / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 3.8 The alternating colors of the voussoirs amplify the dramatic, even kaleidoscopic impact of the double arches and repeating columns at the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Sorin Colac / Alamy Stock Photo. 85

Color Theory

Blue Mosque in Istanbul reinforce similar themes as well as the penchant for analogous, nearly monochromatic, color schemes. And the Doge’s Palace in Venice, never affiliated with Islam, demonstrates how trade connections may have influenced styles in the Christian West, displaying as it does a crisply flat brickwork facade with a broad space of uniform color and pattern (see Figure 3.9). Because of the Quran’s status in Islam as the literal word of God, the art of book making is of the highest importance in that culture. It is here that the most lavish expenditures of labor and expensive pigments are considered most appropriate and it is clear that in the context of religious texts there is no sense that color and the delights of the senses are in any way out of place. Again we see that the general prohibition against figurative imagery has pushed artists to develop letterforms and embellishments of unmatched intricacy and precision. Gold and lapis lazuli are employed both for their heavenly visual effect and for their expense, as a sign of honor for the text. The impressively large Jerrah Pasha Quran held at the Morgan Library and Museum has that signature lavish effect, precise execution, and the interest shared with architecture in applying color in broad areas and ornate color schemes. The Manuscript of Five Sections of a Quran (see Figure 3.10) is a sacred text that demonstrates how restraint is one tool used to create rapturous effects, as the broad expanse of wide margins and blank negative space (itself a sign of luxury) is juxtaposed with a dazzling range of rich colors in tightly orchestrated ornate patterns. Still more indulgent are the secular works of Persian miniature painters such as the Shahnama of Abu’l Qasim Firdausi with its wild array of pinks, purples, greens, and blues that cavort in its pictorial spaces (see Figure 3.11). On the one hand we have the stricter non-objective decoration

Figure 3.9 An element of Islamic influence may be seen in the use of color, surface, and pattern in Venetian architectural works such as the Doge’s Palace. Andrew Soundarajan / Alamy Stock Photo. 86

Stained Glass and Illuminations

of a sacred text and on the other we have the more permissive context of a non-sacred text produced in a Persian court for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Even in the narrative scenery of the latter example we see that the role of color is not to describe spatial depth so much as it is to delight the eye. As Hillenbrand puts it in Islamic Art and Architecture, Persian painters capture the “exaltation and ecstasy of mystical vision” (Hillenbrand 1999, 243). The symbolism, or purported meaning, of various colors in Islamic culture also requires some consideration. In Islamic art, green is the color most often noted for its religious connotation as it is believed to have been the favored color of Mohammed, and the Quran describes paradise as a place where people “will wear green garments of fine silk.” Green fabrics are historically thought of as luxurious and the color green may take on the special significance of a sign of oasis in the desert cultures of the Middle East. Today we can see green used in the flags of many Muslim majority nations. Gold and blue, as in many cultures, are considered evocative of the heavens and of heavenly light. And black and white are each understood in terms of purity. The Ka’ba, the monumental cube-shaped focus of the Haaj ritual center in Mecca, is covered “like a bride,” as poets have put it, in black silk. In all such discussions of color symbolism we note that the symbolic meaning is easily nullified by contextual factors. It is more likely to apply in contexts where symbolism is employed more generally, as in flags or allegorical tales, than in artistic creations more universally.

Figure 3.10 Sacred texts, such as this Manuscript of Five Sections of a Qur’an, use restraint and contrast, as when the broad expanse of wide margins and blank negative space (itself a sign of luxury) is juxtaposed with a dazzling range of rich colors in tightly orchestrated ornate patterns, to create rapturous effects. Artokoloro Quint Lox Limited / Alamy Stock Photo.

87

Color Theory

Figure 3.11 The lavish Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Abu’l Qasim Firdausi is an example of the capacity of Islamic art in secular contexts to offer great luxuriousness of color, materials, and general refinement. agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo.

In the Quran we read about “God’s coloring. And who gives better coloring than God? And we are devoted to Him”—and pause to consider the larger picture of color use in Islamic cultures. It is fairly clear that the God of Mohammed, being transcendent, has no color as our physical eyes experience it. Many translations and interpretations of this passage interpret “color” as “design” or even “baptism,” asserting that the faithful are created as God would have them created. But the possibility of divine coloring being a real, albeit superior kind of color in the conventional sense is available in some traditions. Returning to Samir Mahmoud’s discussion of color in Sufi mysticism, we recall that for some Muslims the visible has a dignity, a nobility that is not less for not being that which is invisible. Rather, the visible is ennobled by its source in the invisible. Mahmoud goes on to say every object has a color—both in our world and in the world we cannot see. Only the color of objects is more dazzling in the invisible world, and our most dazzling colors are “opaque” by comparison.

Medieval color theory Color theory in the middle ages reiterates many of the debates of ancient Greek thought, but with what reads as an intensification of the stakes. What had been a concern with the best manner of living our lives has 88

Stained Glass and Illuminations

become a campaign to attain salvation and avoid eternal damnation. What had been an effort to satisfy intellectual curiosity about the nature of reality has become a need to properly understand and yoke the senses to lead us towards that salvation. Medievalists speak not of medieval culture but rather of medieval cultures—a diverse array of peoples and traditions gradually coming to share a Christian theological framework and diverse, often contradictory, impulses about color. Both Church doctrine and secular sumptuary laws (laws prohibiting extravagant modes of dress for certain people) demonstrate that visual delights were considered both important and problematic. Riotous color, intoxicating music, rich foods—all were potential paths to sin. But church services themselves provided a lavish feast for all the senses from the dazzling colors of stained glass and gilded relics to the strong aromas of incense and the heavenly sounds of the choir. Reinterpreting the works of Plato, and eventually Aristotle, within a Christian theological framework, medieval scholars came to see the data of the senses as both real and as a dangerous force for good or evil. Those engaged in classical revivals including Neo-Platonists noted an affinity between religious regard for the more divine things—things not of-this-world—and Plato’s world of universal forms. But, as early as the great Church father, and significant philosopher, St. Augustine, the status of the material world as God’s creation gave sensory data solid ontological footing. Paul provides support for this in Romans 1.20, stating, “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse” (NRSV). Augustine, who lived at the tail end of the Roman era, is the key founding intellectual of Western Christianity, and generally associated with Neo-Platonic thought. In discussions of medieval philosophy he is often paired with St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived roughly eight centuries after him and who is credited with a large part of the synthesis of Aristotle’s thought into the scholastic tradition in Western Europe. Those Platonic–Aristotilean distinctions hold up fairly well for a short overview such as this, but the overlay of Christianity on these Greek philosophical systems requires us to add a very substantial caveat. In many ways Christianity was a world view completely alien to those systems, from its immoderate insistence that there is only one God, to such novel approaches to sexuality as Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. Like the Byzantine Church, Christians in the West were concerned about the idolatrous potential of religious art. They also have Augustine to thank for solidifying a rather prudish attitude towards the possibility of taking pleasure in the senses. Being involuntarily moved by, for instance, beautiful music or lush displays of color was dangerously akin to involuntary feelings of lust; the manner in which we are unable to enforce conscious control of our own sexual organs. For Augustine the involuntary nature of sexual arousal was a gross violation of our fundamental freedom and a sign of our flawed nature. Accordingly a major strain of medieval thought was to consider the senses, and often sight and especially color, to be necessary but dangerous gateways between ourselves and the world. And the devout Christian was required to stand guard over those gates, ready to shut them whenever danger threatened. Nonetheless, Augustine’s repudiation of Manichaeism, a dualistic religion he had once belonged to, entailed his embrace of all of creation, including the human body, as inherently good. And, as Rowan Wilson puts it in his book On Augustine, “God’s nature is such as to produce beauty” (2016). For Augustine, creation, and thus the world of the senses, is the materialization of God’s grace—most perfectly seen in the incarnation of the Son. As in many cultures before the scientific revolution, the attitudes towards color evident in medieval texts tended to regard color as being a property of objects and, furthermore, that color is a part of that object’s inherent nature or power. As with Byzantine art this is easy to observe in uses of gold and precious stones. Emeralds, sapphires, and rubies had been said since antiquity to have medicinal powers, their brilliance and beauty considered a potent cure for the dark and destructive melancholy thought to be at the root of many illnesses (Beckman 2017). And red cloth wrappings and hangings were reportedly a 89

Color Theory

means of curing smallpox. In fact medicine continues from antiquity to be a domain where sensory evidence is valued. The four humors, transmitted to the West by way of Galen and Avicenna, bring their color associations along with them. And like color, temperature and moisture were considered descriptive, or even generative, of the humors. Blood is hot and wet, choler is hot and dry, phlegm is cold and wet, and black bile or melancholy is cold and dry. And “uroscopy,” the practice of holding urine samples up to the light as an aid to diagnosis, developed to the point where twenty colors of urine, rendered in charts and wheels, were identified. Other early European efforts to order color involve those by the medieval scholastic Grosseteste, who wrote treatises on both the rainbow and on color. He counts color in two contradictory ways, saying on the one hand that there is an infinite range of colors and then saying that there are seven basic colors, as Newton will come to do centuries later. But like Aristotle, who was the primary influence on all medieval color theory, Grosseteste believed that all color comes about as a result of the interplay between light and dark, the many varieties of color depending on the interaction of light with matter, and the various intensities of the light. Here we also see the general association of darkness with matter and lightness with the insubstantiality. To the extent that medieval artists may have read or heard such theories, they seem to have made little use of them. The very thorough artist’s manual On Divers Arts, by the twelfth-century monk Theophilus, is primarily occupied with listing the best pigments for various media, how to obtain and prepare them, and how to apply them for each of many standardized religious images and decorative effects (Theophilus, Hawthrone, and Smith 1963). Whether interested in theory or not, practicing artists are obliged to be pragmatists. St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the late Middle Ages, rivals Augustine for his influence on Christian thought. Though initially there was some pushback against his accommodation of empirical enquiry, his school of thought, called Thomism, eventually became the model of scholarly work in the Latin Church. Like most medieval philosophers, Aquinas did not record a color theory per se, but had a rather robust theory of the senses based on Aristotle, whose works had become available to Western European scholars only recently, through translations from Arabic sources. As a synthesizer of Aristotle, Aquinas embraced the created world as real and the senses as a necessary tool for the intellect. Not simply claiming that intellect is dependent on the senses, he furthermore held that abstractions, or Plato’s universals, are discoverable only as conditions of sensible things. In the terminology of modern philosophy he was an empiricist, and he did much to set European thought on a path towards the scientific revolution. In his own context, however, he accepted both rational inquiry into the world around us based on evidence, as well as inquiry into divine truths using revelation and faith as compatible or complementary paths to the truth. Furthermore he accepted a more or less Platonic notion of a God as a highest cause and source of reality. Christopher Scott Sevier provides a useful primer on Aquinas’ aesthetics in Aquinas on Beauty. For Aquinas, aesthetics rested on an assumption that the good, and reason, and the beautiful, all line up in accordance with one another. In fact, they are nearly the same thing. He says, “Beauty and goodness in a thing are identical fundamentally” (Sevier 2015, 113). They only differ, he tells us, conceptually. We might say that anything we find to be good we will also find to be beautiful when considered in a different light. This also means that what we find to be beautiful (he defines this as “that which pleases when seen”) is linked to our own virtue. The aesthetic sense should be trained so that one’s own notion of the beautiful coincides with the good. Like many philosophers, Aquinas’s discussion of beauty is dominated by visual examples. He helped to codify the general prejudice in medieval thought that sight, owing to its immateriality, is superior to the other senses. Other senses seem more or less to require a physical transmission and cause physical changes in our bodies. Light and color seem to come to us without any physical change in the medium they pass through or (to a point) in our bodies. Furthermore, Aquinas embraced the analogy between light and reason, the sense in which we “see” when we understand, as well as the notion that the beauty of light can lift our souls by its 90

Stained Glass and Illuminations

association with divine light. Color in Thomism, then, enjoys the benefit of being among the things (sense data) on which intellect is dependent and also being the kind of sense data most in line with the good (Sevier 2015). Aquinas describes three formal conditions for beauty: proportion/harmony, integrity/perfection, and splendor/color. This last condition may also be called claritas, a key element of medieval color theory. Sevier notes this is a subject that gives up its meaning reluctantly but that for scholars during the medieval period claritas solves a problem—that proportion does not have the power of self-expression. Plotinus noted the deficiency of proportion alone to account for beauty—noting the beauty found in simples such as color and light. Claritas is described as the difference between a living human body and a corpse; even an otherwise ugly living human has a greater beauty than a relatively more beautifully formed corpse. This beauty denotes the presence of a soul and hints at the source of all good. Furthermore, the Son is given as an exemplar of claritas. Essentially this opens the door to an unquantifiable dimension to beauty, and one possibly present in color taken as itself. It is something we can’t measure that communicates, according to medieval thought, the divine order from which all beauty emanates. The purpose of Christian art in this context, and the refutation of any charge of idolatry, revolve around two main points, which run roughly parallel to the arguments of Byzantine iconophiles. The first is the role of the artwork in elevating the viewer to a contemplation of those things that are higher—a sort of stirring of their better nature and awakening of the inner eye by means of the portal that is provided by the senses. As Hildegard Elisabeth Keller puts it in A Cultural History of the Senses in the Middle Ages, “Certain aspects of sensory experience were bestowed with the power to transform the bodily sphere and to transport the soul into wider realms beyond sensory perception” (Newhauser 2014, 197). This is related to a wider medieval belief in a set of inner senses. These spiritual senses, of which we retain the notion of the “inner eye,” correspond with our physical senses but do not share their taint of corruption. The second major support for medieval Christian art is a reclaiming of all that is “of the senses” as being potentially redeemed by God’s grace—including His creation of the world and everything in it, the Incarnation of God as the Son, Jesus Christ in the form of a human body with all the senses it possesses, and the redemption offered to believers in the rituals of the Church. This physical connection to Christ and the Creator becomes an argument for depicting spiritual subject matter in terms of figurative imagery. The Abbess Gertrude of Helfta wrote, “But as invisible and spiritual things cannot be understood by the human intellect except in visible and corporeal images, it is necessary to clothe them in human and bodily forms” (Newhauser 2014, 203). Nevertheless, tension over the senses is an ongoing point of debate in Christian thought, a debate which was eventually played out in the Reformation.

Color use in medieval art The preceding discussion focused on the theological basis for creating Christian art, a simplification that ignores both secular and non-Christian dimensions of medieval life. Along with Christianity, mobiliary art provides a convenient overarching category for this period. Particularly in the early centuries, simple necessity meant that the art of crafting and adorning smaller, more portable objects of all sorts, including manuscripts, ritual objects, purses, vestments, and so on, took precedence over more monumental and static art forms. The visual vocabulary of such artwork was easily transmitted across the diverse societies of Northern and Western Europe, and lent a greater status to those who possessed it whether in religious or secular contexts, Christian or non-Christian cultures. In medieval color vocabulary and use, we see again, as with the ancient Greeks and then Byzantine color users, that color is understood primarily as being variably intense and bright. And again we see color being very tactile, connected to substances such as gemstones, plants, and metals (Pulliam 2012).

91

Color Theory

Distinctive decorative and animal styles, with Celtic, Scandinavian, and other roots, made use of the intimate engagement one enjoys with such objects, and the material possibilities of the media. Many of the complex overlapping patterns appear to imitate the weaving done in basketry, leatherwork, and certain metal-smithing. All of the decorations reward the sustained close inspection natural to the form, with patterns that repeat across surfaces, and minute application of colors. But beyond these practical dimensions to the use of intricate patterns and color application in mobiliary art, the emphasis on complex and dizzying surfaces implies a general indifference to the superficial appearances of things around us and a corresponding fascination with invisible worlds. In examples such as the Book of Kells, Reliquary of Sainte Foy, or a shoulder clasp found in the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, we see colors treated as precious materials, and precious materials treated as color (see Figures 3.12–3.13). Visual delight, and a chromophilic attitude, dominate these centuries.

Figure 3.12 This page from the Book of Kells demonstrates a medieval fascination with vibrant color and complex pattern. North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy Stock Photo.

92

Stained Glass and Illuminations

Figure 3.13 The colors of this shoulder clasp from the Sutton Hoo ship burial may be more than merely symbolic of powerful forces, being understood as potencies in and of themselves. Eyre / Alamy Stock Photo.

By the tenth century, as large building programs in the Romanesque style were undertaken in churches and urban centers, sinuous stylizations and vibrant patterns, such as seen at Moissac, were applied on a grander scale. The original polychromed effect of such Romanesque monuments is generally lost but partially preserved in such wooden sculptures as the twelfth-century Enthroned Virgin and Child on display at the Met Cloisters (Mounier et al. 2008) (see Figure 3.14). Rhythmic carved swirls turn the drapery into a study in movement across the static postures of the mother and child. The maple was painted in a green and red contrasting color scheme and tin leaf was added to enhance the regal stature of the subject. Works like this would have been displayed for optimal theatrical effect; raised on a pedestal, and placed as the center of attention in a chapel or underground crypt, the dim surroundings and characteristically small windows of Romanesque churches meant that firelight would bounce and shimmer off of the colors and metalwork, and enhance the relief carving of faces, hands, and robes. As with Byzantine art, medieval coloring was first of all a matter of staged presentations where the metaphorical dimensions of light and dark combined with multi-sensory ritual to remove the viewer from mundane reality. In A Cultural History of the Senses in the Middle Ages, Hildegard Elizabeth Keller points out that the question of how to make the invisible visible—of making the blind see—is central to Christianity. Sight, for the medieval artist, is never simply literal—always evoking an added dimension of insight into spiritual matters. As the Romanesque period gave way to the Gothic, the soaring spires and walls of glass that were the signature of that architectural style added the dimension of height, and flight, to the metaphor of heavenly light

93

Color Theory

Figure 3.14 Swirling lines and rich pigments gave this statue of the Enthroned Virgin and Child a fitting sense of power and beauty. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection and James R. Rorimer Memorial Fund, 1967.

(Newhauser 2014). Standing in Chartres, or any of the other triumphant cathedrals of the era, is an immersion in superhuman scale and insubstantial color. The Gothic style initiated at the Basilica of St. Denis used new lighter engineering in stone to create walls of colored glass, like gemstones, which strike us as the material embodiment of light and color (see Figure 3.15). And the viewer both beholds images made of this pure light and color, and is bathed in the jewel-toned colors streaming from the windows. The experience of being transfigured is inescapable as color’s palpable materiality slides seamlessly into the insubstantial and invisible realm of the soul. Recent, and controversial, restoration at Chartres also shows what modern viewers may perceive as garish color on portions of the stonework, and a bright clean stone surface very much contrary to our perception of Gothic art as “goth” in the sense of being darkly melancholy (Ramm 2018). The Abbot Suger, a politically savvy and financially well connected Church leader who helped generate the Gothic style in its

94

Stained Glass and Illuminations

infancy, defended the extravagant expense and potentially idolatrous building programs of his time in this inscription on the doors of the church of St. Denis: Whoever thou art, if thou seekest to extol the glory of these doors, Marvel not at the gold and the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work. Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, To the True Light where Christ is the true door. In what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines: The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material And, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submersion. Frisch 1987, 7

Figure 3.15 At St. Denis the walls of colored glass afforded by Gothic engineering allowed a transcendent light to stream down upon the tombs of centuries of French monarchs. © Jaahnlieb / Dreamstime.com. 95

Color Theory

But it may be overly simplistic to accept the words of the Abbot Suger at face value. The standard art historical surveys are quick to note the political context in which he managed his great achievement in art patronage—acting as midwife to a new international art style that would arguably change much more than the history of art. These texts mention both the Abbot’s close ties to the French state (he served as one of the Regents of France during the Second Crusade) and the status of the Basilica at St. Denis (the burial site for most French kings as well as queens, princes, and princesses). Nevertheless, the ensuing discussion of how Suger defended the use of vast resources on what might be called frivolous and sensual delights places the focus where he himself places it—on spiritual matters. We might be more skeptical in our approach to the issues at hand when such powerful interests as the rulers of a great late medieval culture are involved. For today a visitor to St. Denis (still often called the Basilica though now officially a cathedral) will be overwhelmed not just by the graceful stone vaulting and dazzling expanses of stained glass. These are quite impressively the setting for row upon row of funerary sculpture, rendering in solid stone the ancient lineage and hallowed claims of the divine right to rule. Add to these crowded memorials the many other emblems of royal authority: the crowns and scepters, armor and swords, the crypt where lie the mortal remains of both kings and queens and the miraculous Saint Denis himself, and even the heart of King Louis XVII shriveled in its egg shaped reliquary of gilt glass. The message as a whole tells of a holy union between the monarchy and God’s will on earth. Many of these things began centuries before the Abbot Suger’s tenure. A few, very significant ones we owe in large part to him. And many came later still, as with the saccharine sculptures of Louis XVI and Marie Antionette, kneeling before an altar, heads firmly attached, with a banner of the king’s royal armies displayed to the side. These later embellishments were installed at St. Denis by Louis XVIII and those anti-republican forces which temporarily restored the monarchy during the tangled narrative of France’s revolutions. All of these trappings give every impression to this day of representing the not quite extinguished flame of the cult of the French monarchy. The church in which they sit, after all, is a living place of worship, belonging to an institution whose long memory may reflect on the rise and fall of many forms of government. What does this mean for the beautiful pools of color which spill upon the ancient floors at St. Denis? It suggests that more than one motive lay behind the desire to elevate the minds of the masses. Thoughts of divine perfection and the promise of eternal life are indeed what each viewer is offered. And color and light are the medium of that message. But that this message links that sacred prospect with more earthly powers is as explicit as it could ever be.

Color Use Activity 3.2 Transcendent color 1 Transform the windows of a room to stained glass. If making actual stained glass is not plausible then use colored translucent plastic such as theatre gels, craft supplies, seasonal cling wrap, or as sold in rolls of mylar film. Using the windows as the only source of light, enter the room on a sunny day and walk through the colored beams of light. Sit where the colors pool on the floor and meditate. Contemplate the divine light, transmuted by color, and transforming your body. Let the color draw your thoughts up out of the material realm and towards the divine light of which the sun is a reminder.

96

Stained Glass and Illuminations

Transcendent color 2 Paint the walls and ceiling of a room with rich solid colors (or cover them in fabric or paper). The colors of each wall may be different but should be of a similarly highly saturated nature (not grey or muted) and of a similar value (not appreciably lighter or darker). Decorate these surfaces with ornate patterns, for instance by taping lines in repeating patterns at overlapping angles (bright colored tapes can be fun here). Or you may use a projector to allow you to trace a more ornate Islamic lattice pattern. Arrange furniture in the room with exacting symmetry, and give it a garden feeling by adding potted plants and water features such as wide basins of water or pump systems for burbling fountains. Arrange for pleasant breezes and the fragrance of flowers to move through the room. Visit this space in order to take your leisure, and allow the various cues to your senses to bring you to a wondrous contemplation of a paradise beyond this world.

Renaissance color theory The Renaissance is a period whose intellectual foment seems to point forward towards the next two chapters of this book, even as many medieval institutions carry on. We still see a world of kings and popes, but merchants, scholars, and artists, with names made famous by their individual genius, now appear as key players. The Renaissance occurs in Europe during the period that historians, thinking more globally, call “early modern”—which makes the suggestion clear that the pivot is on, towards world views that today’s readers will more easily recognize. The term Renaissance was used by the people of the time, and so reflects their own assessment that they were engaged in a great period of rebirth—reviving and improving upon the accomplishments of the ancient world. Individualism, and a range of new paradigms for human inquiry, begin to assert themselves as parts of an overall world view that we broadly call Renaissance humanism. Though this instance of humanism had distinctively spiritual elements, these new habits of thought would add to longstanding traditions of careful reasoning present in scholastic thought and provide examples and structures for the eventual scientific revolution. Increasing contact, both military and economic, with Islamic culture meant more and more writing of ancient philosophers was transmitted to the West, along with original Islamic works. This was complemented by increased knowledge of Greek texts brought to Italy by Byzantine scholars at the Council of Florence in 1430 as well as the influx of scholars, and the manuscripts they treasured, who fled from Constantinople when the forces of the Ottoman Empire conquered that city in 1453. Of particular interest to the study of art are Islamic translations and interpretations of Aristotle, and work on optics that would prove valuable in the development of systematic linear perspective. As a practical matter, optics turns out to be the study of how images are transmitted by means of geometrically predictable rays of light. This kind of geometry—projective geometry— allows for the translation of three-dimensional objects onto two-dimensional surfaces: the task of all representational art, but also the task of map-makers. Through map-making, then, the Renaissance art topic of perspective is linked to the early modern topic of colonization. These new fields of applied geometry also lent authority to the notion that quantitative measurement of the shape and spatial locations of objects, stripped bare of the seemingly more qualitative dimension of color, was sufficient to understand the world around us.

97

Color Theory

Alberti Leon Battista Alberti was a prototypical Renaissance man, being a notable humanist scholar and poet, an architect, and having done enough painting to enhance his writings on art with a painter’s eye and a clear understanding of the practicalities of putting images together. In his Introduction to Alberti’s On Painting, Martin Kemp calls it “the first known book devoted to the intellectual rationale for painting,” and in that book Alberti places geometry at the center of the painter’s practice (Alberti et al. 1991, 2). He avows that the artist should be broadly educated in the liberal arts, but in geometry first, poetry second, and the other disciplines after that, arguing that “neither the rudiments nor any principles of painting can be understood by those who are ignorant of geometry” (Alberti et al. 1991, 88). On Painting begins after the fashion of a mathematical text, laying out and defining the elements of a picture in terms of lines and surfaces, explaining the phenomena of sight in terms of rays in a “pyramid” whose apex is in or at the eye and whose base is the scene being depicted. It is perhaps significant that this discussion of painting places this section on perspective prior to his discussion of color. He explains in clear language how the picture plane is a pyramidal intersection, catching the rays from each point in the scene midway between the depicted objects and the eye (today we might use the word cone, and speak of conic sections). He makes deft use of the painter’s pragmatic context, escaping philosophical debates over which direction the rays travel (extramission or intromission, as the Greeks considered it) or where precisely the pyramid’s apex rests (on the surface of the eye or somewhere behind it). For the painter it suffices to know where the lines of projection lie, and how they combine to create an image in perspective. This treatise he provides on linear perspective, in the very early days of its development and informed by the close personal contact he enjoyed with its earliest practitioners, makes it clear that perspective does more than describe where the objects depicted are located in space. Perspective also pinpoints the viewer, at a fixed conceptual viewing point, in relation to those objects depicted. Thus with this technique the individual perspective of the viewer, their “point of view,” is made the central focus of the artist’s project. Never before had the viewer, rather than some deity, ruler, or general orthodoxy, been the standard of truth in image making. But along with that elevated status, the viewer is also controlled or manipulated, their relationship to the scene in the painting determined by the artist. Discussion of color theory in On Painting is secondary to perspective, but nonetheless thoughtful, well informed, and remarkably prescient. Alberti first of all gives a respectful summary of the color theories enjoying the most popularity in his day—various efforts to systematize the concepts of Aristotle. We see here a beginning of those efforts to order color in ways that will become central to color theory in the Enlightenment. Some, he tells us, say there are seven colors which should be arranged in a line with black at one end and white in the middle, placing the remaining five colors in order of similarity from the one extreme to the other. Alberti notes the uncertainty about which colors are to be placed in which spot, but the interest in a sort of mathematical or musical scale is clear. He then notes that some say there really are only two colors—black and white—and all other colors are secondary to these and result from their mixture. Next Alberti introduces his own ideas about color, which he repeatedly couches in terms of the practical concerns of the painter. Here he again avoids taking sides on the philosophical truth of the matter, asking, “For what help is it to the painter to know how colour is made from the mixture of rare and dense, or hot and dry and cold and wet?” (Alberti et al. 1991, 45). Here we see the terminology of the four medieval humors in their common association with color. He continues, “It is enough for the painter to know what the colours are, and how they should be used in painting.” At last he presents his position that there are four basic colors, or “genera” of colors. These he associates with the four elements and describes them as red for fire, blue-grey for air, green for water, and ash for earth. And these four colors are modified by black and white, very much separated from the four basic colors, to create nearly infinite “species” of color. Here, amazingly, we have the 98

Stained Glass and Illuminations

novel notion that will lead in due course to the conviction that black and white are not colors, and which is a foreshadowing of Newton’s revolutionary work. This idea, that black and white are not colors, will turn out to be distinctively Western, arising from the interest in depicting objects as they appear to the viewer in space, rather than according to some higher reality. As Alberti makes clear in his practical advice for the painter, the colors of surfaces of objects in space are modified, as they move through space, by degrees of light and dark. We may take, as a hypothetical contrast, a case in which a Byzantine or Chinese or Egyptian artist is depicting an apple. They likely would be concerned to depict the apple as it is from a theological or imperial perspective, with the protocols being more or less rigid as the status of the apple demands. The red of the apple might be the crucial factor, if one imagines a symbolic resonance with blood, for example. But the Renaissance artist wishes us to experience the apple as though it were a literal apple, within reach of our hand. Thus the red of the apple is at times modified by light, at other times modified by shade, and frequently enough by both in what we call “up-down modeling.” In this overall process—of using contour lines, perspective, and then white and black to locate and model forms three-dimensionally—black and white become separated from the other colors. And the other colors—we have come to think of them as the colors of the rainbow—become secondary to the quantitative properties necessary to that project of mapping space. All of this leads to a conceptual difference, from the Renaissance onwards, between disegno and colore (or sometimes colorito). Disegno is a difficult term to translate, sometimes taken to mean drawing or design, and is the aspect of image making that uses line and shades of light and dark alone to compose and describe precisely the forms we are meant to see. Colore is color and its thoughtful application. It often lies in the realm of the medium being used, so that weavers may add color to the draftsman’s cartoon (which may or may not indicate the hue to be used but tend to reinforce the separation of these elements) by adding variously colored threads to their loom, or painters may add paints to their pallet to add hue to the shapes laid down in the under-drawing. In the case of some noteworthy pro-disegno literature of the period, we are not yet seeing a clear case of what we would call chromophobia—an outright hatred or fear of color. Indeed, the preparatory drawing for a woven tapestry would have been worth much, much less than the luxurious final product created with color, but also luxurious materials crafted with great labor. And as we will discuss shortly, some theorists and artists proudly asserted their greater appreciation for colore as superior to a dependence on disegno. But we are seeing a keen interest in the power and potential of line and shade. These things are more easily measured and controlled, and they allow the artist much control over what is seen. Alberti makes the prejudice clear with statements such as “There are some who make excessive use of gold, because they think it lends a certain majesty to a painting. I would not praise them at all” (Alberti et al. 1991, 85). The simple allure of bright and flashy colors is seen as an undisciplined appeal to the eyes of the ignorant. This leads to the aesthetic half of Alberti’s color theory, in a pairing we often find amongst color theorists. The certainty of what is taken as scientific fact blends seamlessly into a certainty about more subjective claims inspired by, but in no way proven by, the science. For Alberti, paintings must have enough consistency in all things, including in terms of color selections, to be coherent. But they must also have a degree of variety, to clarify the boundaries of one figure from the next, highlight the most important figures, and bring a restrained degree of visual delight. The spirit of this is expressed in such appeals as “I should like, as far as possible, all the genera and species of colours to appear in painting with a certain grace and amenity” (Alberti et al. 1991, 85). He provides very specific advice for coloring, for example, a procession of figures. Light colors are placed next to dark ones of a different “genera” and figures in the foreground are colored more brightly than those towards the back. Even the all important use of black and white to model figures in space must be done with moderation, avoiding dramatic clashing contrasts of light and shadow, or holding them in reserve for special subjects or the sparkling illusion of golden objects. 99

Color Theory

In all things the artist is enjoined to learn from nature and not, as Cennino Cennini advocated only a few decades earlier, by a careful imitation of some past master. Even inventions and fantastical creatures should be depicted with reference to real forms and direct observation. But the Renaissance notion of working from nature did not encompass the kind of gritty naturalism we might think of today. Nature was informed by notions about the dignity appropriate to the high art of painting, and by Platonic concepts of higher realities undergirding all that we see. There is growing interest in being guided by the evidence of the senses, but we do not yet see a consistent empirical approach. The Renaissance artist is an idealist, not a realist, and color application is guided by that desire to show the world in its most perfect form.

Vasari Giorgio Vasari acts as a kind of bookend to Alberti, writing a little over a century later and summing up the accomplishments of such artists as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Vasari may be the first to have used the term “renaissance” in writing—in a somewhat more limited way than the later application of the term “Renaissance” to denote a period style and indeed a whole culture. His repeated use of the terms “rebirth” as well as “return . . . rediscover . . . renewal” are grounded in his thesis that the arts in his time were returning to and excelling the virtues of ancient Greece and Rome (Vasari et al. 1998, 512). He also described the role of economic competition among individuals, artists in particular, as being conducive to advancements in the field. Like Alberti, but even more so, Vasari was a practicing painter, as well as a noted architect. His writings, however, are his most influential legacy. Many see him as the first Art Historian, and his famous Lives of the Artists invents the form of an encyclopedia of artist biographies. This focus on the artist as an individual character, rather than as an extension of the patron’s authority, and as possessing a genius peculiar to themselves is so commonplace to this day that we might miss its significance, though it was a novelty of the age. Color use in such a context of competition calls for innovation and experimentation. Idiosyncratic color applications will naturally be among the ways artists distinguish their own style from that of their competitors. And it will be one of the means by which connoisseurs distinguish the work of an original genius from an unimaginative imitator. Vasari’s lesser-known work, published today as Vasari on Technique, does provide some new developments in color theory as it relates to the practicalities of the artist at work. Like Alberti, Vasari is interested in how one achieves a unified and harmonious color effect, with the musical analogy driving much of the thinking. He also agrees with Alberti that overly bold coloring in of figures is not only lacking in good taste but is also at odds with the imperative to model forms in space using light and dark modifications. All of that ideology of color is reflected here: Unity in painting is produced when a variety of different colours are harmonized together . . . When these colours are laid on flashing and vivid in a disagreeable discordance so that they are like stains and loaded with body, as was formerly the wont with some painters, the design becomes marred in such a manner that the figures are left painted by the patches of colour rather than by the brush, which distributes the light and shade over the figures and makes them seem natural and in relief. Vasari et al. 1960, 218 Vasari warns against discordance and lack of unity, comparing the gaudy effect thereof to “a coloured carpet or a handful of playing cards.” He returns to the musical theme by arguing “For as the ear remains offended by a strain of music that is noisy, jarring or hard . . . so the eye is offended by colours that are overcharged or 100

Stained Glass and Illuminations

crude.” Vasari praises those who understand “the principle of light and shade,” and condemns those who fail to apply that method of modeling forms (Vasari et al. 1960, 219–20). More original are his important observations on the relativity of color. He points out that “A sallow colour makes another which is placed beside it appear the more lively, and melancholy and pallid colours make those near them very cheerful and almost of a certain flaming beauty” (Vasari et al. 1960, 219). These observations are well known to us today but they begin to take us into an interesting grey area between objectivity and subjectivity. Objectively, or pertaining to the reality of an object divorced from our experience of it, the pigments are not altered by their placement alongside other pigments, and so the color does not change. But color, one might argue, is not pigment; rather, it is the stuff of experience. That experience, it can now be shown through reproducible experiment, bears out that the color does change. This is the fault line across which numerous arguments and misunderstandings about color will take place, but for now it is simply the practiced eye of the artist telling us what is seen. These observations also provide fodder for the more aesthetic aspects of Renaissance color theory, as they may support the general desire for pleasing contrasts and a balance of variety with unity.

Color in Renaissance art The quantity and diversity of arts and crafts produced during the Renaissance, along with the increased availability of a wider range of pigments, makes the task of discussing color use in the period quite daunting. Lapidary work, textiles, as well as inlay and marquetry techniques, add numerous color worlds to those of painting. Meanwhile the development of oil painting lends a greater luminosity and flexibility to the artist’s brush, and the spartan approach to color suggested by theorists such as Alberti and Vasari is belied by the opulence of Renaissance visual culture in general. While coloring materials remain similar throughout the period of this chapter, improved trade and access to new sources of raw materials around the globe dramatically alter the circumstances for color use in fifteenth-century Western Europe. Cities such as Venice and Antwerp saw the development of specialist color sellers involved in the import, export, manufacture, and sales of finished materials from raw resources (DeLancey 2011). By the sixteenth century, color sellers gained the ability to obtain pigments from new sources. For instance cochineal became available from South America and in greater quantities and with greater ease than had been the case in the past. This brought costs down and created great wealth for those involved in the trade. And it is thought that the activities of these color sellers, in collaboration with artists in Venice, supported experimentation with new ways of using coloring materials of all forms including pigments, dyes, and in relation to glass making (Krischel 2011). One of the major issues for color use in Renaissance art, at least in painting and other cases such as tapestry and ceramics where figuration occurs, was the question of how to balance the modeling effect of light and dark shading with what artists thought of as the true color of the object depicted, which we now call local color. To the degree that the object was given that color it therefore had no three-dimensional modeling of its form, and to the degree that light and dark values modulated the color it lost that true color. This loss of color may have been troubling to those not used to the new innovations in rendering objects in space, or it may have caused the works to pale, in the eyes of patrons, compared to the richer, more byzantine coloration that the new modes of painting were supplanting. In general, artists depicting objects in space resorted to up-modeling or down-modeling, or even an up and down combination. The first option can be seen clearly in the frescoes of Giotto, such as his Lamentation (see Figure 3.16). Each figure is dominated by one or two broad colored areas of clothing, each of which ranges in value to model the form in what was, at the time, a revolutionary depiction of real objects in space. Here, Giotto chooses to depict the richest, most vibrant color in the shaded 101

Color Theory

Figure 3.16 Giotto’s Lamentation provides clear examples of “up-modeling” in which the saturated hues of a form lie in the shadows and fade towards white as that form turns towards the light. ART Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. areas of the form, artfully fading that color towards white as the rounded form emerges into the full force of the light source, which comes from above and in front of the scene. This solution was readily codified and just as readily critiqued. Such a critique might argue that shadows are the very absence of light, and hence of color. Indeed, Alberti argued “observe that the colour is more pronounced and brilliant on the surface on which the rays of light strike, and that this same colour turns more dim where the force of the light gradually grows less” (Alberti et al. 1991, 82). And Vasari says that “just as we see in life, that those parts that appear nearest to our eyes, have most light and the others, retiring from view, lose light and colour” (Vasari et al. 1960, 219). These statements describe the reverse of up-modeling and were mirrored in artworks which sought to place the richest application of color on the best-lit portions of the figure. But ultimately artists found themselves working out more complex compromises to the issue, and when Alberti gives specific painting instruction he describes a process by which a color is modeled both up and down in value with the addition of white and black. We can see a flexibility of approach in Raphael’s Wedding of the Virgin (see Figure 3.17). Here rose colored dresses grow richer in their shaded recesses, but fade modestly as they turn into the light. However, the aqua hem of Joseph’s tunic, and the green shoulder and arm of the stooped figure to his right, show their saturated brilliance where the light hits them and become nearly black in the shadows. And Joseph’s ochre cloak,

102

Stained Glass and Illuminations

wrapped elegantly about his body, takes the middle road. It shows a deep yellow-brown on surfaces facing to the left and right of the washed out highlight, and also fades into dim shadow in its deeper pockets. Over time, more virtuosic displays of color and value were demonstrated, particularly in the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. Looking at his Doni Tondo, or numerous figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, we see that shifting hues along the rainbow’s spectrum allow for changes in value while maintaining full saturation of color. Michelangelo, without benefit of a color wheel, or any other systematic model of color properties, nonetheless exploits the inherent values of various hues, building on and perfecting the traditional painting techniques he was taught. As red is innately darker than orange, and orange darker than yellow, these colors being added also to white and black create stunningly lush and muscularly modeled forms in space in a technique we call “hue shift.” Consider the Sistine Chapel’s Prophet Jeremiah (see Figure 3.18), whose brightly lit shoulder races from peachy yellows to deep, almost purple shadows, while his shaded boots contrast orange and purple as though a gloomy recess were partly illuminated by reflected fire. These extreme shifts in color are sometimes referred to as “shot color.” Even in the flesh tones such as the rounded face of the virgin in the Doni Tondo, or the nude forms in the Creation of Adam, reddish hues on one side of a cheek or arm slide past a highlight into muted green on the other, followed by a warm shot of reflected light (see Figure 3.19). In this way Michelangelo endows both shadowed and brightly lit surfaces with rich sensuous color and an arresting quickness beneath the skin. Looking beyond Italy, we can see somewhat selective use of Renaissance strategies in examples from Germany and Spain. The late fifteenth-century Spanish image of Saint Michael, by the Master of Belmonte, juxtaposes the spatial recession of a tiled floor in perspective with a space-defying background of gold foil. And the contemporaneous German Nativity of the Virgin depicts St. Anne alongside the newborn Mary in remarkable immediacy (see Figure 3.20). Paint, tin, and gold leaf turn the sculpture into an attempt to bring the supplicant in close contact with this holy intermediary. Such painted statues stand outside a mainstream of Renaissance sculpture where the monochrome effect of wood, bronze, or marble was beginning to be preferred. Here Anne’s gentle but weary expression is complemented by the use of color to evoke not just skin tone but the blood beneath the skin. Such color is both rich and vivacious, making the religious narrative immediate to the viewer and relatable to their own experiences. Francisco Pacheco, a seventeenth-century Spanish painter, falls somewhat out of the timeline for this chapter, but his treatise The Art of Painting sheds light on both the theory and practice of painting on sculpture. Pacheco, who was an official censor for the Spanish Inquisition and also the father-in-law of the renowned painter Diego Velasquez, was extremely well informed on trends in art as well as official Church doctrine. Pacheco argued that painting sculptures removed the icon from the realm of abstractions and made it more approachable for the laity. A topic that received particular emphasis in his treatise was the painting of flesh tones on statuary—known as “encarnacion.” He weighed in strongly against the common practice of adding a glazed finish to the flesh tones of these figures, and claims credit for developing a technique for rendering a much more naturalistic, flesh-like matte finish. In defending polychromy he points out how much more vivid painted sculptures are than simple unadorned wood or marble, arguing “This is because color reveals the passions and concerns of the soul with greater vividness” (Enggass and Brown 1970, 222). That observation notwithstanding, Pacheco strongly subscribed to the view that disegno is more important to the painter than colore, problematically claiming Aristotle’s support. And he prescribed in great detail the pigments to be used for the flesh tones of various subjects, advising “if it is a holy image of the Christ Child, the colors will be made beautiful by mixing white and vermillion only . . . [for] penitents or aged people, perhaps some ochre or reddish ochre may be mixed” (Enggass and Brown 1970, 166). In images of the Immaculate Conception (the conception of Mary, not of her son, Jesus) he recommends that Mary be depicted with “rosy cheeks, and the most beautiful, long golden locks” (Enggass and Brown 1970, 166). She is also to be seen wearing a white tunic and a blue mantle and occupying an oval sun of white and ochre. Perhaps not 103

Figure 3.17 Raphael’s Wedding of the Virgin suggests that up and down-modeling might be best used in a flexible manner. Art Library / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 3.18 Michelangelo’s depiction of the Prophet Jeremiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapelshows his mastery of hue shift, including the extreme cases referred to as “shot color.” Mondadori Porfolio / Getty Images. 104

Figure 3.19 In the Doni Tondo, Michelangelo uses warm shadows to give life to what otherwise might be muted passages. Peter Barritt / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 3.20 This statue of theNativity of the Virgin uses polychromy to bring a human immediacy to the scene. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1956.

105

Color Theory

surprisingly, given his interest in laying down rules, Pacheco’s art is not well regarded for its originality. In part this may be attributed to the political forces at work during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the context of religious struggle in Spain. Although oil painting began centuries earlier, it came into its own as an ideal medium for rendering illusory materials and atmospheric space in the fifteenth century. This development came about first in Northern Europe, where Jan van Eyck’s masterful handling of the medium garnered international attention. The slow drying time and creamy intermixability of oils allowed for the rendering of textures of incredible subtlety. And the ability to create layer upon layer of translucent or smoky glazes was a great aid to the illusion of depth. Neither that seamless blending nor the layers of glazes were possible in tempera or fresco, which dried quickly, requiring a more programmed, paint-by-numbers approach. Shading in those media was accomplished by placing different colors alongside one another or, in an attempt at greater subtlety, very small precise hatching marks of one color over another. In van Eyck’s astonishingly small panel painting the Arnolfini Portrait (see Figure 3.21) we see the fruits of combining glowing color with exacting realism; light and space combine to create an alternate reality. Van Eyck turns perspective into an astonishing magic, with a mirror on the back wall reflecting the depicted space backwards to envelop the viewer. This feat of perspective is well married to the medium of oil, which the artist uses to create

Figure 3.21 Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait has the union of strict linear perspective with luminous tones of oil painting that make his images seem almost to present an alternate reality. FineArt / Alamy Stock Photo. 106

Stained Glass and Illuminations

lush illusions of all manner of materials including fur, heavy fabrics, bare wood, brass, and flesh. These elements, added to rich luminous color, allow the panel to strike one as a hologram ought to: as a vibrant world all its own. The contrast seen between disegno and colore was enhanced by the rivalries between distinct city states in Italy, particularly the military, economic, and cultural competition between Florence and Venice. The artists of Florence were the first to develop systematic linear perspective and they provide clear examples of a theoretical and practical commitment to the importance of disegno. It is often argued that in Venice greater attention was given to the subtleties of color. To be sure, color could scarcely be more vibrant than in the examples of Raphael’s and Michelangelo’s art discussed above. But Venetian artists tended to aim for greater subtlety, constructing their paintings with layers of color, without first assigning every color shape a distinct boundary. And the effect of Venetian painting tended towards more nuanced veils of color, taking advantage of the new oil medium’s properties, and a greater comfort with ambiguity regarding edges and structures. This emphasis on colore’ created a rich luminous atmosphere of color absent in the more sculptural work of Florence. In his dialogue on painting, the Venetian art theorist Lodovico Dolce champions Titian for his naturalism over Michelangelo, Vasari’s hero (Sorabella). In Titian’s Venus and the Lute Player we can see this softer naturalism at work, and the effect of successive veils of colored oil (see Figure 3.22). The fleshy expanses of Venus’s body, with warm and cool shadows moving across its surface, invites comparisons to the hazy depths seen within the juxtaposed landscape. Here color begins to fulfill its role, familiar in the twentieth century, of expressing the inexpressible, creating a mood that escapes definition.

Figure 3.22 Titian’s Venus and the Lute Player uses color to suggest the inexpressible in ways that seem prescient of later Romanticist and expressionist traditions. Peter Barritt / Alamy Stock Photo. 107

Color Theory

The mention of the sculptural qualities of Florentine painting brings up the fact that those artists, so committed to the role of line and shade, were often sculptors and architects as well as painters. If German and Spanish polychromed icons reveal that color is not yet completely passé in Renaissance sculpture, Michelangelo’s David shows us why many, especially in Italy, were ready to abandon it (see Figure 3.23). Numerous other examples of Renaissance figurative sculpture would serve to show the entrenched notion of the time, in mistaken imitation of classical Greek and Roman examples, that monochrome sculpture is purer, more refined, and closer to a Platonic ideal of the human body than any multicolored sculpture could be. The solidly uniform color of these examples demonstrates how light and shade flow over the form to reveal shape and depth and place the human figure at an Olympian remove. But in the case of the David, the staggeringly large and perfect male figure looms over us, magnifying the effect of the (lack of) color. Marble, of course, comes in many colors, and often it is multicolored. And Michelangelo is known to have gone to the Carrera stone quarries to pick out the precise block of marble he would sculpt. An effort can be discerned therefore in seeking out such a large uniformly white block of stone. Here scale is used in alliance with the monochrome austerity of white to make a grand statement. It was

Figure 3.23 Michelangelo’s David realizes the kind of austere formal purity of the monochrome statue that we have come to associate with both Renaissance and (erroneously) classical art in general. nagelestock.com / Alamy Stock Photo.

108

Stained Glass and Illuminations

a statement in keeping with the self-aware nature of the times—which dared to describe itself as a rebirth—and also of the Florentine whose city adopted David as a symbol of a small entity achieving heroic stature. It is the kind of sculpture that one cannot imagine adding color to, and that allows no imitation.

Color Use Activity 3.3 Humanist color 1 While familiar with the previous color activities of this chapter, you are now in the midst of a paradigm shift that places the individual’s perception of the world around them at the center of visual practice. In the service of this end, you now wish to depict apples both as red, juicy, and biblically resonant fruit—as well as having spherical forms, with the three-dimensional modeling that light and shadow provide. Grappling with the ways the depiction of roundness can be at cross-purposes to the depiction of redness explore these methods: ●

“Up-modeling”—Prepare the colors red, white, and one or more stages between them with stepped tints of pink. Then model the red apple roundly by depicting the brightest highlight with white, the darkest shadow area (note, this is not furthest from the highlight, as a subtle reflected light bounces up onto that surface) with red, and other tints in between.

●

“Down-modeling”—Prepare the colors red, black, and one or more stages between them with stepped shades of red. Then model the red apple roundly by depicting the brightest highlight with red, the darkest shadow area (note, this is not furthest from the highlight, as a subtle reflected light bounces up onto that surface) with black, and other shades in between.

●

“Up/down-modelling”—Prepare the colors red, black, white, and one or more stages between them with stepped shades and tints of red. Then model the red apple roundly by depicting the brightest highlight with white, the darkest shadow area (note, this is not furthest from the highlight, as a subtle reflected light bounces up onto that surface) with black, red at the most intermediate point, and other shades and tints in between.

●

“Hue shift”—Adapt the up/down-modeling method to the realization that red shifts easily into orange and yellow, and gains a lighter value in the process. Thus you can maintain a saturated, juicy understanding of the fruit while still indicating roundness, with less use of black and white diminishing the brightness of the color.

●

“Shot color”—Adapt the hue-shift modeling method to the further realization that red shifts easily into purple and gains a darker value in the process. Thus you can maintain a saturated, juicy understanding of the fruit while still indicating roundness—with almost no loss of bright color. This luscious fruit shifts from dark purple to red and then through orange and yellow.

Humanist color 2 In further service of your effort to depict the world as it appears to individual viewers, you turn your attention to how color changes over distance. Though colors seems to apply to objects, as when grass is green or apples are red, you have noticed that color also is a factor of distance and intervening atmospheric veils such as smoke and precipitation. Grappling with the ways distance alters color, explore these methods:

109

Color Theory

●

“Grey shift in aerial perspective”—Create a landscape with multiple layers (so at least a foreground, mid-ground, and background). You can do this from observation, or from a reference source. If you are not a skilled landscape painter you can still learn from this exercise by tracing a reference. Working on white or off-white paper, use stepped values of line—either by progressively diluting watercolor or ink, or by purchasing markers or pencils with different shades of grey. The lightest grey line should be reserved for the furthest distance, the darkest grey line for the immediate foreground, and intermediate steps in between.

●

Create the landscape a second time, this time filling in the shapes with their respective shade of grey. Thus a dark grey shape will occupy the foreground, a middle grey shape will be visible peaking out beyond that, and a light grey will appear beyond the middle.

●

“Blue shift in aerial perspective”—Create a landscape with multiple layers as in the grey shift exercise. This time, however, you will depict foliage, buildings, and so on in the foreground using a full range of colors, but tending towards warm colors such as reds and yellows. In the mid-ground you will shift the color palette so that it is distinctly bluish. In the background you will only use soft shades of blues, purples, and bluish greens.

●

“Complete aerial perspective”—Create a more ambitious landscape combining a full array of these principles of aerial perspective, some of which can be contradictory (as with the first and second items) and need to be resolved on a case by case basis: Near things will appear both darker and lighter, having higher value contrast—and far things will appear greyer, with lower value contrast. Light shapes will appear to advance in contrast to dark ones. Warm colored shapes will appear to advance in contrast to cool colored ones. Distance tends to make things appear bluer. High contrast juxtapositions will appear to advance in contrast to ones which are more subtle. Greater detail is visible up close while it is lost at a distance.

Apply these same principles to another subject, such as a portrait or still life. While the effects in reality are much more subtle in such near-distance observations, applying the principles of aerial perspective to the face of your sitter can be a powerfully subtle way of imbuing lips, eyes, hair, and shoulder with a fuller three-dimensionality and an air of sensual contemplation.

Leonardo We place Leonardo, whom we know as Leonardo da Vinci, in his rightful place at the end of this chapter and looking ahead to the next. Of all the artists covered thus far, he most thoroughly explores the theory of color. He has studied his predecessors and, though his own reading abilities in Latin and Greek were quite limited, he often associated himself with the kind of intellectuals who were enthusiastic about the ancient philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle. By and large he believes the world view outlined by Alberti is the correct world view, but his work is notable for a relentless probing of particular cases, unusual problems, and what Martin Kemp perfectly describes as his “remorseless insistence on scientific naturalism” (Alberti et al. 1991, 23). To 110

Stained Glass and Illuminations

read the posthumous collection of his writings on painting (one version is Leonardo on Painting, edited by Kemp) is to be overwhelmed by theories, examples, and geometric demonstrations of the interaction of light rays. Many of those items contradict one another, and Leonardo never was able to shepherd the whole into a single coherent theory or book, which he clearly hoped to do. Perhaps he would have benefited from the license, afforded by a more mature form of the scientific method, to assert findings as they currently stand whilst maintaining the expectation of later alterations; for something in him seemed to understand the provisional nature of hard won knowledge. His writings are marked by a fascination with vision and with the problems of vision. He discusses the transparency we perceive in objects when we regard them too closely with both eyes, as well as the transparency we observe when objects move too swiftly for the eye to follow. He probes the eye’s limitations, noting the illusion of an after image when something very bright is viewed too long, or when viewing paintings in a dim chamber from inside, and then from outside, in a brightly lit courtyard. He examines the effect of the pupil’s dilation, and of images seen through and off the surface of water. And he weighs in on the debates of philosophers, providing an argument for intromission by disqualifying extramission for the time lapse that he asserts must occur for rays of light to travel from our eyes to distant objects, including celestial ones, in order for us to see them. And his discussion of the intromissionist reality revels in the infinite pyramids of light thrown off by every object, images of which are visible from each and every unobstructed point in space around those objects. In practice, Leonardo was as subtle a colorist as could be hoped for, declining to use the stark saturated colors of Michelangelo or Raphael, yet in his theory he came down firmly on the side of disegno. He said that he who neglects the rendering of shadows “acquires glory according to the ignorant masses, who require nothing of painting other than beauty of colour, totally forgetting the beauty and wonder of a flat surface displaying relief ” (Leonardo et al. 1989, 15–16). He provides exhaustive formulations of the various interactions of light and shadow, with a noticeable emphasis on shadow. Shadows are initially categorized as “primitive . . . derivative, (and) cast” (Leonardo et al. 1989, 98). Primitive shadows are those that attach to opaque bodies when set before a luminous body, their materiality seeming to be linked to the power to acquire and produce shadows. The cast shadow is the identical term we use to discuss a shadow puppet or our own shadow trailing alongside us as we stroll down the sidewalk. But his “derivative” shadow is the shadow as it exists in the air, having been projected by an opaque body, but not yet interrupted and cast upon another opaque body. “From these original shadows there arise rays which are transmitted throughout the air” (Leonardo et al. 1989, 97). These shadowy “rays” are an intriguing concomitant of Aristotle’s notion that color derives from the interaction of light and dark. Under such theories, darkness is not just the absence of light; it is a principle in itself and its power mingles with the power of light to create all visual phenomena. But Leonardo contradicts this, in the very same discourse, with a more familiar statement that “Shadow is the privation of light.” Old and new concepts struggle with one another in these writings. In truth, the point is moot as far as the geometrical diagrams of light and dark are concerned and it is reasonable to suppose that shadow is a force in itself. But the application of Occam’s razor suggests that because we can account for all this without a hypothetical power of darkness, we ought to discard it from our thinking. In Leonardo On Painting we see continued difficulty on two major points of color theory. First is the ambiguity of the relationship of white and black to the other colors, and second is the list and proper order of basic colors on a scale of white and black. That all colors ought to fall somewhere between white and black seems in keeping with the Aristotilean principle that all color is created by their interaction. But the struggle to place colors in this order led to numerous competing color/value scales. From our perspective this is an impossible task because the hues of the rainbow are simply a different scale from the stepping stones from white, through grey, to black. But to some degree the scholastic exercise in color ordering was encouraged by 111

Color Theory

the fact that blue, at its most saturated, is in fact darker than other colors. And for yellow, of course, the opposite is true. The colour scale was a theoretical way of ordering colours at regular intervals like musical notes. Beyond that, however, the issue was a muddle and would remain so until Newton. Saying “I call simple colours those which are not compounded and cannot be compounded by means of a mixture of other colours,” Leonardo states the consensus view of his day, at least among painters (Leonardo et al. 1989, 72). And he uses the “for us painters” justification for including white and black among the colors despite the objections of “some philosophers” (Leonardo et al. 1989, 70). At one point Leonardo asserts there are eight simple colors (including tan and deep purple) and at another just six. And at another point he argues that blue and green are not simple because they may be compounded of other colors. The example of blue, however—according to his own discussion of the blue sky being a combination of the white light of the sunilluminated atmosphere with the black color of night behind it—ought to disqualify all colors since all are supposed to be made from black and white. His six simple colors are sometimes ordered white, yellow, green, blue, red, black (Leonardo et al. 1989, 70). But elsewhere, as Janis Bell notes, he starts with blue—then black. This ordering points to a remarkable new effort Bell detects in Leonardo’s writing from a particular period— an effort to link the color value scale, with its musical associations, to a geometric perspective scale: “in the practice of colour perspective, the colour scale helped the painter determine the relative distance at which the appearance of colours would differ from their ‘pure’ appearance in the foreground” (Bell 1993, 114). Noting that the apparent color of an object changes depending on many factors but above all the distance from the viewer, Leonardo begins to order colors by their tendency to turn blue as they recede in the distance. “This mode of thinking transformed the colour value scale into a colour perspective scale in which the position of colours was determined by their proximity to black” (Bell 1993, 114). In all these discussions, Leonardo is keenly interested in the contextual nature of apparent color, noting the multiple factors that may cause an object to appear other than its true color. At one point he goes as far as to say that “the surface of every opaque body takes on the colour of the object opposite” and “No body is ever shown wholly in its natural colour” (Leonardo et al. 1989, 75, 74). And this focus on the variables of apparent color serves as a link between color theory and perspective. In fact most of what he has to say about color is as it occurs within his three categories of perspective. These, he tells us, are in regards to the diminution of sizes of things (linear perspective), diminution of color (which he terms “colour perspective”), and diminution of distinctness. These last two, the ways in which space interacts with color and distinctness, we now call aerial perspective. And his geometric diagrams, of such subjects as an eye regarding a receding sequence of mountaintops, or an elevated eye regarding a series of distant valleys, include measurements of altitude as well as distance. For Leonardo the density of the medium (air but also air containing smoke, mist, dust, etc.—and denser in valleys than around mountain tops) is a key variable. We have yet to examine Leonardo’s color as he actually practiced it in his art. Owing more to our lack of space than to his admittedly small catalog of completed works, we will restrict ourselves to one artwork, a painting displayed at the Louvre, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (see Figure 3.24). Typical, for a work by Leonardo, is the layering of mysterious factors in this painting. From its never quite finished status, to the distortion of scale between the two maternal figures, to the signature sfumato style—this is an image that escapes all efforts to pin it down. Three members of the Holy Family, along with a baby lamb, occupy a tight foreground space between the abrupt precipice of the picture plane and a vast sublime landscape. The jumble of their bodies, with arms flowing into arms, makes Mary almost a puppet of her mother; the child’s grappling with the sacrificial lamb the completion of a single gesture through three generations. And that deep Alpine wilderness glows with the blue of aerial perspective, a color the artist noted for its beauty, and a color that is one long deep echo of the traditionally iconographic rich blue of Mary’s mantle. The red of her dress is both rich and delicate, more flower than fabric, and, together with the glowing yellows of the foreground turf, 112

Stained Glass and Illuminations

Figure 3.24 Leonardo’s paintings, such as the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, may be read as scientific treatises on the interaction of color, light, and space—or as demonstrations of color’s ability to evoke the ineffable. PAINTING / Alamy Stock Photo.

creates a primary color scheme commonly considered harmonious. But it is Leonardo’s use of shadow that turns that primary triad, ordinarily akin to a musical composition in major key, into an introspective work in minor key. “Sfumato” is the term traditionally used for Leonardo’s signature style—the smoky blending he achieves in the medium of oil. Chiaroscuro—the more muscular modeling of form using lights and darks—is a term we associate with many Renaissance artists, but sfumato is very much a Leonardesque term. Chiaroscuro is allied with disegno, crisply delineating the edges of objects as a sculptor carves marble with hammer and chisel. We can reach out and grasp those clearly contoured forms. Here, sfumato removes the image, just out of our reach. The interior forms, oddly, get more definition than the edges. Mary’s eyelid meets the limpid orb with a tactile pressure, and the lips press together with gentle firmness. But draw your gaze out from these details and try to take in the cheek, the neck, the wrist—and all goes soft. To be sure, Mary and Jesus get the brightest contrast, their colors ring out most vividly. But light and shadow play across them in ways that seem anything but geometric. Perhaps the brightest light, because also the deepest shadows, shape Jesus’ head. Playful and pleased, he resists his mother’s grasp, and a shadow falls over his eyes. His crown recedes into the darkness at the foot of a tree.

113

Color Theory

Conclusion The road from Aristotle to Newton is rich with sophisticated color theory and dazzling color use. We have almost, but not quite, completed that journey. Certainly for much of the period we are discussing here, Platonic and Aristotilean theories about the senses dominated the discourse, but reconciling those world views with a theology that included an afterlife and, in Christian contexts, a God who became “clothed in flesh,” both distorts and invigorates the ancient debates. Furthermore, much original theory was developed, and even more developments can be documented in the wide-ranging practice of the arts in these diverse cultures. Notably, the Islamic effort to create arts that generally depart from the impulse to depict objects leads to historically unique applications of color in alliance with pattern and architecture. In many ways the cultures of the medieval period, with their impulse to delight the eye with color and pattern, and use art as a means of depicting the supernatural world, echo the global context of traditional cultures discussed in Chapter 1, but with the legacy of ancient philosophy as a foundational structure. The pivot is all the more striking, therefore, in the Renaissance. What had been a disparate tribal tapestry of Goths, Celts, Saxons, and so on becomes loosely affiliated under Christianity and in time turns to an ancient Mediterranean heritage to which it was only partially linked. That Renaissance of classically inspired humanism precipitated a shift towards a radical and idiosyncratic attitude towards color, rooted in empirical evidence yet dismissive of the ultimate reality of color itself, which we will explore in the next chapter.

References Alberti, L. B., 1991. On Painting, Penguin Classics. Edited by M. Kemp and C. Grayson. London: Penguin. Bechtel, F., F. Daniel, and A. Mounier, 2008. “Guilding Techniques in Mural Paintings: Three Examples From the Romanesque Period in France.” In Isabella Turbanti-Memmi (ed.), Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Archaeometry, 276–7. Siena, Italy : n.p. Beckman, E., 2017. ‘Color-coded: the relationship between color, iconography, and theory in Hellenistic and Roman gemstones.” In M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinski, L. (eds.), What Shall I Say of Clothes: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of Dress in Antiquity, 67–82. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America. Bell, J., 1993. “Aristotle as a Source for Leonardo’s Theory of Colour Perspective After 1500.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56: 100–18. Bloom, J. and S. Blair, 2011. And Diverse are Their Hues: Color in Islamic Art and Culture, Biennial Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. DeLancey, J. A., 2011. “ ‘In the Streets Where They Sell Colors’: Placing Vendecolori in the Urban Fabric of Early Modern Venice.” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 72: 193–232. Droge, A. J., 2013. The Qurʼān: A New Annotated Translation. Sheffield: Equinox. Enggass, R. and J. Brown, 1970. Italy and Spain, 1600–1750: Sources and Documents. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Finlay, V., 2004. Color: A Natural History of the Palette. New York: Random House. Frisch, T. G., 1987. Gothic Art 1140–c. 1450: Sources and Documents. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hillenbrand, R., 1999. Islamic Art and Architecture, World of Art. London: Thames and Hudson. James, L., 2003. “Color and Meaning in Byzantium.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11: 223. John of Damascus, 2001. St. Apologia of St. John of Damascus Against Those Who Decry Holy Images. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Krischel, R., 2011. “The Venetian Pigment Trade in the Sixteenth Century.” In: L. A. Waldman (ed.), Colors Between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún, 317–22. Florence: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut. Leonardo, 1989. Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings. Edited by M. Kemp and M. Walker. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Newhauser, R. G., 2014. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Middle Ages. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

114

Stained Glass and Illuminations Pulliam, H., 2012. “Color.” Studies in Iconography 33: 3–14. Ramm, B., 2018. “A Controversial Restoration That Wipes Away the Past.” New York Times. Sevier, C. S., 2015. Aquinas on Beauty. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,. Theophilus, 1963. On Divers Arts. Edited by J. G. Hawthorne and C. S. Smith. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Turbanti-Memmi, I. (ed.), 2008. Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Archaeometry. Siena, Italy: n.p. Vasari, G., 1960. Vasari on Technique: Being the Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, Prefixed to the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Edited by L. S. Maclehose and G. B. Brown. New York: Dover Publications. Vasari, G., 1998. The Lives of the Artists, Oxford World’s Classics. Edited by J. C. Bondanella and P. Bondanella. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, R., 2016. On Augustine. London: Bloomsbury.

115

CHAPTER 4 PRISMS, MIRRORS, AND LENSES: THE NEWTONIAN REVOLUTION

In a very dark Chamber, at a round Hole, about one third Part of an Inch broad, made in the Shut of a Window, I placed a Glass Prism, whereby the Beam of the Sun’s Light, which came in at that Hole, might be refracted upwards toward the opposite Wall of the Chamber, and there form a colour’d Image of the Sun. Newton, The Optics The scientific revolution Consider two recurring devices in the history of color theory and explorations into the fundamental nature of reality: the cave and the optical instrument. The cave is the sensory deprivation chamber, sought out by philosophers and mystics for deep thought and access to wisdom. Perhaps it begins with the oracle at Delphi, who sat in the recesses of the omphalos, burned certain plants, and made cryptic pronouncements (“Know thyself!”). Much later, Descartes legendarily made use of a bread oven to deny the senses in his search for truth. Many philosophers and artists would find in the cave the means of creating a camera obscura—the literal dark chamber that is a working model of the human eye. Newton created his cave in the darkened attic of his home, carefully shuttering the windows and allowing only a focused beam of light to enter. One appreciates the discipline of this, or perhaps the gall; that we will inquire into the nature of light by nearly banning its presence in our laboratory. He must have seen there the phenomenon of the camera obscura, for that is precisely what he constructed. Perhaps there were images of cows and farmers, wheelbarrows and workmen, all moving about upside down and backwards on the walls and ceiling of his chamber. He was careful to ignore these distractions from the outside world as indeed he ignored almost all of our most common experiences of light and color. The artificial nature of such a context is what would lead Goethe, the primary figure in our next chapter, to warn his readers against those who turn our attention to tricks performed in black boxes. For Goethe, the fitting description of Newton’s darkened attic is that given by Plato in his famous “Allegory of the Cave” in The Republic: a benighted chamber of illusion, rather than a place to discover wisdom. The other prominent device in color theory history is any of several kinds of optical instruments but especially those made of glass such as a mirror or a lens, or perhaps most talismanic of all—the prism. It took Newton to combine these two great devices—the cave and the prism—in one crucial experiment. Every bit as iconic in our imaginings as the apple of inspiration striking Newton on his crown is the image of him focusing that single beam of light, within a dark chamber, and splitting it into the spectrum with his prism. Everything about this scene tells us Newton is setting aside color as we have experienced it and delving into the unseen properties of light. Fulfilling Galileo’s desire for an accounting of light without regard to any observer, Newton makes the same profound shift Galileo did, ignoring the role of a human perceiver in color and seeking out only what can be said about the physical causes of color perception. He chooses to set aside any inquiry into the “modes or actions [light] produces in our minds the Phantasms of Colours” (1671–2, 3085). Preferring the more stable ground of physics, he concludes, “And I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties” (1671–2, 3085). 117

Color Theory

For followers of European history there is a natural progression from the Renaissance to the scientific revolution, with the “father of science” Galileo Galilei being legendarily born within a day of Michelangelo’s death (Renn 2001, 155). But in color theory history we tend to think of the revolution as being entirely Sir Isaac Newton’s. Indeed his discovery—that differing colors of light have differing degrees of refraction and create “white” light when combined—is the moment when Aristotelian color theory is undone. But the context matters. For Newton, in one field of inquiry after another, Galileo set the stage and forged the outlook that made his work conceivable. That outlook included an emerging scientific method and a mechanical philosophy of the ways in which the world works. The scientific revolution, roughly covering the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was no absolute break from the past, but rather a period of both continuity and change. The evolution of early modern world views saw the growing promise of Renaissance humanism but also cannot be separated from several other earth-changing developments—most notably the Reformation (and reformations within the Catholic Church), the discovery of the New World and new routes to Asia, and the invention of the moveable type printing press (Principe 2011, 12–19). Thinking of these simply in terms of information is a useful, if reductive, exercise. The global contact of the age of discovery brought about a tsunami of new information about the world. That tsunami was focused in Europe, where the printing press meant that this new information was relatively cheap and widely available. And the Reformation, while raising the stakes of theological disputes and all that they touch upon, also created intellectual and political room for a multitude of new ways of viewing the world. Each of these phenomena fed the others, as for example the press widely disseminating arguments for and against the Reformation. And information is of course an essential fuel for science and a disruptor of orthodoxy. These conditions appear to have been necessary to bring about real progress investigating the phenomenon of light. The scientific revolution displayed diverse, even contradictory, attitudes towards the senses. By its nature, scientific inquiry into the world around us required close observation of the objects under study and a tacit acceptance of sensory data. But that very close study quickly revealed the limitations and confusions to which the senses are prone, and seemed to be countered by the powerful theoretical claims, apparent reliability, and practical benefits of logic and mathematics. Relying on sense data also ran contrary to that disparagement of worldly things, noted in previous chapters, which is a commonplace of many religious and philosophical systems. Deductive reasoning based on logic and inductive learning derived from the senses were to become the twin poles of modern philosophy. These poles would come to be identified with Continental Rationalism, as envisioned by Rene Descartes, and British empiricism, as advocated by John Locke. In the meantime they provided the space within which the scientific method took shape. An early advocate of the empirical method, and another with the claim to “father” of the scientific method, was the English philosopher Francis Bacon. In The Great Instauration, published in 1620, he advocates a critical method for advancing knowledge. He acknowledges the obscure and labyrinthine path of learning and decries the division between reason and empiricism. He states his commitment to empirical evidence, and his hesitancy to impose burdensome theories upon that evidence, with a delightful optical metaphor: I, on the contrary, dwelling purely and constantly among the facts of nature, withdraw my intellect from them no further than may suffice to let the images and rays of natural objects meet in a point, as they do in the sense of vision, whence it follows that the strength and excellence of the wit has but little to do in the matter. 1905, 246 So, for Bacon, some abstract theorizing is needed, but this should be kept to the minimum amount to allow a clear picture of the evidence to take form. And the philosopher’s inclination to show off their wit or cleverness 118

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

in explaining the facts of nature should be repressed. This is a humble, self-critical process, which acknowledges the limits of human understanding and takes care not to overstate its findings. Towards the conclusion of the text he makes his own potentially hubristic claim for this method as a middle way between abstract reasoning and empirical evidence: And by these means I suppose that I have established forever a true and lawful marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty, the unkind and ill-starred divorce and separation of which has thrown into confusion all the affairs of the human family. 1905, 246 This middle path between what reason would suggest and what the senses indicate, and the use of each to correct the other, is very much what his contemporary Galileo Galilei spells out in his discussions of method. This is what we would come to call the scientific method but at the time was simply a method for gaining knowledge, and not clearly delineated from other philosophical debates about how we know what we know. Galileo was another of the type we call a Renaissance man; his accomplishments were both theoretical and technological and he was well versed in the arts. His father was a musician and, according to his biographer, Stillman Drake, he himself wished to be an artist but didn’t feel he could choose that profession (1957, 14). As it was, he did study and learn to apply perspective drawing, chiaroscuro, and the skills of disegno more generally (Renn 2011, 197). Galileo’s published writings are littered with references to this knowledge, such as when he argues that anyone familiar with the laws of perspective relating to spherical objects will be able to see, as he did, that the sunspots which had come to the attention of certain scholars by virtue of the telescope are located either on, or in very close proximity to, the surface of the sun (Drake 1957, 92–4). More breathtaking are Galileo’s comments and illustrations describing the moon’s surface, concluding that it is in high relief, with craters, mountains, and valleys. This conclusion ran contrary to Aristotelian dogma and called for strong evidence and persuasive argument. The received wisdom was based on the belief, grounded in millennia of first-hand observation of the regularity of the heavenly bodies, that everything from the moon and beyond was in a category apart from the terrestrial world. Here on earth, and in the region of clouds and weather between us and the moon, all is in flux—a constant merging and coming apart of the four elements. The moon, planets, sun, and stars, on the other hand, moved with perfect regularity and were incorruptible. Aristotle concluded that the heavens were composed of a single elemental substance, the fifth element known as “aether” or “quintessence,” and as such are all in perfect regularity, free from change and decay (Armstrong 1983, 86). The moon, in this system, is not like the earth, and is a perfect sphere. So Galileo’s daring was to reverse the notion of “as above, so below” that decreed that the motions of the heavenly macrocosm was both a parallel to what order could be found in the microcosm of our bodies, and a driving force in the processes of our world. Galileo decrees that as below so above—that the moon is like the earth. And of course, in the Copernican heliocentric world view that he was eventually tried and convicted for supporting, the earth is just another of those heavenly bodies with their rough surfaces, sunspots, and generally messy nature. This was an interdisciplinary accomplishment. Relying on reports of the device and his own grasp of the law of refraction, optics, and technical know-how, he produced his own telescope, perhaps the finest optical instrument of his time (Renn 2011). It was then the simplest but nonetheless most daring and unprecedented step to turn that device on the heavens. And he was able to comprehend what he saw there thanks to his artistic training. In fact Thomas Harriot, who had also gazed at the moon through a telescope, seems to have been unable to reframe his expectations in light of the visual evidence, for his drawings thereof had none of the 119

Color Theory

perceptive accuracy of Galileo’s work (Renn 2011, 176–7). Galileo produced a famous, and gorgeous, sheet of six ink drawings of the moon at different phases, and then had printers prepare engravings from those drawings to accompany his printed report, The Starry Messenger, from 1610 (see Figure 4.1). In the text he describes how the light and shadow of chiaroscuro unambiguously reveal the moon’s rugged terrain. And he narrates how this plays out over time, as the sphere rotates relative to the sun (Drake 1957, 32–7). There is, in general, a dividing horizon between the dark and sunlit sections of the moon, but there are also outcrops, seen as highlights, in the shaded section—and concavities and mountainsides, seen as dark patches, in the sunlit side. As the zones of light and dark shift, the artist’s eye observes the patches growing and shrinking, merging with other patches and with the general background of light or dark, while other new patches crop up beyond the previously patchy zone. The modeling, in three-dimensional movement, of the surface by the simple tools of light and shadow are the powerful evidence and persuasive argumentation—when rendered with an artist’s skill—that Galileo needed. And the drawings he created are more than just the first accurate images of the moon’s surface. They are an utterly new kind of image, an interdisciplinary tour de force, owing much to Leonardo it is true, that pierces into the previously unseen and forbidden world of the heavens, and renders it with the beauty and delicacy with which the day’s artists would have depicted the folds of a robe. They are the first in a line of sublime images of deep space that is carried on today by the work done with the Hubble telescope.

Figure 4.1 Galileo’s drawings of the moon’s surface as seen through a telescope were astonishing feats of interdisciplinary thinking and a testimony to an emerging dedication to the importance of empirical evidence. Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo.

120

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

Galileo on color In a letter he wrote as a sort of application for employment as court mathematician and philosopher with Cosimo de Medici’s secretary of state, Belisario Vinta , Galileo lists “lesser works . . . on sound and voice , on vision and colors” among his many accomplishments (Drake 1957, 63). But this color theory is lost to us, possibly never having been completed and probably not published. We are left once again to speculate, but can argue that his was an atomistic color theory, emphasizing the invisible and mechanical causes of color, and framing the assumptions that Newton would take up in his Opticks. Galileo starts out, in the manner of Bacon, by taking care not to make hypotheses that exceed the evidence. Among his followers, some of whom took to calling themselves “Galileists,” his advice to respond “I do not know” became a watchword—a means of expressing philosophical humility but also a first step in cutting scholastic dogma down to size. And Galileo argued that in the quest for knowledge we cannot hope to go too far, that it is impossible to know the internal essences of things. We can only hope to make adequate descriptions of their properties. But from here he frames a radical mechanical vision of reality, one which takes up Democritus’ notion that all is merely atoms and void, and the apparent sights, sounds, colors, and so on of the senses are mere illusion. How does one step off so quickly from a position of philosophical humility into a radical rejection of sensory experience? The answer may lie in the distinction made between quality and quantity. Qualities of objects may be seen as Galileo’s unknowable internal essences. Quantity, it seems, was in the category of those few properties which can be described. For Galileo, and Newton after him, philosophy should be read in the book of the universe, that is in observation of nature. And the language that book is written in—its only intelligible content—is mathematics. He wrote that nothing is required of external bodies save shape, number, and other features that can be measured and quantified. And here he takes a small additional step from saying that this is all we can know, to this is all we might wish to know; from a necessity to a sufficiency. Galileo’s account of the senses is, like Democritus’ and Newton’s, a mechanistic one where sub-sensible particles transmit their bits of evidence mechanically through the world around us and impact upon the physical apparatuses of our sense organs. The sense organs then provide us with the illusion of texture, scent, sound, and so on. He works his way “up,” as it were, through the senses starting with touch, which is easiest to imagine in this way, and ending with vision, which he at first says he must pass over in silence. But then he breaks this vow and, discussing how heat might be transmitted and felt in the skin, imagines an intensification that brings forth light (Drake 1957, 277). The notion that the senses are illusory is related to his awareness that they depend upon our consciousness of them. As ticklishness is not a property of feathers but rather of our experience of feathers. He realized therefore that there is no color without a viewer to experience color, only particles moving about in void, being themselves no more colored than sound or scent. He argued that sense perceptions reside in, and are annihilated in the absence of, the living animal. And his preference for any theory of the senses—for any color theory—was for one that accounted for color as it is in the absence of any perceiver. For Galileo, this was color understood as it truly is. Despite this, he was no pure rationalist: he understood that empirical evidence was essential to natural science and sought ways to find a judicious balance. The emerging methodology has been described as a critical empiricism. This emerging scientific method would increasingly lean upon scientific instruments, and optical instruments in particular, to safeguard the evidence that the senses collect. The telescope is a telling combination of the senses and the intellect. One of Galileo’s many detractors within the academy was philosopher Cesare Cremonini, who famously refused to so much as look through the eyepiece of Galileo’s telescope (Renn 2011, 301). His reluctance might be seen as a distrust of the new, or of the senses, or of the supplanting of the senses with an unnatural eye. But the essential factor may have been 121

Color Theory

Cremonini’s opposition to the very premises of Galileo’s theories, which upset received Aristotelian doctrine. The telescope, like all optical devices, is an attempt to address the vicissitudes of vision by altering it in measurable ways. It is an effort to control and tame the senses. And, in keeping with Galileo’s interest in learning about the nature of things in the absence of any observer, it is an effort to replace the eye with something superior. The lens becomes something of a talisman, during the scientific revolution, for the way geometrically predictable curves and optical lines of projection control the transmission and reception of images.

Rationalism To understand the middle path that these proto-scientists sought to discover, rationalism and empiricism, the schools of thought they steer between, require a brief introduction. Modern philosophy begins with the establishment of rationalism by Rene Descartes, whose legendary thought experiment adopts the most cynical possible position in order to refute cynicism, postulating that we are all in the grips of an illusion created by an omnipotent deceiving demon. The senses feature prominently in the preliminary argument, the “wax argument,” as he describes himself sitting in his study examining a piece of wax (Descartes 1990, 84). The cold, hard, brittle, and odorless chunk of white wax is altered in every way as he pinches and twists it in his hands. Cold becomes warm, hard becomes soft, brittle becomes flexible, and a sweet odor is released. Descartes believes there is a real something there, but every sensible feature of this substance is fugitive. How then can he claim to know anything about it? The senses, he reasons, are no path to knowledge of the world around us—not without some further support. He looks to the history of philosophy and sees that the whole edifice is in danger of coming down around the simple fact that there is no sure way to know anything with certainty. Just as significant for our interest in the senses (and color vision in particular) is his method for conjuring up, and then combating, this deceiving demon. The story goes that he shut himself up in a bread oven, a crude but effective sensory deprivation chamber. If the senses are not to be trusted, he reasons, then shut them out as best you can and wrestle with the logic of our predicament. Anyone who has heard of Descartes will also have heard of his famous conclusion, from which point he builds his philosophical system: “Cogito ergo sum,” which we loosely translate as “I think therefore I am” (1990, 36). This is the great rallying cry for rationalists, whose work rehabilitates the senses, but only in a very qualified manner. Reason and logic, in their system, is the only true source of certainty. But of course the argument begins by shutting out the senses, rather than engaging with the phenomena of perception itself, so their demotion was perhaps a foregone conclusion. Many will also be familiar with the dualism of Descartes’ system—his assertion that what exists can be divided into two distinct categories of mind and body. Many of the critiques of his system question the possibility of separating mind from body and, once separated, explaining how mind and body interact. How does the mind receive information about body? And how does the mind, when it wishes to do something in the world, act upon that which is body? At one point Descartes locates this point of contact in the pituitary gland, a hypothesis few seem to have followed up (Descartes 1990). Furthermore his world view, which we may call a mechanical philosophy, comes very close to a strict determinism, with little room for free will. His world of body (philosophers also call this extension) appears to be a completely self-sufficient machine ruled by an unbroken chain of cause and effect (Descartes 1990). It may have required a divine creator but, like an automaton set in motion, seems to require no further divine guidance and seems to allow no impulsive acts from those of us who are cogs in its great mechanism. Descartes’ philosophy was nonetheless incredibly influential and successful, perhaps because he was able to apply it to numerous practical and scientific concerns from the rainbow to geometry (Descartes 1990). In the latter field, Cartesian coordinate systems elegantly 122

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

describe the three dimensions of extension in a way that makes it seem almost credible that we can account for all that is body in an abstracted, quantified way, set apart from the realm of the senses (Descartes 1990). Among the greatest followers of Descartes, who try to fix some of his system’s shortcomings, is Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza, a Dutch Jew of Spanish descent, got himself excommunicated from the Jewish community for his apparent pantheism (there is little distinction to be seen, in his system, between God and nature) and allows a certain amount of mystery to remain at the heart of his rigorously mathematical system. Like Descartes, he also proposes that there is a world of mind and a world of body, but asserts that these are two manifestations of a single reality. We know of the world of space because our body participates in extension. And we know of the world of ideas because our mind participates in that world. But ideas express relations of extension. And things in the world, like our bodies or chairs, are likewise manifestations of abstract ideas. The apparent division, between mind and body, is merely a limitation in our ability to perceive reality. And for Spinoza, freedom does not consist of being able to impulsively do something contrary to nature. Rather it is an alignment between our perception and what is real in nature (which you might also read as “God”). Insofar as our ideas are ordered as they are in nature, our bodies will likewise be free to act in ways that flow from our ideas. What role do the senses play in this puzzling system? They take up very little of Spinoza’s time, but they also are not disdained. For Spinoza there are only things that are real, and all that is unreal simply is not a thing. The senses would have to be facts of the body for which corresponding ideas exist, neither of which can be anything but fully real. It appears to follow that both the idea of a certain red, and our sensory experience of that color, are both equally real aspects of a single reality. As with Aristotle, the only room for error is in the relations we think exist between and among the ideas we have and the perceptions we receive. Given our earlier presentation of the telescope, and all optical instruments, as a talisman of the scientific method, it is an interesting fact about Spinoza that his primary means of making a living was as a celebrated lens grinder, who prepared lenses for the leading scientists of his day (Korsten 2017, 143–4).

Empiricism Connected to early empirical philosophies, particularly that of Francis Bacon, British empiricism specifically is begun by John Locke, a noted proponent of the liberal ideology that undergirds the Declaration of Independence, the doctrines of consent of the governed, and the separation of Church and state. Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding advances the view that at birth the mind is a blank slate, which is written upon by our experiences in the world (Morris 1963, 19–60). He rejects the Cartesian notion that we are born with innate ideas and instead proposes that we learn abstract ideas from reflecting on concrete experiences. Number, for example, is learned by contact with various quantities of objects. One or three apples present themselves to our senses at various times and we gradually learn the numbers one and three from those encounters. We learn addition and subtraction from finding more apples and from eating others. And we learn what is logical from the limits that reality imposes on us in our experiences. Ideas about logical fallacies, such as the impossibility that something both is and is not, simply arise from our lived inability to both have and not have some thing. Furthermore, Locke is open to rewriting any theory, as soon as it is not supported by experience. Stating “whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand will be the forwardest to throw it into the fire,” he begins creating a philosophy more congenial to the experimental method and less dogmatic about the limits of reality (Locke in King 1858, 248). The two most prominent followers of Locke in the tradition of British empiricism are Berkeley and Hume. Their theories pursue the logic of the blank slate more thoroughly than Locke’s, and venture into profoundly radical reassessments of the nature of reality (Morris 1963). In doing so, each explores important questions about 123

Color Theory

color and vision. In fact, a novel theory of vision is central to Berkeley’s philosophy, and arises from his desire to combat the danger of atheism, and determinism, which he believed lurked in the philosophies of both Descartes and Locke alike. Hume, on the other hand, was content to skirt close to heresy and atheism, and refused to assert the existence of anything of which he did not have direct empirical evidence. As a result he reduces the self to nothing more than a “bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (Hume 1896, 134). A further discussion of their notions about color will have to await our treatment of the discoveries of Isaac Newton himself.

Newton’s Opticks Sir Isaac Newton has been described as having read from the book of nature, as though peering over God’s shoulder at its pages. The poet Alexander Pope wrote, in a proposed epitaph upon Newton’s death, “Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in the Night / God said ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was Light” (1847, 114). Newton’s insights into the workings of the universe opened up the “Newtonian” age of physics, which still prevails in many everyday contexts despite its acknowledged disruption by Einstein’s theory of relativity. This incredible impact on the history of science makes his interest in alchemy all the more puzzling, at least from our perspective. As George Maynard Keynes famously said, “Newton was the not first of the age of reason: He was the last of the magicians”(1946). These are arguably his three biggest discoveries: the discovery of the laws of gravitation and motion applicable both “in the heavens” and here on earth; the discovery of calculus, the mathematics needed to describe and predict the motion of objects in this Newtonian universe; and the discovery that white light is made up of variously refrangible rays of light, each of which we perceive as a distinctive color. We will briefly discuss the first two, before delving into his observations on color. For Newton’s physics, we may apocryphally picture him being hit on the head by a falling apple and thus struck by the insight that apples move towards the earth. Naturally he was not the first to notice that apples fall, but rather he worked out that all bodies, on earth but really anywhere in space, are drawn towards each other at a predictable rate relative to their mass and distance from one another; every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. The formula is clear, concise, and powerfully predictive—apples and planets reliably show up where this theory says they should. We should note that this theory attempts no explanation as to how masses act upon one another in this way; it simply describes very well what that action is. For his calculus we require a mathematician to say more than this: Newtonian physics calls for a math that can pin down the path of a curved line influenced by forces that vary depending on the relative positions of the objects under study. This is a task we can only calculate with infinite labor using arithmetic and an x, y, z Cartesian coordinate system. Calculus is this math. The matter of authorship is muddied by the fact that the continental rationalist philosopher Leibniz also and quite independently discovered calculus around the same time—and neither he nor Newton were prompt about establishing their claim to fame in the international scientific literature. A divide between the British Isles and the continent, along religious, political, and philosophical lines, is now to be joined by a mathematical divide. Rival claims over this new math hindered progress and intruded later into debates on color theory, with partisan loyalty affecting whether one was inclined to accept Newton’s theories or more likely to give Goethe a full hearing, over a hundred years later. We come now to what is arguably the single most consequential moment in the history of color theory: certain experiments conducted by Newton into the nature of light and his discovery that “white light” is composed of infinitely variable rays of “colored” light (Newton 1952). These experiments may have been suggested to Newton by his efforts to devise better telescopes. He did in fact devise the reflecting telescope in 124

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

1671—a device which was less troubled by “chromatic aberration” than those Galileo worked with (White 1999, 170). These experiments also came at a time when the scientific method was only vaguely defined, and in the midst of a lively debate about the nature of light—whether it be a wave phenomenon or composed of particles (“undulatory” or “corpuscular” in the day’s terminology). Newton’s conclusions were controversial in regard to that debate and also because they finally and irrevocably upended Aristotelian color theory just shy of two millennia after it had been introduced. Newton’s theories prevailed for many reasons, not least of which being that they were generally correct, relative to the other theories available. It also helped that he outlasted one of his detractors. After an initial effort to publicize his findings was condemned by the influential man of science Hooke, who was outraged by Newton’s corpuscular theory of light, Newton waited until 1704, the year after Hooke’s death, to publish his Opticks (Principe 2011, 66). As it happened, he had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch when a chance fire in his study burned up his original manuscript. It is alarming to speculate on the course of color theory history had Newton also perished in that fire. Newton also benefited from his incredible stature owing to his other accomplishments, and from his masterful demonstrations and convincing prose exhibited to particularly pleasing effect in the Opticks. Finally, Newton crafted his new theory of color along lines that, while they disturbed tradition in one way, conformed to other long cherished notions. For the Greeks, from Pythagoras’ inquiry into sound and octaves, had made number and ratio the ultimate criteria for whether a theory of natural phenomenon was fitting. By the time Galileo is constructing his telescope, mathematics is seen by many as the secret language of the universe. As we will see, Newton’s color wheel, and his seven primary colors, allow his theory to pick up the mantle of Pythagoras. Enough then, of context and rhetoric. We need to describe more exactly what Newton observed and the color theory he constructed from those observations. The Opticks describes not simply this one demonstration of light passing through a prism. It is rather an exhaustive probing, with numerous combinations of prisms, mirrors, and lenses so that light is split, combined, split and then split again, prisms are rotated, mirrors may be concave, convex, or flat—and so on (see Figure 4.2). The colors that appear are noted, but nothing that can be done to quantify them is left undone. The angle at which a beam strikes the prism and the angles at which the colors exit it are measured. Attention is given to various degrees of reflection and refraction, and the effect that various media (air, glass, etc.) have on the inflection of beams of light, owing to their varying densities— much as a stick standing in a pond appears to bend at the water’s surface. All of these things can be quantified, and diagrammed on paper without the use of color. Much as Renaissance artists depicting architectural tableaux had engaged with the projective geometry of linear perspective, Newton used mathematics to turn the observation of color into a map-making exercise. There are two more key observations of his to present here. First is simply that light does not bend around corners but rather it proceeds in a “rectilinear” fashion. And second is that the use of two diffraction gratings, interrupting a beam of light, can be rotated relative to each other to reveal the light and then block it, as the orientation of their markings aligns and dis-aligns. From these observations Isaac Newton constructed an entirely new theory of color and light. The experiments with diffraction gratings revealed that light is polarized (although Newton did not coin the term)—meaning that it has a two-sided structure, with rays like so many flat ribbons. This observation is accurate, and is the basis by which today’s 3-D movie technology is constructed, with two differently polarized lenses capturing separate polarized images from the projection. The rectilinearity of light convinced Newton that light is not undulatory, as waves of water passing through an opening into a wider space will spread out and fill the space beyond the barrier with their undulations. He held this view notwithstanding the essentially periodic nature of his assertion that light is made up of a variety of differently refracting rays giving rise to the different colors—which he explicitly compares to “vibrations of the air,” and which “according to their several bignesses, excite sensations of several Sounds” (Newton 1952, 345). Newton hypothesized that space is in fact filled with an “aether”—something extremely subtle and elastic. Particles can pass through this substance with 125

Color Theory

Figure 4.2 Newton’s Opticks was a tour de force presentation of experimental approaches that helped forge a nascent scientific practice. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-95333. great ease, yet it also vibrates in a manner not perceptible as light but capable of generating heat in bodies. Finally, this aether varies in density—accounting for gravity and linking that phenomenon with light. As it turns out, neither Newton nor Hooke were able to get to the bottom of the undulatory vs. corpuscular debate. On this count, Newton’s Opticks suffered a great deal during the nineteenth century. Our current view of the matter is that light is both made up of the particles we call photons and is also a wave phenomenon. Both assertions can be proven even if they are difficult to reconcile. Newton’s observations of light passing through prisms gave him the insight that light is not a simple, homogeneous substance (Newton 1952). Rather it is a complex, heterogeneous phenomenon, made up of infinitely variable rays each of which provokes a different color response in our eye (Newton 1952). The notion of white and light as a simple thing has ever been aligned with the notion that it is an essential principle of our world, and its association with the good, the truth, and so on. This simple, most essential principle of the visible world is also built into Aristotle’s theory that color is made by the interaction of light and dark. 126

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

Newton’s observations of light interacting with prisms and lenses also yielded a surprising result about purple, or rather about a range of colors that extends from magenta through purple. This is that these colors do not exist in the rainbow and are not present in the spectrum of visible light. All other colors may be experienced either by stimulating our retinas with light of the appropriate wavelength or by combining wavelengths to generate that color by a process of additive mixing. Purple is entirely synthetic, arising when our eyes perceive combinations of the red and violet which appear at the extreme ends of the spectrum. This piece of empirical evidence may have prompted Newton to one of his most inspired, most influential, and least empirical constructs—the color wheel. But connecting the two ends of the spectrum to account for this crossover in our perceptions also allows Newton to stamp his theory with an image of timeless simplicity and allusions to musical notation. Musical notation in the Western tradition invokes the circle by the repeated sequence of notes in a system of octaves. The term octave denotes the eight steps from middle C to C again on a register one octave up or down, and is illustrated as a circle in numerous exercises for music students. But there are not eight notes— there are seven, starting with “do, re, mi . . .” and returning with “do” again at the top of the circle. Thus Newton also introduced his wholly subjective set of seven primary colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. This sequence, preserved as “ROY–G–BIV” in science and art school books alike, is accurate enough in terms of order but there is really no scientific basis for naming these particular colors rather than any other set of colors appearing in the sequence. Nor is there any reason, other than the rhetorical resonance with music theory, to list seven basic colors. One might as easily list six or ten or three—and subsequent color theorists did just that and named many other color sets as well. The truth from a physicist’s point of view is that none of the infinitely divisible colors along the spectrum are any more basic than any of the others, many combinations of colored light will create white light, and there is no such thing in nature as a color circle. Newton professed an adherence to the same rules of experimental philosophy as Galileo and Bacon before him, that one should do one’s best not to let theory intrude on what the empirical evidence shows us. He famously said “hypothesis non fingo” or “I propose no hypothesis” precisely because he wished to simply show the world what his experiments could demonstrate and not get embroiled in controversies over dogma (Newton 1846, 506). But in the end the need to make sense of his surprising and somewhat confusing discoveries, and the need to win acceptance for his work (perhaps even to bring himself to embrace it), required a significant amount of invention, in addition to discovery. Martin Kemp summarizes Newton’s work on color and light in his book The Science of Art and also provides a helpful delineation of the points where Newton’s work, for all its groundbreaking insight, fell into error. He notes the cultural construction of the color wheel and the seven basic or primary colors, though the error here would only be in mistaking these for hard science (Kemp 1989, 285–321). In addition to these, Newton failed to differentiate between additive and subtractive color mixing—a subject which perplexes most students of color to this day (Kemp 1989, 285–321). This is simply the distinction between mixing colored lights to make new colors and eventually white light (additive mixing) vs. mixing colored pigments in the form of paints, inks, or dyes to make new colors and eventually a muddy grey approaching black (subtractive mixing). In one case each new light added to the mixture increases the amount of the spectrum being presented to the eye, increasing the lightness perceived until white light is the result. In the second case each new pigment in the mixture absorbs additional wavelengths from the light striking it and allows less and less light to bounce back to the viewer. In theory, black is the result of mixing all the available colored pigments, but in practice impurities, and the opacity or translucence of certain pigments, means the result is never quite black. Another notion generally accepted as scientific but truly a cultural construct is the one holding that white and black are not colors. Though one may certainly decide to employ a semantic distinction between white and black and the colors of the spectrum, one may just as logically decline to do so. One often hears that 127

Color Theory

white and black are the combination or absence of the colors, but the same logic applies substantially to brown. White and black and the rainbow’s colors are equally phenomena of our perception of light. In contemporary color theory terminology, those rainbow colors, in addition to purple of course, are called “hues.” Perhaps more telling is our interest in such theoretical statements about color that apply to no color ever perceived. There is no perfectly black pigment and there is no situation where we perceive either the absolute absence or presence of all light. If nothing else, our retina’s participation in the creation of both the stimulant color and that color’s complement is insurance against our ever seeing a pure white or black. Taking the long view of the history of color theory suggests that the most important shift that occurs for color during the scientific revolution is a changing of the subject being discussed. In fulfillment of Galileo’s desires, Newton has discarded the discussion of color as a distraction from the real nature of light. To comprehend the visible he seeks to describe the invisible mechanisms underlying vision—and not even underlying vision but underlying the world that vision purports to convey to us. Essentially this is a decision to disregard qualitative matters in favor of quantitative ones. We are no longer concerned with the experience of seeing colors—which eludes efforts at measurement. We only wish to account for the sub-visible mechanical processes that give rise to what is now considered an error—our impression that the world is colored. Note that the narrative of color theory has slipped sideways, from color theory to color science, as if the two are the same, or that the true core of color theory is indisputably scientific. At this stage in history, especially with the great achievement of Newton’s Principia, physics is seen as the pre-eminent scientific discipline, and its objective accounting of all matter renders color a mere illusion.

Color Use Activity 4.1 The dramatic advances in optical science, which played a prominent role in the scientific revolution, were based on a counter-intuitive framework. This framework privileged the ontological status of things as they are without an observer present. Thinkers such as Galileo and Newton sought to know not how things appear but what causes them to appear. Perhaps inevitably this procedure led to conclusions which discounted the reality of color, discovering it to be an error, or an illusion. The following activities seek to dramatize this point of view, and recreate some of the innovative discoveries of the period. As with previous chapters, if working in a group setting, compare and contrast your work. Mechanical color 1 Return to the dark room/sensory deprivation chamber of Chapter 1. Starting from the assumption that the senses are a path of deception, generate a theory of color as being an illusion arising from the impressions made upon our eyes by sub-visible particles whose only true properties are those which may be measured and plotted in a Cartesian coordinate system, such as size, shape, and motion. Announce to the darkness, “I knew it all along—color is not real!” Mechanical color 2 Use optical instruments to improve upon and calibrate the impressions of the eye. Examine colored specimens through a microscope. If the color appears different than when viewed with the naked eye, declare that which the microscope reveals as the true color of the object. Gaze at some celestial bodies through a telescope and likewise record their appearance including apparent color as being more real

128

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

than what you otherwise would see. Use a prism to split the sun’s light into the visible spectrum. Declare that white light is not really white at all; rather it is these colors instead. In none of these cases do the colors experienced directly by the senses count as real because you have assumed from the outset that such things are illusion and that optical instruments are inherently closer to the truth of color than the human eye. Mechanical color 3 Return again to the dark room/sensory deprivation chamber of Chapter 1. This time open a single small opening in the material covering the window, about the size of a nickel. Do this at a time of day when the sun’s light is bathing the scene outside from behind you as you look towards the hole, or aperture (in the morning for a west-facing window, and in the afternoon for an east-facing window). Now turn around and see that you have created a camera obscura. The world outside has been captured within this black box, being projected upside down and backwards. This becomes clearer the longer you let your eyes adjust to the dim light and take in the scenes unfolding before you on the ceiling and walls of the room. If you have a white sheet, or better, a projector screen, you can move it closer to the aperture to get a sharper focus and a better image. The sense of wonder you feel gives way to a keener awareness of just what a thin tissue is the illusion of sight. The camera obscura is the very model of the human eye. Its aperture is analogous to the iris, selecting a single ray from each point in the scene outside and projecting it upon an opposite spot on the back wall of the room—analogous to the retina. Wave your hand through the scene and reveal this projection for what it is—a trick of the eye.

Cultural impact of Newton’s Opticks Though Newton’s theories of light and color were known in the scientific community before its publication, the Opticks inaugurated a long process of assimilation of those ideas in literature, art, and popular culture. Outside of the Netherlands, the heyday of landscape painting, where light and color are fully explored, would not come until the nineteenth century. Thus it seems that literature, especially poetry, is where this effect is first and most noticeably seen. Though his Principia is better known and perhaps more highly regarded in scientific circles, the Opticks, being written in English and changing our thinking on subjects closer to daily life, was far more widely alluded to in the poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first fifty or so years after Newton’s death in 1727 were largely a matter of deification, often in uninspired terms but with important exceptions. But as we will see in the next chapter, later decades saw Romantic poets begin to articulate the “disenchantment of the world” brought about by Newton’s new mechanical system by which the universe is regulated—and by the barren, colorless void and atoms that were now understood to be its ultimate reality (Nicolson 1963). Alexander Pope was widely celebrated in Newton’s day and made many references to the wonders of prismatic color as explored by him. He is among those who heaped laurels upon Newton, and wrote the epitaph which we have already quoted. Especially under the prevailing mood in England expressing a just pride in the achievements of their great Newton, poets were inclined to see delight and wonder in the mercurial prismatic display that is the world around us. Pope’s most famous work, a “Heroi-Comical Poem” titled “The Rape of the Lock,” describes the airy garments of a clan of sylphs thus:

129

Color Theory

Thin glitt’ring textures of the filmy dew, Dipt in the richest tinctures of the skies, Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes, While every beam new transient colours fling, Colours that change whene’er they wave their wings. Pope 1962, 163 The poet John Hughes also versified on what was popularly being called “Newton’s rainbow” or “Newton’s colours,” as well as his discovery of the laws of motion and gravitation. In The Ecstasy, Hughes lauds the ability to “trace each Comet’s wand’ring Way” and goes straight on into color: And now descry Light’s Fountain-Head, And measure its descending Speed; Or learn how Sun-born Colours rise In Rays distinct, and in the Skies. Hughes in Nicholson 1963, 11 This rapture of colored light goes on to show that light shedding its “tinctures” “On ev’ry Planet’s rising Hills” thus embracing a wide universe, beyond our home solar system, of suns and planets bathed in prismatic light. Newton’s rather unpoetical work, and despite his indifference to aesthetics, allowed poets to see nature and color in new ways, ascribing divinity to the order they found in his color theory, and providence in its revelation to the world through his efforts. Gradually, less rosy pictures of Newton’s universe began to emerge and were well developed by the time Goethe would write his counter-argument to Newton’s theories. The skeptical attitude that proved so valuable to the scientific method drew criticism for lacking in faith, for refusing to believe in the most obvious of everyday phenomena—color being among the more salient examples. British empiricism after Locke Just as Descartes was followed by others—chiefly Spinoza and Leibniz—who carried on the tradition of continental rationalism, Locke’s empirical approach to philosophy was picked up by others—chiefly George Berkeley and David Hume. The trajectory of British empiricism rapidly revealed that Locke’s radical first principle, that all knowledge arises from experience, leads to equally radical and surprising results. Surprising because the seemingly dry and pragmatic method of empiricism is not generally associated with the borderline mystical revelations of Berkeley’s theory of vision, nor the dissolution of common sense and certainty of Hume’s assessment of the self and the world. What may be less surprising, given the empiricist’s focus on experience as the path to knowledge, is that sight and the senses, the means by which we have experiences, become crucial subjects for these philosophers’ investigations. Berkeley and Hume were animated by nearly opposite motivations as regards matters of faith. The former was explicitly concerned with creating a bulwark against the atheism that he saw as implicit in the materialism of the systems of Descartes and Locke alike. Whereas the latter was unperturbed by the possibility that God, the self, and cause and effect were just so many superstitions. As we have seen, from the ancient Greeks onward there have been problems explaining how our mind “in here” comes to know about the world “out there.” Even when the senses are acknowledged to play a role—are 130

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

not seen as a path of deception—there are important questions to resolve about what the relationship is between the sensation we experience and the object we are purportedly sensing. For Galileo there is a remarkable disconnect; ticklishness describes our sensation but not the feather, and red describes our sensation but not the apple. Berkeley, like the poet Blake, saw Locke as adopting that mechanical philosophy of Galileo and Newton, and he felt that such a clockwork view of the world must inevitably leave God out entirely. He therefore proposed a New Theory of Vision in 1709, an alternative to the explanation of the senses proposed by such mechanical philosophies—with a theory of vision structured as analogous to language. Essentially, Berkeley proposed that our experience of color and of a world-space of colored objects is not caused by tiny sub-visible particles which are not themselves colored (2002, 2). In fact, he points out that empirically we can not claim to have any knowledge of a world “out there” —a world on the other side, as it were, of our senses (Berkeley 2002). All we have knowledge of is what we experience—and that consists solely of our sensory impressions. The question then becomes how do we form our ideas of such things as colored apples, blue skies, and so on? We learn about that world through repeated association of, say, our perceptions of round and red and crunchy and tasty. Much as we learn the meaning of the word “apple” in our youth, not by the force of reason (apples need not exist, they just happen to exist) but by the contexts in which we hear people use that word rather than “orange.” And furthermore, where the prevailing world view ascribes ultimate reality to the senseless particles and void that give rise to our senses, and describes those sensations as essentially illusory, Berkeley reverses the matter. In his theory of vision colors are what is real and the objects they seem to attach to are the illusions. Yes, this defender of the faith, himself a bishop of the Church of England, proposes that Descartes’ skeptical stance was in fact correct—the world we think we know is a vast illusion. But Berkeley is careful to avoid the accusation of solipsism (the notion that the only being we can be sure exists is ourselves, and the world and everyone else in it are unreal). He argues that all these sensations do have a cause—that there is something “on the other side” of the senses (Berkeley 2002, 12). That thing is God. And, pursuing his analogy with language still further, the senses are God’s manner of talking to us. How does he recognize God as the cause of our experiences? He asserts that he is never so convinced of the reality of his fellow human’s consciousness as when they are speaking with him. It is a sort of Turing Test applied to the universe, ostensibly revealing that a consciousness greater, or at least other, than our own is directing it all. This view of ourselves as being in direct communication with the divine through our senses is not so very different than the Sufi mystic’s concept of the visible as the means by which the invisible makes itself known to us. In Britain this theory fell largely on deaf ears. Few seemed to find inspiration in, or even notice, the attempt to save God from oblivion, because most were distracted by Berkeley’s dismissal of the entire world around us as nothing more than appearances. Most who heard of it considered it very clever but unacceptable. In a famous anecdote, James Boswell told Samuel Johnson that “though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it” to which Johnson vehemently responded by kicking a stone declaring, “I refute it thus” (Boswell and Morris 1923, 126). The Scottish philosopher David Hume followed Berkeley in the strict application of empiricist principles to so great an extent that he denied the reality of the phenomenon of cause and effect, or at least the possibility of our knowing any such thing. Observing everyday actions and reactions akin to one billiard ball striking another and sending it into the corner pocket, he notes that we see one ball move, and then another. And indeed we see this repeated many times. But we never do see cause and effect per se. We do not see the movement of the first ball cause the movement of the second one and only assume there is such a thing by long familiarity with their conjunction. This assumption is, to Hume, a leap of faith, a superstitious belief in a sort of magical power between and among the objects in the world and belief that the world will continue to operate in the manner to which we have grown accustomed. 131

Color Theory

Even more alarmingly, Hume then looked at the self, a notion we not only assume but also hold dear, and found nothing there either. The self is, he said, “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement” (Hume 1896, 134). From this refutation it appears obvious that Hume would not have wasted much time in rejecting Berkeley’s assertion that we can detect God as the guiding force of our sensory experiences. He also seems to have embraced the “all is flux” philosophy of the ancient Heraclitus. But where does Hume leave matters? He doesn’t deny that we are compelled to behave as if those seeming bedrocks of the world are real, and his countrymen largely considered him an admirable thinker whose ideas could not be accepted but were a bracing tonic for rigorous thinkers. Dependent as it is on a certain faith in the ability of our senses to provide us with knowledge, empiricism requires some theory of how the senses operate. But in Hume’s system we don’t just wonder how it is we come to see the world around us, but what is this “us” who sees the world? He notes that we are nothing more than a bundle of impressions, but then bestows upon that bundle the creative ability to assemble that bundle into an idea of the self. It may be instructive, in considering these problems, to ponder another, more famous, “problem” in his philosophy—the “problem of the missing blue” (Hume 1896, 9–10). Hume does not propose much in the way of a color theory. His was more a project of pointing out the things we cannot say with certainty than of proposing new things we might say. He doubtless agreed with Berkeley that the insensible atoms and void of mechanical philosophy were a leap of faith, impossible to verify. He also would agree that the sense impression itself is something we do know. And at one point, considering how we come to form our ideas of things he asks a hypothetical question about a man who has seen many different shades of blue in his lifetime and thus has adequate ideas of those various blues. But this man has never seen one particular shade of blue. Could he, Hume asks, form an adequate idea of that “missing blue”? This question comes just after Hume seems to have thoroughly demolished the idea that we can do any such thing; the answer is clearly “No.” And yet he says “Yes”; Hume supposes that one can take the various adequate ideas already supplied to us by experience and imagine this heretofore unseen blue. This apparent inconsistency has bothered students of philosophy ever since, and has aroused numerous proposed solutions. All of these are necessarily compromises of one sort or another. Some part of his argument must be slightly modified in ways that go against what he has actually said—the question is simply which part of his system are you most willing to reduce? Or it may be that, like Galileo and Newton, he believes color really is essentially quantifiable. Hume does support our ability to conjure up a new number from our experience with adding to and subtracting from the numbers of objects before us. We have three apples and then eat one, discovering there are now two apples. From this he allows that we can imagine the number seven even if we never before saw a pile of seven apples. But it is one thing for Newton to claim that some particles and their motions, which give rise to the experience of red, can be measured in a quantifiable manner. It is quite another for Hume to say that the experience of red or blue or any color—what it is like to see those colors—can be quantified. One final option, not generally adopted but consistent in itself, lies in embracing the radical implications of Hume’s theory of knowledge. By analogy, one way of reading Heraclitus is more radical than another. One may simply say, “No man ever enters the same river twice” and notice that the river—the world we live in—is always changing. Or one may say “A man never enters a river twice” and notice that we are not the man we were yesterday, who we nonetheless remember entering the river. We are, as the river is, always in flux. Thus Hume’s stance towards the things we think we know is a variety of agnosticism; he doesn’t claim there is no cause and effect, only that we can never know such a thing. Likewise with our notion of ourselves. He simply seems to report what passes before our consciousness, both the rapid and seemingly regular bundle of impressions and

132

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

our apparent ability to construct an idea of a self from that bundle. Because though there may be no self, there is an activity taking place in which that bundle is used to construct a self. Sense impressions occur and thinking about those sensations also occurs—Hume declines to say how. Likewise, it may simply be that Hume feels that blue experiences occur, and the conjuring of otherwise unexperienced blues also occurs. His is not a task of proposing how or why; it is simply one of noticing what. Interestingly, and not often emphasized by books on British empiricism, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume all made some impact on discussions of aesthetics. Locke said little about art per se, but his foregrounding of the senses as a primary object of study, and his discussions of how ideas are formed, were influential in aesthetic discussions and increased interest in psychological matters (Morris 1963). He described how many associations people take to be necessary, as between certain forms and the good or the beautiful, are merely accidental; imprinted in the mind by repeated association (Morris 1963). Bishop Berkeley argued, as any good empiricist would, that beauty is not known to us by some innate sense but by our appreciation of the suitability of a given form to its purpose. But the resulting contextual theory of beauty would mitigate against the more dogmatic or schematic aesthetic prescriptions. For Hume’s part, he was a well regarded writer who covered many subjects outside of his esoteric philosophical efforts, having authored widely distributed histories of England and Great Britain (Morris 1963, 109). He was one of many intellectuals of the period to write on the subject of “taste” and he argued that while we will not find universal agreement on such matters it behooves us to take note of those who have a greater sensitivity, greater perceptiveness of fine differences, generally owing to a greater level of experience with the particular field of artifice being discussed. He emphasizes the organ of perception and its health so that resonances may be seen with Aristotle’s appraisal of the mean as being the most conducive to health. He does not lay down a prescription but we can see that baroque extravagance is not quite the thing in this Scottish philosopher’s milieu.

Color Activity 4.2 Mechanical color 4 Return once more to the dark room/sensory deprivation chamber of Chapter 1. And again allow the single small opening in the material covering the window, about the size of a nickel. This time do so when the sun’s light is entering directly through that hole, as a shaft of light. Imitating Newton, place a prism in the path of the light and so cast the spectrum across the room. Then have friends hold up mirrors in the colored light so that they can direct selected colors in new directions. Additional friends with mirrors can then use them to recombine various colors together to discover what colors arise from their mixture, and how they can recombine to create white light. Mechanical color 5 Use a projector to create a trompe l’oeill scene. For instance, project an image on the walls and ceiling of a room, with the lens of the projector situated exactly where you anticipate the eye of the viewer to be when they enter the room. Then outline and color in the scene projected on the wall. A similar approach may be used to create sidewalk art, projecting a scene of a dramatic hole in the ground onto the ground— with the projector positioned at the spot where an approaching viewer would see it.

133

Color Theory

Color use during the scientific revolution We reach again the point where we attempt to ascertain, as far as we may, the extent to which all these bookish musings and laboratory tests may have influenced actual color use and reception during and shortly after the period of the scientific revolution. It is arguable that the iconic image of Newton wielding the prism in his “very dark Chamber” exercised a certain amount of influence on the public imagination—indeed it does so to this day. And etchings of this scene testify to its popular reception (see Figure 4.3). But the immediate effect may have been more keenly felt in the literary arts which were far more advanced in England than the visual arts, which frankly lagged behind those of the continent. Hogarth emerges as a vigorous proponent of a more independent English painting tradition and Gainsborough develops world-class skills as a portrait painter for the aristocracy. Gainsborough’s Blue Boy is of course iconically colorful, creating an ineffable persona that sticks in our mind (see Figure 4.4). As for the major royal commissions in England, these tended to go to foreigners like Rubens, whose meditations on warm and cool colors rippling across fleshy thighs are a school of color in themselves (see Figure 4.5). But, for all that, Gainsborough’s boy wears the blue of a rich satin, and Rubens’

Figure 4.3 The popular image of Newton holding his prism up to a beam of light is more likely to be true and may be as iconic as that of the apple of inspiration striking him on the head. Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo. 134

Figure 4.4 Gainsborough’s paintings were in a league with the best baroque art of the continent, and his famous Blue Boy image uses color, in the form of extravagantly expensive textiles, to create an iconic image. Art Collection 3 / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 4.5 Often the most important painting commissions in England went to foreign artists such as Rubens, whose fleshy passages rippled with color. Peter Barritt / Alamy Stock Photo.

135

Color Theory

women display the well-fed and sunlight-averse bodies of an idealized womanhood. Thus both are in part a display of wealth in keeping with the baroque trends on the continent that we will describe below. In the next chapter we will at length find painters raising the same strenuous objections to the cold vision of science that the Romanticist poets have raised, even as those very artists begin to reap benefits from the new science of color. Watercolor, however, was a painting medium that saw an early and broad appreciation in England that continues today. The medium was well suited to embellishing popular engravings produced cheaply enough that middle-class consumers could hope to own one. It was also well suited as an activity for the young man of means taking in the grand tour of Europe’s monuments, or of the amateur naturalist out for a walk in the Lake District, or in one of the far flung corners of the British Empire. The muted tones of watercolor generally played a secondary and carefully instructive role to the meticulous drawings and etchings of botanists, butterfly enthusiasts, or anthropologists whose recordings were dispatched via the popular press and among learned societies alike (see Figure 4.6). Finally, colored images were simply hard to come by and most people’s familiarity with the world’s paintings was mediated by engravings, tinted with watercolor or not, which reinforced the academic artist’s prejudice in favor of design over color. It may be that academies, conservative by nature, must always incline towards the more definable traits of design and away from those of color. In this period the Royal Academy in France saw a healthy dispute in formal debates and papers on the merits and

Figure 4.6 Watercolor, often on engravings (such as in this image from Moses Harris’s The Aurelian), expressed a carefully empirical approach to color, in which the goal was to indicate the local color of the object without the distortions which shadows and reflected lights can add to the perception of that color. Courtesy of The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology. 136

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

priority of color and design, but the preponderance of opinion was always in favor of design. This spirit was reinforced by the dependence on prints to obtain information on art elsewhere in Europe. The print historian Susan Lambert makes this link between printmaking and draftsmanship, and its dissociation from color:“Colour, being as it were a grace note added to the image, [was] unnecessary to the true connoisseur and possibly a distraction from the elegance and significance of the image” (Engler 2017, 103). Thus the objective view of color advocated by scientists like Newton, that color is not what is real about the objects under study, would have been a reflection and a reinforcement of a prejudice in color use against lavish displays of color. All of these varieties of carefully engraved and conservatively colored prints may capture the objective sensibility of Newton’s England as well as, or better than, any ceiling fresco or oil painting. Landscape architecture in England during the eighteenth century, developing a picturesque tradition inspired by earlier Italian landscape painters, confirmed the prejudice against extravagant displays of color and the preference for line and three-dimensional form. This traditional disegno y colore distinction is joined by a second distinction between natural and artificial effects. Sir Uvedale Price acknowledged the expressive potential of color but nonetheless fell in line with the overall focus on design and endorsed muted colors. Mira Engler notes his opening remarks on color: “I have said little of the superior variety and effect of light and shade in scenes of this kind, as they of course must follow variety of forms and of masses, and intricacy of disposition” (2017, 103–4). Engler goes on to list Price’s ideal landscape design elements as “form, mass, and the experience of movement that sets the scenes in motion, and to which light, shadow, and color were merely subordinate” (2017, 104). Furthermore, Price preferred muted autumn colors to those of spring and endorsed “the painter’s favorite colors, those deep and mellow effects of autumn colors resulting from age and decay” (Engler 2017, 104). We may also be missing some of the effect of the pragmatic, empirical, and verifiable approach to color one might look for simply because it coincides so well with what we might call a Protestant aesthetic. The subject of Protestants, Puritans, and the Church of England has not quite been discussed to this point but it has lurked behind this entire chapter in the divergence of continental rationalism and British empiricism, the quixotic efforts of Bishop Berkeley, and the controversies between Galileo and the Catholic Church. We must note at last the near coincidence of traditional date ranges for the Reformation and for the scientific revolution. In color theory it is the latter era that concerns us, but in painting the all consuming conflict was that of the various Reformations, both within and outside the Catholic Church. And the major overarching creative period is yet another domain that overlaps both the Reformation and the scientific revolution—the period of Baroque art. Baroque art is dauntingly diverse, but for our study it has the virtue of being the first global art movement, providing an effective descriptor for art, architecture, and music in Protestant Amsterdam and Catholic Rome, in Louis XIV’s court at Versailles and in the Banquet House of Charles I—not to mention being the style of missionary churches from Mexico to India. For our purposes, Baroque art is notable for its absolute control over and powerful use of optics, perspective, spectacular lighting effects, and lush color to achieve the desired end of the patron. Simply put, for the Catholic Church especially, the fullest use of all that art and science could provide, including lush displays of color, were sanctioned for the persuasive power that they offered. Consider the explosive ceiling fresco Allegory of the Missionary Work of the Society of Jesus created by Andrea Pozzo in 1655 in the St. Ignazio church in Rome (see Figure 4.7). In a trompe l’oeil tour de force, the parishioners must crane their necks backwards to take in the astounding vision of the building’s columns reaching up into clouds, sunlight, and glory. Colors are kept as bright and luminous as possible while carving out sufficient shadows to forcefully sculpt the clouds and figures bursting out of the ceiling. Now consider Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes with its deeply shadowed interior scene and shallow depth of field causing the spotlit heroine and villain, caught in the moment of grotesque slaughter, to spill out of the canvas and into the viewer’s space (see Figure 4.8). In both cases the urgent political and spiritual cause of the Church’s Counter-Reformation effort impels artists and patrons to enlist the seductive appeal of color, the drama of lighting effects, and the powerful manipulation of perspective. 137

Color Theory

Figures 4.7 and 4.8 Andrea Pozzo’s Allegory of the Jesuits’ Missionary Work and Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes are forceful displays of light, color, and perspective handled with great skill in the service of the CounterReformation project. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. Ian Dagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo.

138

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

Protestant institutions were not shy either, within certain parameters, about employing the rhetorical tools that the Renaissance had made available. The iconoclastic strain within Protestantism had to be respected, and many artists pursued a more sober and muted color vocabulary suited to their context, but profoundly contemplative moods and rich opulent materiality were every bit a part of Dutch painting in this period as they were tools for the Vatican. It was no use for those Dutch artists to paint more icons of the Virgin Mary and Child—the Churches of England, Holland, Flanders, and portions of Germany among other countries had just been stripped of all such paraphernalia. Those statues and paintings were burnt in the public square, sometimes by mobs and at other times by orderly civic committees. Meanwhile newly reformed church walls were given a thorough whitewash—making a pure white expanse the color scheme of Protestantism if anything can be so described. Protestant artists turned their attention to subjects and modes of expression that would not be seen as objects of worship in themselves, including landscapes and still lives. Landscapes sometimes contained miniature images of the Holy Family on their exodus to Egypt, or else productive fields leading the eye to a distant town with its single church spire piercing the horizon. Still lives often depicted floral displays or else tables overloaded with the material bounty of trade goods, imported foods, plus the occasional worm or skull—to bring home the pious theme that such things are destined to be dust. Landscape with Church and Village by van Ruisdael typifies a unique type of Dutch landscape painting (see Figure 4.9). Though he also depicted more turbulent scenes akin to previous Italian masters as well

Figure 4.9 Protestant ideology called for new forms and subjects in art such as landscapes like Landscape with Church and Village by van Ruisdael, in which a cool clear light prevails. Art Collection 2 / Alamy Stock Photo. 139

Color Theory

as scenes with Gothic ruins in anticipation of Romanticist trends in the following century, this image presents a bird’s-eye view of town and country with a simple hard horizon line and towering sunlit clouds above an orderly world. When compared with deWitt’s 1668 Interior of a Church as well as Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter of 1664, one begins to imagine a new kind of Protestant light (see Figures 4.10–4.11). This is a natural light removed from the theatrical stage set of Gentileschi. Potentially conveying a less emotional, more rational, and scientific ethos, we may simply call this the clear light of day and appreciate that this effect, like all light effects in painting, is entirely a matter of the palette of colors selected by the artist. Given Vermeer’s well known use of the camera lucida (another optical device of the period), noticeable in the images by the way reflected highlights gather themselves into little discs of white, we may assume that Dutch patrons took pleasure in the clarity and precision these images conveyed (see Figure 4.12). We have Willem Kalf ’s 1659 Still Life with Fruit, Glassware, and a Wanli Bowl and Rachel Ruysch’s 1711 Still Life with Flowers as breakfast table and floral examples of this genre (see Figures 4.13–4.14). Dutch still lives alternated between the dark recesses of a more heavily chiaroscuro treatment and the clear light of day mode noted above. Regardless, excellence in color use clearly rested in its ability to convey verisimilitude in not only color but also in the touch, smell, transparency, and reflection of all the materials assembled on the table top.

Figure 4.10 DeWitt’s 1668 Interior of a Church illustrates the whitewashed coloration consistent with a Protestant iconoclastic aesthetic. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. 140

Figure 4.11 Vermeer’s Woman Reading a Letter, seen alongside other Dutch Protestant works, suggests a new kind of “Protestant” light. World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 4.12 Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer shows the tiny dots of light reflecting off surfaces that are an artifact of the optical devices Vermeer employed to produce such stunningly realistic scenes. Mauritshuis, The Hague. 141

Figures 4.13 and 4.14 Willem Kalf ’s Still Life with Fruit, Glassware, and a Wanli Bowl and Rachel Ruysch’s Still Life with Flowers reveal the devotion to detail, as well as a less idealistic and more naturalistic sense of color and light, typical of Dutch still lives. FineArt / Alamy Stock Photo. The Artchives / Alamy Stock Photo. 142

Figures 4.15 and 4.16 The approach to paint handling in both Protestant and Catholic contexts, such as this 1659 Self Portrait by Rembrandt and Velasquez’ Portrait of Juan de Pareja, sacrifices a certain level of illusion in favor of a visceral connection to the painter’s reaction to the subject of the painting. Arguably color begins to be treated as worthy of exploration, contemplation, and display— simply for its own sake. FineArt / Alamy Stock Photo. Thomas Abad / Alamy Stock Photo. 143

Color Theory

All of these subjects called for a devotion to detail, a less idealistic and more naturalistic sense of color and light, but no less mastery than we see in the Baroque art of the Counter-Reformation in regions that remained Catholic. For the most part, however, these lush uses of color were not connected with a desire to explore color and its effects for their own sake. The powerfully expressive tools of color, perspective, scale, and expensive materials were seen as a means to an end. It was a time when, as art critic David Hickey has put it, paintings went to war (2009). Perhaps the painterly intensity of Rembrandt or Velasquez may be seen as notable exceptions. Consider the National Gallery’s Self Portrait of 1659 by Rembrandt, or Velasquez’ 1650 Portrait of Juan de Pareja (de Pareja was inherited as a slave by Velasquez, who freed him about the time of this painting, and was a painter in his own right who worked in Velasquez’ studio) (see Figures 4.15–4.16). Note in each the heavy application of paint in ways that reveal the artist’s hand. This approach sacrifices a certain level of illusion in favor of a visceral connection to the painter’s reaction to the subject of the painting, communicating that emotion in a direct and expressionistic manner to the viewer. Globs of oil paint are inseparable from the rich color, much as an artist experiences it on the palette, and the act of applying those colors to the canvas is preserved in the visible presence of brushstrokes. In these artists’ work, color begins to be treated as worthy of exploration, contemplation, and display—simply for its own sake. Secular patrons also made use of the Baroque style to manifest their power as well as to bring pleasure and legitimize their own authority. Under Louis XIV especially, France emerged as a center for the latest and most accomplished works in art, architecture, and fashion. The monarch established royal organizations and standards for art, tapestry and carpet weaving, and typography (as well as various branches of science) and was a major patron of palace architecture, furnishings, décor, and landscapes. The palace at Versailles is the obvious but by no means the only example. Baroque palace interiors were decorated and furnished in a manner whose incredible opulence was belied by more subtle sensory effects. Throughout, strong unified color schemes and carefully orchestrated textures and spatial experiences conveyed a sense of absolute control (see Figures 4.17–4.18). The goal was to convey not only wealth but also reason, sophistication, and the status of the king as an absolute arbiter of taste. Likewise, exterior facades balanced classical proportion and elegance with curvilinear plans, dramatic protrusions, and sweeping extensions. And French baroque gardens show none of the English distinction between art and nature; all is artifice, control, and power. Here, color is applied in a manner that is lush but also perfectly controlled. As the Baroque period evolved into the Rococo variant, we see French secular painting enter its most frivolously pleasurable phase with Boucher’s Brunette Odalisque and Fragonard’s The Swing typifying the genre (see Figure 4.19). Here softness of form and color greet the (presumably male) viewer in pastel tones that are as superbly balanced and modulated as they are open to derision from a post-revolutionary perspective.

Conclusion Newton’s age was one of great progress in color science and unparalleled mastery in the arts over the use of color and light for persuasive effect. If it took some time for color use in the arts to respond to his science, Newton himself as well as his science were an immediate reflection of his own age. As the benefits of colonization increasingly accrued to Europe, a rising class of highly literate individuals with freedom from wants gained access to knowledge via global resources and printed media. Their embrace of all things quantifiable would reinforce chromophobic traditions while enabling them to make breakthroughs in physics that would have far-reaching consequences for both science and art. Meanwhile, in the Baroque art movement the struggle for the hearts and minds of Christians and newly colonized populations, and the effort to consolidate royal power and authority, led to the harnessing of all that color and perspective, with the aid of 144

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses

Figures 4.17 and 4.18 Baroque interiors such as these at Versailles contrasted extravagant opulence with more subtly sensuous combinations of color and texture, always conveying that all such effects are under exacting control. imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo. Yuri Turkov / Alamy Stock Photo. 145

Color Theory

Figure 4.19 French secular painting of the Rococo style such as Fragonard’s The Swing employed frivolously pleasurable combinations of pastel hues. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

wealth and talent, could offer. The story of at least the next two chapters is one of simultaneous reactions against, and further exploitation of, these currents in art and science.

References Armstrong, A. H., 1965. An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 4th ed. London: Methuen. Bacon, F., 1905. The Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon: Reprinted From the Texts and Translations With the Notes and Prefaces of Ellis and Spedding. London: Routledge. Berkeley, G., 1963. Works on Vision, The Library of Liberal Arts. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Berkeley, G., 1969. Philosophical Writings. Edited by T. E. Jessop. New York: Greenwood Press. Boswell, J., 1923. Boswell’s life of Samuel Johnson. Edited by M. Morris. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited. Descartes, R., 1990. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

146

Prisms, Mirrors, and Lenses Galilei, G., 1957. Discoveries and opinions of Galileo: including The starry messenger (1610), Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), and excerpts from Letters on sunspots (1613), The assayer (1623). Edited by S. Drake. New York: Anchor Books. Hume, D., 1896. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kemp, M., 1990. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Keynes, J. M., 1946. “Newton, the Man.” n.p.p./n.p. King, L. P., 1858. The Life and Letters of John Locke: With Extracts from His Journals and Common-place Books. London: Henry Bohn. Korsten, F.-W., 2017. “Not a frame but a lens: the touch of knowledge—Rumphius, Vossius, Spinoza.” In A Dutch Republican Baroque: Theatricality, Dramatization, Moment and Event, 125–48. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,. Morris, C. R., 1931. Locke, Berkeley, Hume. London: Oxford University Press. Newton Isaac, 1671. “A letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; containing his new theory about light and colors: sent by the author to the publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72; in order to be communicated to the R. Society.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 6: 3075–87, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1671.0072. Newton, I., 1952. Opticks: or, A treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections & colours of light. Based on the 4th ed., London, 1730. Edited by A. Einstein, E. T. Whittaker, and I. B. Cohen. New York: Dover Publications. Newton, S. I., 1803. The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. H.D. Symond. Edited by W. Davis. n.p.p./n.p. Nicolson, M. H., 1963. Newton Demands the Muse: Newtons’ Opticks and the Eighteenth Century Poets, History of Ideas Series. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Pope, A., 1847. The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., with Notes and Illustrations, by Himself and Others. To which are Added, a New Life of the Author, an Estimate of His Poetical Character and Writings, and Occasional Remarks by William Roscoe, Esq. London: Longman, Brown. Pope, A., 1962. The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems, 3d ed., His Poems, Twickenham Edition. London: Methuen; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Principe, L., 2011. The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,. Renn, J. (ed.), 2001. Galileo in Context. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. White, M., 1997. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer, Helix Book. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

147

CHAPTER 5 ROMANTICISM AND CHROMOPHOBIA: THE CREATION OF COLOR THEORY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

I had entered an inn towards evening, and as a well-favoured girl with a brilliantly fair complexion, black hair, and a scarlet bodice, came into the room, I looked attentively at her as she stood before me at some distance in half shadow. As she presently afterwards turned away, I saw on the white wall, which was now before me, a black face surrounded with a bright light, while the dress of the perfectly distinct figure appeared of a beautiful sea-green. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Farbenlehre Johann Goethe’s Farbenlehre, and the heated conflict between his advocates and those of Isaac Newton, tower above the work in color theory of the nineteenth century, and indeed all subsequent color theory to this day. Scientifically reactionary to a fault, and marred by a distasteful polemics, Goethe’s color theory nonetheless became what one recent commentator described as a “monument of resistance to the absurdities” of a reductionist scientific world view (Sharpe 2002, 176). It also proved to contain numerous vital insights into the physiology of color perception and influential intuitions related to color theory as a guide to aesthetic choices (Sharpe 2002). The epigraph at the head of this chapter demonstrates Goethe’s dramatic departure from Newton in terms of methodology and rhetoric. For the Farbenlehre was no mere recitation of theory and experiment; it was an inter-genre amalgamation of careful scientific observation and theorizing as well as history, poetry, anecdote, and a dash of vitriol. With his poetic gift for storytelling, Goethe places us back within the experience of color, together with all of its messy contextual factors—the fresh eyes of the traveler in a new locale, his gendered gaze, and the peculiar light of the gathering dusk. Throughout the work, Goethe moves decisively to recenter the human eye and the soul’s response within the phenomenon of color, and recalls color theory to its task of helping us make sense of our color experiences in art and nature. Previous chapters of this book have begun with the philosophy and science of color and then shifted to color use in that context. Here instead we will let the poets lead the way, as an international cultural movement loosely termed Romanticism sought to balance out the mechanistic trends of the scientific world view. Not actually anti-Enlightenment, Romanticism was an attempt to come to terms with scientific discoveries and accommodate them to a world view that retained spiritual and poetic dimensions. In this sense, Romanticism may be considered a post-Enlightenment movement. Romantic poets, artists, playwrights, and intellectuals struggled to find meaning in a world in which traditional notions of God had either been destroyed or demoted to that of absent creator—a Deist entity who crafted a clockwork universe and set it in motion, but was not an active presence in that world. For many, the loss of a transcendent God provoked a compensatory discovery of the divine within creation—either in nature or in our deepest selves. This immanent God took many forms and often was revealed in the raw power of the sublime. This “sublime” was the Romanticists’ term for the awful power of the divine as seen in nature, and the realization of our own insignificance that it bears with it. As we shall see, this immanent and overpowering divinity would contribute to a more assertive embrace of color simply as color; an unabashed use of that sensuous element to stir the soul’s response to the natural world. 149

Color Theory

All of these cultural trends emerge within the dramatically changing global economic framework and the shifting social realities of the Industrial Revolution. Preceded by political revolutions in the Americas and Europe, the Industrial Revolution added to the instability of traditional aristocracies as new wealth was created and distributed according to new mechanisms. These seemingly egalitarian trends were oddly paired with emerging racist theories and the self-fulfilling ideology of Manifest Destiny. Meanwhile the nineteenth century saw Goethe’s contemporary Johann Winckelmann found the field of Art History under a distinctly chromophobic paradigm, and “color theory” would become a field in its own right, with more being discovered about color, its production and its perception, than in all the previous millennia of inquiry. But before we explore these developments further we give the poets their promised role in the avant-garde.

Poetry in the Romantic tradition In her book, Newton Demands the Muse, Marjorie Hope Nicolson relates Benjamin Haydon’s diary account of a dinner party in 1817, at which such literary lights as Charles Lamb and William Wordsworth discussed the subject of Newton and his lack of faith. Lamb described him as “a fellow who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle” and the whole dinner party eventually raised a lighthearted toast to “Newton’s health and confusion to mathematics!” (Nicholson 1963, 1). Over a century after the publication of Newton’s Opticks, these and other writers had absorbed the Romanticist opposition to his clinical and mechanical view of the universe. Keats’ famous poem “Lamia” encapsulates the attitude thus: Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mineUnweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person’d Lamia melt into shade . . . Nicholson, 1963, 2 “Lamia” evokes what was lost not only to color but to the quality of human life more generally in a world indifferent to life and love. But perhaps no one more clearly indicates Newton’s influence on the popular imagination than the poet and artist William Blake, who fiercely opposed “Newtonianism” in all its forms. Blake considered Bacon, Newton, and Locke to be an unholy trinity, limbs of Satan whose rejection of beauty and of reality was perverse and blind. He decried their dependence on the evidence of the senses and denial of the capacity of Genius to seek out truth through internal processes: They mock Inspiration and Vision, Inspiration and Vision was then, & now is, & I hope will always Remain, my Element, my Eternal Dwelling place; how can I hear it Contemned without returning Scorn for Scorn?” Orel 1973, 49 150

Romanticism and Chromophobia

In Blake’s “Visions of the Daughters of Albion,” the tragic heroine Oothoon rails against Locke’s empirical notion of mind—that we are blank slates upon which our ideas are written entirely by our experiences. Arguing that her rape by the villain Bromion should not define her, she asserts that she is more than the sum of her experiences—that her soul is washed clean by a pure spring that wells up within her (Ferber 2010). But Blake’s hatred for the mechanistic world view obscures interesting moments where Newtonian physics inform his poetic descriptions of our cosmos. And Blake did get around to offering redemption to those he damned. In English Poets & the Enlightenment, Orel discusses such passages from the conclusion to “Jerusalem.” The innumerable chariots of the Almighty are depicted as driven by the three unholy scientists—Newton, Locke, and Bacon—joined by the poets Milton, Shakespeare, and Chaucer (Orel 1973, 57–9). Orel also draws our attention to Blake’s colored print depicting a rather godlike Newton (1973, 57). Though the world he dwells in is as rocky and barren as Democritus’ evocation of atoms and void, “It is possible to see Newton’s design as a heroic effort to create something beyond oneself ” (Orel 1973, 57). Even the detested men of science have a purpose, for they “teach Humility to Man” (Orel 1973, 58). The disdain with which these Romantic poets often held science was not merely some form of antiintellectual conservatism. It was one aspect of a clearly articulated response to the challenge posed by mechanical philosophies to the existence of God, the concept of free will, and many cherished humanist values. The universe that Newton and Locke described, with its objective and clockwork system of colorless particles subject to various actions and reactions, was one that was simply indifferent to human desires. It is a commonplace of popular culture today to inscribe a world without color as one without passion, human connectedness, and happiness. Newton’s world is the archetype of that lifeless simulation of life. Scholars have come to call this conflict in modern life the “disenchantment of the world.” Glen contrasts Alexander Pope’s optimistic (at least superficially) rendering of this universe with Emily Bronte’s description of it as a “giant stranger” and the tragically hopeless and uncaring world revealed to Wordsworth by the passing away of his daughter Lucy (1983, 289). Each of them are discussing in their own way Newton’s permanent fundamental particles of matter and the forces which allow them to come together as the objects and experiences we know, and then dissolve and rearrange themselves. Pope writes: See plastic Nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Form’d and impell’d its neighbor to embrace. Glen 1983, 289 But Wordsworth’s parental despair counters simply: No motion has she now, no force, She neither hears nor sees. Slumber did my spirit steal. Glen 1983, 289 Ultimately the scientist’s objective vision of the world is the world as Galileo ordered it up—a universe as it would be, were all consciousness snuffed out of it. Romanticism sought to restore the human eye, and human consciousness, to a more well rounded understanding of reality. 151

Color Theory

Ideologies of the nineteenth century A particularly German world view about the relationship between the inner self and the outer world was bound up with the work of the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (though his work may be said in turn to reflect that world view). Kant was trained in the philosophies of continental rationalism, with their dependence upon a priori reasoning as a foundation for all knowledge. But he was also introduced to the works of British empiricism which instead founded all knowledge upon the evidence of experience. Kant is often said to have particularly credited Hume for awakening him from his “dogmatic slumbers” (1912, 7). His landmark work on philosophy of mind, Critique of Pure Reason, was an attempt to reconcile those two great branches of modern philosophy by accounting for both the mind’s role in shaping our experience of reality as well as the input we receive from our senses. The focus of knowledge, therefore, is on the phenomena that exists where mind meets world. Phenomena are simply the substance of our experience of the world. For the broader culture, both among German intellectuals and many Romanticists, experience is a synthesis of what the soul generates and what is sensed. This German concept of subject and object seeks to balance the competing ontological claims of the perceiver and perceived. Our knowledge is not subjective only, and there is a harmony between the internal and external world. Here the world “outside” becomes an externalization of our interior states and the soul is an internalization of that world. This state of affairs necessitates a somewhat ironic attitude towards scientific enterprise, as absolute objectivity is recognized as impossible. Ultimately these views sought to place the role of science alongside those of philosophy and religion as mutually complementary means of understanding our world. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, another contemporary of both Goethe and Kant, is generally acknowledged as the founding figure of Art History as a modern enterprise. Informed by recent archaeological discoveries and well positioned to take advantage of renewed interest in classical art, Winckelmann argued for the preeminence of ancient Greek cultural accomplishments. As we will see in the next chapter, the interest in classical Greek culture, and particularly the works of Homer, will lead to some unusual potential discoveries by William Gladstone in the relationship between color perception and language. Winckelmann divided Greek art into an enduring periodization involving a rise and fall starting from the archaic and rising to the classical, followed by the “decline” of Hellenistic art and Roman imitation. He argued further that the only hope for modern culture lay in neoclassicism—an art which seeks to emulate the perfection of Greek classicism. That perfection lay decidedly in ideally proportioned depictions of the human form and emphasized the importance of disegno as opposed to colore in that traditional division of Western art. Geometrically perfect ratios and subtle visual harmony determined the quality of the artwork, and color was seen as decidedly inferior and distracting under Winckelmann’s paradigm. Winckelmann had the advantage over other commentators in that he had spent more time than most in actual observation of the works of art, and his close observations and sensitive perception set the standard for analysis of artworks. But his notion that the Greeks’ refined aesthetics were demonstrated by their preference for plain, unpigmented white marble in sculpture and architecture turns out to be essentially flawed. As discussed in Chapter 2, we now know that much of the lost sculpture of the ancient Greeks was in fact ornate bronze work as exemplified by the Riace Warriors, and that much of their marble architecture and sculpture was gaudily painted in bright polychromy. It is a testimony to his cultural impact that even to this day we generally retain that whitewashed image of ancient Greek art in our minds. Winckelmann laid down this chromophobic aesthetic in statements such as this one from his History of Ancient Art: 152

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Color, however, should have but little share in our consideration of beauty, because the essence of beauty consists, not in color, but in shape, and on this point enlightened minds will at once agree. As white is the color which reflects the greatest number of rays of light, and consequently is the most easily perceived, a beautiful body will, accordingly, be the more beautiful the whiter it is. 1880, 308 At this point the rhetoric merely reads as implicitly racist, but the following lines make that connotation blatantly explicit. Though he acknowledges that dark-skinned people and certain statues and architectural works of darker materials can also be beautiful in certain contexts or by a process of acclimation: “A traveler assures us that daily association with negroes diminishes the disagreeableness of their color” (1880, 308). This chromophobic and racist world view, which was widely shared in the nineteenth century, can be understood as equating excessive color use with the worst art and, by adopting the heritage of ancient Greece as Western, with non-Western cultures. Despite Winckelmann’s explicit linkage between the moderate climate of the Mediterranean and the exalted status of Greek artistry (he disparaged English art as simply being incapable of greatness on climatological grounds), an enduring paradigm would eventually emerge in which hard working, Protestant, Northern and Western European cultures are conceived as sober grey strongholds of reason—and supposedly lazy, non-Western cultures are understood as colorful. These pseudo-historical theories in the humanities were allied with pseudo-scientific theories among natural historians about race as a scientific category and created the intellectual context in which Romanticists worked. While notions of in-groups and outsiders are a commonplace of history, the theory of race as a scientific theory is a feature of the developing Natural History associated with Linneas—an effort to give names to, and establish relationships among, all the creatures of the earth. These efforts were also an attempt to explain the world as we see it in terms of the natural traits of its inhabitants and this extended to the division, however inconsistent and subjective, of humanity into distinct racial categories. These race theories were very simply an invention, and a spurious one. Nell Irvin Painter describes this invention quite thoroughly in her History of White People (2010). Early efforts at racial categorization focused on geographic regions and skull types, but soon race was inextricably linked to beauty in these theories. The “Caucasian variety,” as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach termed it, is inspired on purely aesthetic grounds: “I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucases, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian” (Painter 2010, 81). The towering American figure Ralph Waldo Emerson, like virtually all intellectuals of his time, was receptive to the emerging race theories of his day. Though not unusual for their kind, these theories about the inherent worth of the various races would have carried extra clout when articulated by an influential figure like Emerson. His theorizing was important in the effort, even as race based slavery was coming to an end around the world, to invent and more clearly define the concept of a white race. Previous constructions of race had assumed multiple European races, but the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a movement towards constructing whiteness as a singular race (caucasian) with many ethnicities, or towards a conception of an ideal white genetic type (Arian) typically described as Anglo and/or Saxon, and many more or less soiled and imperfect versions of that whiteness (Celtic, Slavic, Jewish, various Mediterranean stock, etc.), as well as examples of miscegenation for the prevention of which new laws would eventually be enacted. Emerson was fond of describing the Saxon race in heroic terms and in his book English Traits he connects an idealized set of physical characteristics to traits of character and potential. Of an imaginary exemplar of the race he boasts: 153

Color Theory

. . . the fair complexion, blue eyes, and open and florid aspect. Hence the love of truth, hence the sensibility, the fine perception, and poetic construction. The fair saxon man, with open front, and honest meaning . . . is not the wood out of which cannibal, or inquisitor, or assassin is made, but he is moulded for law, lawful trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of children, for colleges, churches, charities, and colonies. Emerson in Painter, 2010, 170 As Painter remarks, Emerson “does not explain how Norse assassins turn into loving fathers without losing their racial character of manly brutishness” (2010, 170). Taken in the context of the population displacements required by the Industrial Revolution and the ongoing project of colonization, now accompanied by the United States’ territorial expansion across the continent, these theories and the aesthetic philosophies that undergird them, take on chilling connotations. Manifest Destiny was soon invoked as an allegory of progress—the inevitable and beneficial destiny of humanity under God’s grace is used here as a disguise for theft, invasion, and genocide. Considering the plight of the non-white races, Emerson heartlessly speculated, in his Conduct of Life, on the inevitability of the extinction of various races, and how Nature’s greater good was no doubt served by this process. This despite Emerson’s well known hatred of slavery. Ruminating in his journal on the recent arrival of poor immigrants on American shores he wrote: Too much guano. The German and Irish nations, like the Negro, have a deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried over the Atlantic, & carted over America to ditch & to drudge, to make the land fertile, & corn cheap, & then to lie down prematurely to make a spot of greener grass on the prairie. Painter 2010, 189 And what of the pre-eminent color theorist of this chapter? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took very nearly the same approach, from his assumed position as both a natural scientist and an aesthetic theorist, as Winckelmann. He swiftly and confidently asserts that the color of our skin is linked to our inner nature: That the color of the skin and hair has relation with the differences of character, is beyond question . . . A similar hypothesis may be applied to nations, in which case it might perhaps be observed that certain colors correspond with certain confirmations, which has always been observed of the Negro physiognomy. Goethe 1880, 156 He next moves on to what he calls the “problematical question” of comparing the beauty of the various kinds of humans (Goethe 1880, 156). He will admit that there are those who leave the matter in doubt, but he concludes that “a mind aiming at a satisfactory decision” may reasonably assert “that the white man . . . is the most beautiful” (Goethe 1880, 156). Before moving on to Goethe’s color theory more generally, and his debates with Newtonian thought, we may ponder one other poet of the nineteenth century, Herman Melville, and his magnum opus, Moby Dick, which volume’s very length and restless diversity of content seem themselves to be one manifestation of the sublime. In the chapter “Concerning the Whiteness of the Whale,” he provides us with an iconic meditation on the supernatural depths of a single color: . . . there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. Melville 1995, 219 154

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Melville’s narrator seems to have Winckelmann in mind when he notes the common associations between whiteness and beauty, the good, and truth, “as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls,” and goes on to note that this pre-eminence in white “applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe” (1995, 219). But this simple formula is not enough for the author, and so the speculation on the awful whiteness of the whale: Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark . . . The Albino is as well made as other men—has no substantive deformity—and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Melville 1995, 220–2 These passages, revealing as they are of the racial tinge with which light and dark are always imbued in American culture, as well as the spiritual and moral analogy they hold in nearly all cultures, cling to the ancient significance of color. In opposition to Galileo and Newton, Melville mines our instinct to see in color something innate to the being or substance with which it is joined. This is color as anything but an illusion, and this is color as part of the potency of its object. It is the green, blue, red or yellow medicine of colors in a Navajo sand painting or the incorruptibility of gold in a medieval religious reliquary. Goethe as scientist There is a statue dedicated to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe standing near the lakeshore in Chicago. The plaque tells us that it was placed there by the Germans of Chicago in honor of “The Master Mind of the German People.” And it is not so much a depiction of the man as of his soaring mind; an art deco idealized and semi-nude male figure trimmed with classical drapery and bearing a sharp-eyed hawk upon his arm (see Figure 5.1). It was erected in 1913, just before pride in German identity became less fashionable in the States, and it conveys well the importance of Goethe to German civilization as Germany itself was coming together as a major nation state. The nineteenth century saw this emerging nation coalesce out of numerous minor states and principalities and quickly rival the great powers on the world stage. Along with a group of canonical figures in classical music, philosophy, and science, Goethe’s intellectual contributions were a key ingredient in the formation of a German national identity. Indeed, as we saw above, his tendency to think of the world’s population as divided into distinct categories, such that a “German identity” might be a plausible concept, was sadly in keeping with his times. Today we generally think of Goethe as a poet, although this is understood in the broad sense to include dramatic works in verse as well as fiction—and really a poetic approach to the world in general. And this idea that he approached the world as an artist is often cited when explaining perceived inadequacies in his scientific work. He was an early star on the literary stage with his publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther at the age of twenty-four. Nearly as famous was Faust, his play in verse form, which retells the age old story of an ambitious man trading his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. In Goethe’s telling it is also a meditation on love, both human and divine, as well as a warning about the limits of human knowledge. Besides his literary accomplishments, Goethe exemplified his era’s ideal of the worldly gentleman: well traveled, witty, and profound. He of course showed talent as a painter and philosopher, and he made many important contributions to science. This was a time when science was not so much a degree one might obtain in college, as a pursuit for the sophisticated man of leisure—a person who could put time and financial resources 155

Color Theory

Figure 5.1 The statue to Goethe erected by “the German people of Chicago” testifies to his stature in German culture. Jim Roberts / Dreamstime.com.

into recording observations, purchasing equipment, and carrying out experiments. In this milieu Goethe’s work was a meticulously well observed and unflagging effort carried out over decades. He made many key discoveries and framed important hypotheses in a number of fields, including his theories of morphology in plants and work on comparative anatomy, and was absolutely a key contributor to the science of color theory. Goethe’s philosophy of science was very much informed by (and probably helped form) the German concept of subject and object, discussed above. The object under study is “out there” in the physical world, while our subjective understanding of that object is “in here” within our mind or soul. As Descartes was well aware, the great challenge is understanding how these inner and outer worlds make contact with one another, and in particular how we can truly know anything about that world of objects. Newton grants ultimate reality to the physical objects in the world but makes of our senses an illusion, providing us with experiences not actually present in the world we study. How then do we know anything at all about that world of objects? Goethe’s very German approach is to attribute ultimate reality to the phenomena of the senses; the experience of color is all we can really know for certain about light. But he is not a skeptic: the realness of the phenomena provides us with a wealth of evidence both about the state of affairs out in the world as well as within our souls. And because we seek to observe our own perceptions, as scientists we must acknowledge that an element of subjectivity will always be present. We are observing, after all, that with which we do our observing. This requires an ironic or provisional approach to all scientific endeavors, a point that is very well supported in the philosophy of science to this day. 156

Romanticism and Chromophobia

It also explains his skepticism regarding the instrumentalist approach to science in the tradition of Galileo and Newton. Goethe insisted that observations should be made in the world, with contextual variables fully in play, and not in a black box where everything is done to eliminate color as it is ordinarily experienced by the eye. Goethe’s Farbenlehre A typical paragraph-length entry on Goethe’s color theory, as we might find in an encyclopedia, is likely to briefly frame his debate with Newtonianism and then state that Goethe got the physics wrong, so the victory goes to Newton. Indeed, Goethe did get the physics wrong, but the commonplace conclusion begs the question of whether the crucial issues about color are physical, not to mention whether color theory ought to be equated with color science. The intellectual framework in which we may better understand Goethe’s color theory may be visualized as a tree of concepts in which we see his philosophy of science as standing above and framing all of his scientific works. Dependent on that are his methodology and the close and exhaustive observations which that method requires. From that basis he then produced bodies of scientific work in the various fields mentioned above, including color theory. In color theory, Goethe first addresses physiology—the functioning of the human eye in the detection of color. From there he moves to a physics and then to a chemistry in which he explains the phenomena in ways that failed that test against Newtonian theories. Here we may pause to note that much of Newton’s Opticks was also ultimately shown to be incorrect, but being incorrect is not damning in science. Regardless of our amendments to Newton’s proposed facts, the course on which Newton set color science was simply revolutionary and critical to future progress. Likewise Goethe’s error regarding the physics of light does not invalidate the progress his work made possible. Returning to Goethe we also return to the juncture of color physiology in the intellectual framework which we are laying out. From physiology Goethe moves on to propose enduring and productive theories on certain pathologies of color vision. And finally he grounds a discussion of harmonious color use (aesthetics) on that same physiological basis. So the physiology of color perception is the central piece of his color theory, and this is a field within color science which he virtually inaugurates. Finally, we can weigh all this work both in its own right and also in terms of its impact in the fields of science and in art. An overview of this sort demonstrates clearly that Goethe’s contributions to science are remarkable, his work in color science anticipates a range of breakthroughs in physiology and pathology, and his discussion of color aesthetics based upon laws of perception is indispensable. Probably more important than any of his particular scientific results was Goethe’s grasp of the philosophy of science and of the methodological challenges scientists face. That may be his most significant and lasting work outside of literature, as that understanding of the constructed nature of all knowledge prevails in the philosophy of science today. The great flaw in his work on color arose from personal shortcomings; he indulged in polemical ad-hominem attacks on his opponents, was ungenerous with those who did engage with his physics but offered alternative solutions, and was lacking in a requisite amount of self-criticism. These flaws did much to obscure the importance of his work and mar his reputation in science. In his work on the morphology of plants and on comparative anatomy, Goethe had found that nature is rather more dynamic than fixed, and adaptive to innumerable circumstances. And he felt that a methodology grounded in experience and wary of theory was essential. But the scientist must, eventually, settle on the nearest thing to bedrock in such a state of affairs: the “Ur-phenomena.” This applied equally to his color theory in which color is in a constant state of change and our perceptions of it are always conditioned by circumstance. Goethe laid down that blue and yellow are the Ur-phenomena of color. As phenomena, the Ur-phenomena are something really to be found and experienced in nature—they are no abstraction. But the “Ur” prefix, reflecting the new German fascination with the origins of civilization, implies that there is something about blue and yellow, among the 157

Color Theory

infinite variety and variability of color, that is basic or essential. Looking at an infinite variety of particular cases in nature, say of leaf forms or of a particular leg bone, the scientist must search for the form or forms from which variations spring, that mark out the poles of variability and becoming. Looking to Aristotle’s theory that color arises from the interaction of light and dark, he saw blue as the first color to emerge from the darkness when pierced by the light, and yellow the first color to arise in light when muddied or darkened. For those of us accustomed to believe that red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors, this may well sound like a wild and culturally conditioned leap of faith. But an overview of color theories will show that no set of basic, fundamental, or primary colors can fully escape this view. It really depends on what one decides to hold as constants and what will be the variables in one’s system. If, for instance, the ability to create white from the most limited set of colors is what makes them primary then it is worth knowing that a blue light combined with a yellow one do indeed create white light. The same is not true, however, for a blue and yellow pigment. This distinction between additive mixture by light and subtractive mixture by pigments is one that no one in Goethe’s time had worked out. As Sharpe describes in the Cambridge guide, the Ur-phenomena is not the beginning of Goethe’s methodology but rather the realization or fruition of exhaustively careful, perceptive, and nuanced observations (2002). Goethe begins his Farbenlehre with a litany of observations in situations of obscuration and illumination, of moving from shadow into light and the reverse. These observations must emphasize the observation of the phenomena as we experience it in everyday life. Only once that work is done may the scientist bring the phenomena under general empirical categories. The Ur-phenomena are located at the limits of experience, providing an explanatory context for all other individual cases, and not being susceptible to explanation themselves. All of this is conceptualized within the German notion of subject and object and the Kantian approach referred to above: “the subject in careful evaluation of his perceptual and conceptual organs; the object, his opposite number, at best barely recognizable; the phenomena themselves in the middle, repeated and diversified in experiment” (Sharpe 2002, 228). Fundamental forces of nature, which Goethe saw at work throughout nature’s processes, were those of polar attraction and repulsion. This he saw in magnetism, oxidation and reduction, light and dark, yellow and blue (Magnus 1949). Thus his theorizing is inscribed with dualities: paired opposites whose dynamic interactions produce the world we inhabit. In his color theory these processes can be illustrated by Goethe’s “Color Pyramid”—a triangular color model whose title again reveals a fascination with the earliest civilizations (see Figure 5.2). At the base of the pyramid the two corners are occupied by yellow and blue, and everything else arises from these two points, along two different pathways. The passive resolution of yellow and blue, achieved by simple mixture, is green, and is situated in the middle of the baseline directly between the two Ur-phenomena. The active resolution, and so green’s opposite, is red, situated at the peak of the pyramid. This point is reached by enhancing or intensifying both yellow and blue along the sloping paths that converge upwards along the pyramid’s sides. Yellow transforms into orange and blue into violet, before the two coalesce into what Goethe termed “royal red,” a color that may have been more pinkish or magenta than our current fire engine notion of a primary red. Thus, taken in as a whole, this pyramid has many of the same features as other color wheels and even triangles, which will be discussed below. But the difference is in the conception of the dynamic relations among the colors, and the narrative that is provided making sense of the light and dark, active and passive, warm and cool aspects of color. These are aspects of color as it is received by human observers; color theory as storytelling that has marked potential to inspire color use in art and design, as well as an aid in its interpretation. Because of his emphasis on the eye as the organ of sight, Goethe inspired the field of the physiology of color perception. Appreciating the reality of sensation itself, he began the work of exploring the mechanisms of that sensation. This is in contrast to Newton, who explicitly set aside all aspects of color as it occurs in the eye or mind. Goethe argued that physiological colors are not illusions, mistakes, or “morbid”; they depend on the 158

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Figure 5.2 Goethe’s “Color Pyramid” illustrates his use of the concepts of paired opposites with dynamic interactions, and of Ur-phenomena. Illustration by Aaron Fine.

proper functioning of the healthy eye and allow us to peer into the nature of both the observer and the observed (Goethe 1840, 45–50). His observations along these lines quickly led to several fundamental aspects of color perception. The relative nature of light and dark is one of these that he points to first; that these seeming absolutes are in fact always experienced as more or less dark or light depending on their surroundings or the changes the eye has just experienced. Likewise, other colors “demand” their opposites either in the simultaneous intensification of two opposites when they appear alongside each other, or in the afterglow of one color after another has been perceived—as with this chapter’s epigragh in which the scarlet bodice is replaced in its absence by a sea green apparition (Goethe 1840, 28). That experience—and another in which Goethe, traveling in the snow-covered mountains, witnessed the pink snow colored by the light of the setting sun and the contrastingly green shadows cast by trees—is a rapturous, poetic, and accurate description of great relevance to color scientist and artist alike. From such observations Goethe laid out the relative nature of light and dark and warm and cool colors as well as the dynamics of simultaneous contrast (when two colors, opposite in nature, are seen simultaneously they appear more saturated and thus more intensely opposed) and successive contrast (the sight of one strong color followed by a blank surface causes the eye to see the opposite color as an after-image). These aspects of the dynamic relationships between colors as we perceive them are fundamental to color theory today. From this groundbreaking basis, Goethe goes on to propose a theory of what he calls “physical colors” (1840, 56). This is color as it is in light, intended to compete with Newton’s assertions on the matter. In both cases he believed color to be something real in nature, and simple or homogenous, in opposition to Newton’s colorless void with its complex and heterogeneous light. Light, for Goethe, retained its purity, undergoing transformations into the various colors, rather than filtrations. Thus, red wine in a clear glass does not somehow trap the other colors, filtering out the blues, yellows, and greens and letting only the red through. Rather, it darkens and intensifies the white light, modifying the same substance, as it were, through yellow and orange to become a new color—red. 159

Color Theory

One of the primary sets of experiments Goethe used to justify his color physics involved viewing, through a prism, black and white forms placed adjacent to each other—giving rise to yellow-orange on one boundary between black and white and blue-violet on the opposite boundary. The effect may be more familiar to the reader who has observed the black lines at the bottom of a swimming pool. Seen through the water the black form is edged just as Goethe describes it. Here he believed he saw the light and darkness mingling, through the dispersive properties of the glass, and creating color. In fact, Goethe’s physics do provide a possible explanation of the phenomena he observed, and he considered those physicists who nearly always took Newton’s side as close-minded and stubborn. Some of them did attempt to engage with Goethe about his theories, and to point out to him that his observations did not pose the challenge to Newton’s theory that he supposed they did. But in these cases Goethe was every bit their equal in stubbornness. The next area of color phenomena in which Goethe was a pioneer was in the field of color pathologies, commonly called color blindness. He rightly realized that these “morbid phenomena” provided narrow yet potentially valuable windows into the inner workings of color perception (1840, 45). Though the first recorded observation of color blindness was noted by Dr. Juberville in 1684, it was a century before further discussion of this phenomena occurred. John Dalton, famed for his atomic theory, observed it in himself and other members of his family and provided the first scientific analysis of what was then sometimes termed “Daltonism” (1798). Goethe interpreted color blindness in terms of simultaneous contrast and was the first to envision the deficiency as arising from the absence of a group of color sensations, which he thought were the blue colors, and thus he gives color blindness its first scientific, if mistaken name, “akyanoblepsia.” These first steps soon inspired Arthur Schopenhauer, taking in the significance of Goethe’s color opposites, to articulate that color blindness involves the coupled loss of opposing colors. All the ensuing research confirmed this hypothesis, with red-green blindness being the common form. James Clerk Maxwell would use spinning discs as a means of mixing colors to demonstrate that black, white, yellow, and blue are sufficient, in the eyes of the color-blind person, to match all other colors. And in 1851 George Wilson succeeded in instituting the first regulation prohibiting color-blind persons from taking on certain jobs on railroads, as red and green signals were vital to the safety of train operation. These explorations into color vision pathologies had the effect of confirming Goethe’s theories regarding contrasting colors. If Goethe’s philosophy of science proved to be far sighted, and his work on physiological color and color pathologies proved to be influential, his work on aesthetics may nonetheless be more profound. Profound because it asks us to consider what color theory may be for and questions that its purpose is to attain a more accurate understanding of how color arises. Instead, Goethe is restoring the role of color theory in guiding the use and appreciation of color in art and design. And his poetic insights into color as an indicator of the workings of both the outer and inner worlds heralds the creative exploration of color in and of itself, which will become a principle preoccupation of modern art. As the following chapters will show, color science will prove to be a boon to artists and an even greater boon to the needs of industry, marketing, and communication— where the predictable production and reproduction of exactly matching colors has obvious benefits. But color science is not a substitute for color theory considered more broadly because its utility in creating a particular color is no guide in the choice of that particular color. Goethe may have hoped for an eventual set of laws guiding the artist’s hand, and many succeeding color theorists would believe they were providing just that. But the needs of the artists have proved to be ill served by that kind of constraint. Nonetheless art curricula justly include many of the principles he inaugurated and the very proliferation of color theories provides grist for the mill of anyone looking for inspiration in their use of color. Goethe himself, and the vast majority of color theorists to follow, sought a system for determining what combinations of colors were harmonious, balanced, well proportioned, and so on. Ultimately the reason these systems were never wholly adopted as a means of dictating color use is only partly because there seem to be as 160

Romanticism and Chromophobia

many of them as there are color theorists. It is also because the notion of color harmony is not always suited to the times or the needs of the moment. “The fundamental law of all harmony of colors . . . [is] physiological” (1840, 317) was Goethe’s insightful way of grounding aesthetic color choices in the laws of color perception that he had uncovered. His discovery that the eye “demanded” balance joined well with his appreciation for Aristotle’s focus on proportion and the mean as dictated by the healthy functioning of the organism. The Farbenlehre is a concerted attack on the false doctrine promoted by Galileo and Newton that the realness of some thing is dependent on its existence even when we are not there to see it. In the realm of color such a stance is paradoxically both productive and misguided. In Goethe Contra Newton, Sepper writes that to say that “Goethe is wrong on facts is essentially a flawed perspective since he is arguing about the factuality of facts” (2003). Facts, Goethe would argue, are theory laden. On the topic of color the challenge of how it is we know what we know is even greater, as the eye seeks to examine itself. His most poetic ways of saying this depict the eye as a creature of the sun: The eye may be said to owe its existence to light . . . the eye, in short, is formed with reference to light, to be fit for the action of light; the inner light juxtaposes the outer light. If the eye were not sunny, how could we perceive the light? If God’s own strength lived not in us, how could we delight in divine things? Goethe 1971, 73

Color Use Activity 5.1 Romanticism arose in response to the transformations of industrialization, and in opposition to the mechanistic world view of the scientific revolution. The poet Goethe was also very much a scientist according to the standards of his day, and he articulated a scientific world view which encompassed subjective experience. The following activities re-enact some of his studies of color, and point to the ways this more nuanced philosophy of science might lead to color theory that is of more use to those who create with color. As with previous chapters, if working in a group setting, compare and contrast your work. Romantic color 1 As a believer in science in the mold of Goethe, you assume that color arises out of a communion between an observer and the world, and that observing color requires turning one’s gaze inward as well as outward. Conduct the following experiments: 1. “White and black creating color”—Gaze into the bottom of a swimming pool that has black rectangles on the bottom surface, such as are seen in competitive lap pools. Observe the colors that arise at the boundary of the black bar and the surrounding white or light blue surface. One edge shows bright prismatic hues of blue to violet. The other edge shows blazing red to yellow. Use a camera or sketchbook to document this evidence of black and white, mixing through the aid of the fluctuating liquid medium, creating colors. 2. “Creating color in the eye”—Sit by a window on a cloudless night and allow the moon’s light to strike a slim vase positioned on a white table cloth. Set up a lit candle on the side of the vase opposite the window. Observe the colors of the two shadows—one cast by moonlight and the other cast by candlelight. Alternatively, simply walk around a modern town in the moonlight and observe your own shadow—cast by the moon and cast by the streetlights. The colors of the shadows are, you intuit, the colors your eye demands to see when otherwise presented by the

161

Color Theory

light which casts that shadow. Document these colored shadows and appreciate that you are a being who, when in health, seeks out harmony and therefore seeks to balance what is seen by creating the perfect color to harmonize with it. 3. “Creating color in the eye, redux”—Cause a handsome person with dramatic coloring and clothed in saturated colors to stand against a white wall in a brightly lit room. Enter the room from a dark antechamber and gaze at this person longingly. When the person moves away, keep your eyes fixed where they had been and behold the color negative of their image—a ghost image of the adored and further proof that your innermost self is active in the harmonious creation of color. Romantic color 2 Now create art inspired by these romantically interpreted scientific observations. Though the scene will depict colors in keeping with the world we see, in some way imbue the scene with the overall harmony which you know is essential to our communion with the visible. You might tinge the shadows with rich hues, or you might place a piece of cloth of a contrasting color upon the lap of your sitter’s dress. Romantic color 3 Now turn away from science. Reflect that the sublime and awful power which color suggests to our spirits cannot be measured nor encompassed. Read Melville’s passage on the whiteness of the whale. Read an article about entropy and the gradual cooling of the universe which may be its ultimate destiny as a lifeless vacuum. Then create a painting of ineffable madness in which colors, like actors in a Greek tragedy, combine in love and strife—and then fade into oblivion. Romantic color 4 Cheer up. Regard the quickened flesh of a nude figure. Choose one color for the cool shadows, the hollows, and the crevices. Choose another for the warm and fleshy fullnesses and bountiful curves. These colors again are actors. And one may be protagonist to the other’s antagonism. But they combine to tell the story of this body at rest and in harmonious equipoise.

The evolution of color models Even as Johann Wilhelm van Goethe was producing his color theory, a flock of new color theorists were exploring the possibility of plastically rendering color’s properties in two- and three-dimensional models. Newton’s color wheel, the first to meaningfully arrange colors in a circle, implies that we might find an arrangement of colors in space that organizes color by its properties, with each variable determining a color’s location along a set path. That path might be a circular one or it might be an axis. During this same period the concept of a set of primary colors becomes almost axiomatic to color theory. This idea has ancient roots, including in the Greek collection of four basic colors. But Newton’s selection of seven spectral colors, applying music’s mathematical order to visual art, and Goethe’s idea of the Ur-phenomena, a limited set of phenomena that serves as a foundation for all others, suggest a more systematic ontological scheme for colors. From this 162

Romanticism and Chromophobia

point forward, despite the tendency for each new color theory to revise the number or specifications of that set, the idea of primary colors would be a virtually unassailable reality in most discussions of the nature of color. A parallel may be seen in other areas of nineteenth-century science. Advances in chemistry and physics, linked to the concept of the atom, reinforce the view that a complex reality is built upon simple fundamental units. The effort to arrange the elements into categories according to their properties inspires the effort to design the periodic table. Like the color wheel, the periodic table uses an axis to locate elements according to one or another variable properties. Also like the color wheel, and contrary to what one learns in high school science class, there are competing designs for the periodic table, some of which are three-dimensional. But another parallel is with mapmaking, whose task of displaying a three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface requires the mapmaker to choose among many variables. Each competing projection of the globe preserves some aspects of reality (size of land forms, shape of those forms, greater distortion of some regions than of other regions, etc.) at the expense of others. These parallels can be of use to us when considering the collection of efforts to model color. Part and parcel with the effort to find the perfect color model was the effort to determine a taxonomy of colors, including a hierarchy with primary or basic colors at the root of a chain of color mixtures. The familiar three primaries of red, yellow, and blue were early and frequent candidates as the most essential colors. As early as 1731 the printer and entrepreneur Jacob Christophe Le Blon had created a remarkable three-color printing process using three intaglio plates inked in those colors, sometimes assisted by a fourth black plate (see Figure 5.3). This technically very successful effort to mass-produce full color imagery was more than a century ahead of

Figure 5.3 Jacob Christophe Le Blon created images like this portrait of a girl, demonstrating that full color images could be printed with just three or four plates inked up in different colors many decades before the idea of full color printing caught on in the form of chromolithography. Library of Congress.

163

Color Theory

the heyday of chromolithography and is very similar to the cmyk color printing in widespread use today. The fact that Le Blon’s business venture failed and the technique was not widely adopted is a testament to a peculiar fact of graphic design history. We tend to assume that this history is driven by technology, especially the inventions of paper, movable type, and the personal computer—but culture will play its part, and technologies do not create the revolutions they might in the absence of a demand by consumers. It may simply be that the industrialism and mass markets of the nineteenth century were necessary ingredients for color printing to gain traction. One of the earliest and most influential color models was a pair of color wheels designed by Moses Harris, a British entomologist who was inspired by Newton’s discovery but made enduring adaptations that increased the practical utility of the color wheel (see Figure 5.4). His scientific interest in a color model arose from his need, shared by other practitioners of the natural sciences emerging in this period including ornithology and geology, to accurately record and communicate the colors of natural specimens under study. From this period through the present, color wheels would be presented as an aid to artists in their selection of colors, but the actual use of a color wheel to select and communicate the precise color to be used in an artwork has always been an outlier, and there is of course no evidence that artists who worked before the advent of color models suffered for that lack in any way. Harris’s “System of Colours,” published in approximately 1770, adopted Newton’s wheel form and his placement of the colors around the wheel in the order in which they appear on the spectrum. Though this has

Figure 5.4 Moses Harris created his Natural System of Colours based on the idea of three primary colors, motivated by his interests in printing and in natural history. Library of Congress, ND1280. H3 1700z.

164

Romanticism and Chromophobia

the advantage of allowing colors to blend seamlessly from one to another, they generally are not blended on the color wheel but are compartmentalized instead, and there is nothing in particular that says the most useful arrangement for the artist or scientist is the one they happen to fall into in a rainbow. His division of his system into a more saturated wheel and a more muted or earth-tone wheel indeed suggests that his purposes, dealing with the conditions arising in entomological collections, call for a division of colors first into categories of purity or intensity and second according to location along the spectrum. George Field, a nineteenth-century British chemist and innovator in the creation of lake pigments, would similarly focus on color’s dimension from bright and saturated to muddy and mixed by making secondary colors as a mixture of primaries (the usual notion) and then tertiary colors as a mixture of secondaries (rather than the usual color intermediate between a primary and a secondary) (see Figure 5.5). Harris’s second circle and Field’s increasingly muted colors are attempts to deal with the complexity of color in a way that some models achieve by adding a third dimension to the model. Just as important as his adoption of Newton’s wheel is his decision to ignore two aspects of his system: the selection of seven colors as being somehow basic to color in the way that seven notes are basic to the octave, and the proportions in which the colors appear in the spectrum. Newton’s interest in the wheel as a model for color was partly motivated by the desire to align his theories with musicological concepts, leading to strained efforts to distill the infinitely refrangeable colors into seven, and then to construe the proportions in which

Figure 5.5 George Field’s six-pointed star illustrates the fusion of mysticism and science that typify color theory and color models. Courtesy of The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology.

165

Color Theory

those colors appear with the ratios between one note and the next, measurable for example in the lengths of plucked strings producing harmonious notes. But the analogy was always imprecise, and we now can see its asymmetries as a feature of the complex system we have evolved for perceiving color, perhaps filtered through cultural and linguistic tendencies to note some color differences as significant and discount others. For those who wish to tell one color from the next and precisely describe the color of a beetle’s eye, for instance, these proportions are irrelevant, and so Harris cleanly allotted equal representation to each color in his model. This design decision was so broadly adopted it is easy to miss that it was a decision at all. It is unclear what motivated the decision to appoint three colors as primary since the physiological evidence partially supporting that number would not appear for many decades. It may simply be that the selection of three primary colors was an emergent phenomenon, noticeable in other color systems of the time, and justified perhaps by the experience of printers and others who worked with the mixture and application of color. A new form of color model, and the suggestion of a third dimension in color modeling, was presented at a 1758 lecture in Göttingen by Tobias Mayer, a renowned German astronomer, but only published posthumously in 1775. This new form is the color triangle, and nearly as influential as the color wheel (see Figure 5.6). Like Harris he selected the three primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, and specified vermillion, massicot, and azurite as their best representatives among pigments. He also proposed the colors each be given equal space in the model, but though the colors are arranged in a manner consistent with their order in the rainbow, he based the arrangement on the notion of primary colors as colors which cannot be mixed but which can be mixed to create all other colors. Thus he placed each color at a corner of the triangle in its purest form. He then proposed that fine distinctions being beneath the notice of the human eye, 12 steps from one color to the next should suffice. His steps were given as mathematical proportions whose sum was always 12, so that each color could

Figure 5.6 Tobias Mayer’s color model, and the lectures he gave on it, may be the first to suggest a three-dimensional form to encompass all possible colors. The History Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

166

Romanticism and Chromophobia

be designated precisely by an alpha-numeric tag: r12 sits at one corner, y12 at another, and between them lie a series of 11 ry colors, r6y6 providing a balanced orange in the middle of that side of the triangle. Thus he initially explained that there were effectively ninety-one discernible colors, each with a precise designation in his system. Finally, at the close of his lecture Mayer indicated that each of these colors could be further modified by the addition of up to 5 degrees of black and 5 degrees of white, implying but not illustrating a three-dimensional model resembling an equilateral triangle extruded into space—or a prism. The total number of discernible colors in varying tints and shades in his mathematical color model is therefore 910. In 1801, Thomas Young, an important British physicist and Egyptologist, began to connect physics to physiology, while Goethe is attempting to bring his labors on the Farbenlehre to a conclusion in Germany. His explanation of the eye’s ability to focus at varying distances by changing the curvature of the lens makes him a key founder of the field of physiological optics. He was also responsible for upending Newton’s “corpuscular” (particle) theory in favor of the wave theory of light owing to his simple and elegant demonstration of wave interference. Regarding color vision, he tackled the problem of metamers, the eye’s perception of a single color arising from multiple distinct stimuli. For instance, we may perceive a certain yellow green because our retina is stimulated by a pure light source corresponding to that section of the spectrum between yellow and green, or we might perceive it because one or more light sources corresponding to various other portions of the spectrum combine to create that response in us. Young considered this problem, along with the infinitely variable refrangeability (to use Newton’s term) of color, and the painter’s experience of mixing many colors from just three. Young concluded that there evidently is not a great number of receptor cells in the eye, each able to detect a single minute portion of the spectrum and discern those specific stimuli. Rather there must be a small set which may be stimulated by a broader range of the spectrum, but with sensitivity varying up to a peak at a given point on the spectrum. He settled on proposing that the eye has three such receptor cells clustered in the retina—a hypothesis taken up decades later by Helmholtz. His original set of primaries was red, yellow, and blue but he soon proposed red, green, and violet, indicating a dawning interest in distinguishing color as it mixes in light as opposed to as it mixes in pigments. This trichromatic color theory was founded on a pivot from describing three colors as conveyed to us from objects by light (physics), to describing three color sensations as experienced in the eye. And it was essentially accurate as a description of the three sets of cones which are an accepted part of contemporary color science.

Color theory in the wake of Goethe Goethe’s theories were not wholly lacking in sympathetic reception and two important collaborators soon emerged to extend his work, albeit in directions beyond his control. The artist Phillip Otto Runge was a prominent Romantic painter whose short lifespan limited his overall influence. When he met Goethe the two found an affinity in the way that they thought about color and henceforth carried on a detailed correspondence regarding Runge’s emerging theories. Runge’s color model, a very early and enduring three-dimensional proposal, was described in The Color Sphere, or the Theory of Color Mixture and Affinity with an appended essay on color harmony and combination, published in 1810 (see Figure 5.7). Goethe praises it in his Farbenlehre, published that same year, as an important extension of his own theories, and it does a good job of appeasing both what we observe and what we feel about color. This color sphere, whose pleasing name of “Farbenkugel” is discarded in translation, is ideally designed for simple discussion and contemplation as well as for the application of theories of color balance and harmony. This is owing to its perfect symmetry and clear layout, and its tantalizing suggestion of a color world. A twelve-part color wheel occupies what you might think of as the equator of this world. And twelvefold symmetry accommodates both the notion of three primaries and three secondaries, as well as of colors 167

Color Theory

Figure 5.7 Phillip Otto Runge’s Farbenkugel met with Goethe’s positive support and is essentially the same basic concept as Munsell would later propose. Getty Research Institute.

opposing each other, as green and red do in Goethe’s system. The north and south poles of this world are white and black, creating a third dimension in a manner similar to, but more comprehensively realized than, Mayer’s series of triangles. In between these extremes are every conceivable mixture of the colors as well as white and black. Runge’s early death, Goethe’s controversial nature, and the imminent rise of the Frenchman Chevreul in the world of color theory, would result in the Farbenkugel’s early departure from general discussion. But in 1900 the American Albert Munsell would patent a model very similar to Runge’s and some version of this form continues to underlay the basic color model education of art students today. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer also hit it off with Goethe based on early discussions of color, but over time the two would grow apart as Goethe found the young philosopher’s divergence from his own views unacceptable. Schopenhauer followed Goethe’s lead in focusing on the reality of the phenomenon of color perception. Thus his On Vision and Colors, published in 1815, focused on color physiology, with a full chapter on color vision pathologies, being one of the first to fully consider the implications of color blindness for color theory. 168

Romanticism and Chromophobia

More innovative was his color model, really a simple color sequence, placing the colors in an order determined by physiology and along a line from white to black, rather than in the spectral order as Newton and all the models discussed in this chapter have arranged them. Essentially Schopenhauer paired a consideration of how the retina is stimulated with the Aristotilean (and now Goethean) notion that color exists between white and black. Schopenhauer proposed that full stimulation of the retina provoked the perception of white and, upon cessation of the stimulus, brought about a compensatory perception of black, in the form of a black after-image, as the eye seeks to restore balance. Likewise black is a pronounced under-stimulation of the eye, provoking a white response in the eye. Yellow is a stimulant one step lower than white and stands in the same relationship to violet as white does to black, with a mathematical ratio helping to align this theory with notions of musical harmony. One step below yellow is orange, which is opposed to blue. And finally there is green opposed to red, with this pair standing at the center of the sequence. The full sequence then includes white and black as extreme cases of color, not the absence or presence of it as many describe them after Newton. More remarkable, however, is the resulting sequence between white and black, replacing Newton’s r–o–y–g–b–i–v with y–o–r–g–b–v. Yellow and orange proceed as usual, but one does not normally find green between orange and red, red between green and blue, nor blue between red and violet. Yet the sequence matches well with our physiological experience of color, and like Goethe’s theories it evokes for the user of color the way in which we are inextricably bound up in the creation of color. But Schopenhauer was rather more open than Goethe to the Newtonian view of the universe, though what Goethe felt most betrayed by was Schopenhauer’s acceptance that white could be created by a combination of other colors, as each color adds to an accumulation of stimulus that builds towards full stimulation or white. Though members of the scientific community generally derided Goethe’s color theory, the pursuit of physiological properties of color during the nineteenth century would lead to several dramatic discoveries in color science. Young’s deduction leading to the trichromatic color theory, which we now know to be a consequence of the three sets of cones in our retinas, drew equally upon Newtonian physics and the limitations of our color perception. Similarly, in 1819 the Czech scientist Jan Evangelista Purkyně correctly deduced that our retinas have two separate systems for light perception. These are now described as the rods (sensitive to low light levels but lacking color discernment) and the cones (providing color vision in daylight conditions). Purkyně was a close observer of nature and would frequent fields with blossoming wild flowers at dawn. There he noticed that certain red flowers appeared differently in dusky light than they did in full daylight, and not simply in being more obscure in the darkness along with everything else observed. Rather, the red petals appeared bright against relatively more muted green foliage in the daylight, but they appeared darker and more obscure than the leaves when the sun was down. For this reason red light is used in situations where low light is required and one’s dark adaptation needs to be preserved; for example in cockpits on aircraft the red lights illuminate instruments while not interfering with the pilot’s ability to see out the windows. This synthesis of physics and physiology achieved its most celebrated point with the decades-long work of Eugene Chevreul. Really a chemist, Chevreul began by studying fats and soaps, and would not be the last color theorist to emerge from that field. In 1824 he was hired by the Gobelin tapestry works to solve problems they were having with the quality of their dyes, and he remained there for sixty years, making many important discoveries in the application of color theory to practice. In the coming decades, chemistry would produce many new, brighter, and more permanent pigments, so such a position was natural for a chemist like Chevreul. But what he discovered was that the dyes being used at Gobelin were perfectly satisfactory and that the flaw was in the application of those colors. By juxtaposing complementary colors, as conceived by Goethe, the products were provoking unintended responses literally in the eyes of the consumers. If combined in overly minute and intermixed quantities, the complementary colors would cancel each other out, resulting in a muddy effect, which we now understand as optical mixing. Juxtaposing larger areas of the complements would, on the other hand, make each appear more intensely saturated than it otherwise would, which we now describe as simultaneous contrast. Chevreul also 169

Color Theory

discovered “Chevreul’s illusion” in which two colors identical in hue but of varying intensities appear to have a shimmering line dividing them. The bottom line is that the apparent color of a given thread is dependent on context. For the artist imitating nature, this would have a curious consequence. While effects of light and dark would continue to require close copying, or even exaggeration (given that the light and shadow in a painting will never have the true range seen in a sunlit landscape), if one exactly copied the colors seen around them the painting may take on a different appearance owing to the interaction of colors in the compressed space of the painting. These insights would have a profound effect on impressionism towards the close of the century as well as on several post-impressionist movements in the early decades of the twentieth century. By mid-century Chevreul produced his own color system and color model. Like Runge’s, this model was premised on the three primaries of red, yellow, and blue. Also like Runge, he laid out the colors in their spectral order, and in a symmetrical or balanced arrangement divisible by twelve. But Chevreul proposed for his threedimensional solid a hemisphere rather than a sphere. The color wheel formed the base of the hemisphere, but this circle placed white in the center, black around the perimeter, and the rainbow of colors as a circle stationed midway out between the center and the circumference. The top of the hemisphere was also black, with a grey scale leading down to the white center of the circular base. Thus the levels between the base and the top are occupied by increasingly small, dark, and muted variations of the base. There isn’t an apparent scientific reason to prefer the hemisphere or the sphere, but it aligns with the needs of a printer seeking to reproduce colors. The saturated pigments available, and the white of the paper, form the basis of all their work. The printer may thin the application of pigment and thus reveal more of the white of the paper. Beyond that one can simply mix the colors with each other or with black, and these constraints are well modeled by Chevreul’s color hemisphere. This model also has the neat property of being publishable in a book format, with the color wheel being printed flat on the page, and with an inserted quarter circle flap available for the reader to draw upwards, indicating the full dimensions of the hemisphere (see Figure 5.8).

Figure 5.8 Chevreul proposed a hemispherical color model set upon a chromatic circle laid out with seventy-two tonalities, each 5 degrees apart. “Chevreul’s Hemispherical Color Model” artist unknown,  https://www. colorsystem.com/?page_id=792 accessed July 10, 2017.

170

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Chevreul’s color model was prescient in several ways, marking an important stage between the relatively abstract model outlined by Runge and Munsell’s much more empirical color solid. Chevreul’s system was more than a theoretical ordering system, as he was intimately engaged in color samples being used in woven combinations by the weavers of the Gobelins studios. He even produced one of his chroma circles using dyed wool samples—and he had ambitions to create another out of samples of porcelain. This appreciation for the realities of color experienced in context supported his development of theories of optical mixture and interaction. One final giant astride the new field of color theory in the nineteenth century is James Clark Maxwell. We have until now failed to mention the invention of photography—not so much the camera, which dates back in a sense to Mozi in ancient China, but the use of a camera and photosensitive chemistry to capture light in a durable image. It may be that photography created the necessary context for untangling additive from subtractive color mixing. Until Maxwell, color theorists failed to clarify how colored rays of light mix to form new colors as opposed to how colored pigments mix to create new colors. Maxwell worked out this difference and, drawing on Young’s theory of three color sensitivities, which was being updated and given more experimental proof by Helmholtz, understood that the primary colors of additive color mixing would correspond with the three colors to which we are sensitive—red, green, and blue. At a color theory lecture he gave in 1861 Maxwell demonstrated the creation of the first color photograph (see Figure 5.9). He had a photographer take three black and white pictures of the same subject—a Scottish tartan—each through a filter: red, green, or blue. He then had the three images projected into a superimposed image to produce the full color image. James Clark Maxwell also made extensive use of optical mixing—the kind of mixing done in our eyes when viewing Chevreul’s tapestries containing many small bits of colored yarn next to each other. Maxwell used

Figure 5.9 James Clerk Maxwell’s accomplishments in color science were prodigious, including working out the distinction between additive and subtractive color mixing, revealing that visible light is only one section of the electromagnetic spectrum, and demonstrating the creation of this image, the first color photograph, in 1861. Science & Society Picture Library / Getty Images.

171

Color Theory

spinning tops, with different colors arranged around the surface, eventually placing a medium grey at the center to seek out the colors that are optical complements based on how closely their optical mixture resembled the grey center. These tops became known as Maxwell’s discs despite his not being the first to use them but because he used them to invent the field of colorimetry. Maxwell’s most noted discovery links color and light to cosmological physics as he worked out that the visible spectrum is just one part of a broader spectrum, including x-rays, radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and so on. He demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light. In the context of this electro-magnetic spectrum, Newton’s linkage of red to violet by means of a bending of the spectrum into a circle is revealed to be driven by physiology rather than physics. There is no purple portion of the spectrum, but there is a purple phenomenon in our perception. And color wheels are therefore anthropocentric constructions. Two great German scientists, Hermann von Helmholtz and Ewald Hering, bring nineteenth-century color theory to a close with a fresh intellectual and personal feud over the nature of color, reminiscent of the schism between Newtonian and Goethian camps with which it began. Helmholtz secured the validity of Young’s trichromatic color theory—now called the Young–Helmholtz theory. He also made a startling step in the development of color models by adopting an asymmetrical form in place of the color circle. In a sense Newton’s original color model was also asymmetrical, and both were motivated by the same principle. That is simply that human perception of color is not itself symmetrical. In Newton’s color wheel we see this not in the outline of the wheel but in the pie-wedge subdivisions within it. This is the result of the fact that we do not perceive the smoothly transitioning wavelengths of the spectrum, from long to short, in a smooth manner; the colors clump together in uneven patches. Helmholtz bases his lopsided model on the fact that the perception of purple to magenta is only experienced as a synthesis of red and violet, in simple ratios resulting in a straight line on one side of the model. He also allows for the fact that yellow is brighter than blue by placing the white convergence point within his model off-center and closer to yellow (see Figure 5.10). The decision to use a

Figure 5.10 Helmholtz’s color model may be the first to adopt an asymmetrical form, the result of following empirical evidence rather than a prior commitment to some ideal of color harmony or balance. He advocated the tri-stimulus theory of color vision and used a straight line to describe the portion of the color model outside the visible spectrum (the magenta to purple range) in a move that anticipated the C.I.E. color space. Illustration by Aaron Fine. 172

Romanticism and Chromophobia

symmetrical or an asymmetrical shape in creating color models will be a telling feature of all such models going forward. The asymmetrical decision gains greater accuracy but sacrifices utility and handicaps long cherished notions related to an aesthetics of color harmony. Ewald Hering was a pioneer in the study of how binocular vision works, including depth perception and the coordinated movement of the two eyes. His study of color considered psychological and linguistic evidence as valid in exploring color’s true nature. He advanced the color opponent theory that argued for four primary hues, along with black and white, making up three pairs of opposed colors. These three pairs were red–green, blue–yellow, and black–white. Psychological evidence led him to argue for a concept of primary color as a color which we do not perceive as sharing any part of another color, but rather those other colors must share a part of it, or else be of another primary. For example the yellow primary would be that color that had no hint of green or red in it. Primary green, he argued, is a color that does not appear to be “bluish-yellow.” Red, yellow, white, and black all achieve this same status in his argument. He further cited color words in languages as proof of the theory, noting that these are the colors that we give names of their own. The acrimonious dispute between Helmholtz and Hering continued with their respective camps well after their lifetime. Time, however, may have healed the divide as new discoveries provide support for both theories. The retinas do have three main color sensitivities of red, green, and blue as the Young–Helmholtz theory describes. But the ganglion cells which transmit color sensation to the brain appear to translate the light impressions into three pairs of color opponents, as Hering asserted.

Color use during the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution brought about great strides in color science including breakthroughs in chemistry that allowed for the manufacture of rich new pigments for use in art, print media, design, and fashion. It also brought about dislocations in society that distorted gender roles, the domestic and public spheres, and constructions of race and class. For each disruptive or egalitarian shift in culture there appears to be an equally strong reaction and codification of norms. Those norms, whether they be of a woman’s place in the home or the proper role for colonized peoples, were constructed as traditional—despite their recent and opportunistic generation. Anxieties about the social order and the relationship between ourselves and nature played out in the traditional visual arts as well as areas of craft that were rapidly becoming industries of their own—such as fashion. Among the upper class, the eighteenth century in Britain and France had been a period of extravagant clothing for men as much as for women. Just as the title of the medieval song “Greensleeves” conflates the beloved’s unique attractiveness with her ability to obtain fabric dyed with that particularly expensive color, so too did gentlemen flaunt their wealth through the use of colors of whose cost everyone was well aware. The daily dress of the wealthy lord during the Enlightenment included richly dyed silks and velvets, metallic threads used in embroidery, sequins, and voluminous sleeves, collars, and so on. These were signs equating expensive colors, labor intensive embellishments, and sheer yardage—with status. These styles may readily be contrasted with the severe, but no less indicative of wealth, black and white costume of the Dutch Puritan merchant class depicted in Baroque era portraits. Consider the extreme example of the “Macaroni,” an outlandishly dressed gentleman, whose modes of dress indicated sophisticated absorption of continental styles even as it was widely mocked in popular culture (including in the lyrics of “Yankee Doodle”) (see Figure 5.11). Or later, the title character of Goethe’s famous literary work, The Sorrows of Young Werther, sets off a colorful fashion trend of his own. Described in the book as wearing boots, yellow pants, and a yellow waistcoat, with a blue jacket, this tragic-romantic figure inspired countless imitators across Europe. The adoption of 173

Color Theory

Figure 5.11 The “Macaroni,” seen here in the form of a sort of prodigal son of fashion, was an object of satire and an archetype of a certain style in eighteenth-century fashion which included luxurious materials and opulent colors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1960.

Werther’s distinctive style allowed the young men of the Romantic era to communicate their interior distress, whether authentic or a pose, to their peers. All of these examples of colorful dress for men were of course beyond the means of the bulk of the population working as farmers or laborers. And the age of revolutions (in America and in France, but resonating everywhere) with which the eighteenth century ended, encouraged or even enforced more democratic ideals in clothing, especially for men. More sober colors were accompanied by more practical cuts, sometimes associated with the leisure activities of riding, hunting, and variously walking or ambling, associated with the country gentleman. Women’s dress during the Industrial Revolution was often determined by its level of functionality or practicality as the home, probably on a farm, had been an important center of economic activity producing food and raising money through cottage industries. This labor required durable clothing with an ability to hide dirt, allow for strenuous action, and protect from the elements. Naturally, working-class men required similar features, but the functional appearance of these clothes was seen as appropriate to one’s station during the eighteenth century and would become a virtue in the clothing of men of all stations during the nineteenth century. For women, the relocation of economic activity out of the home and into factories brought about anxieties about the nurturing role of the mother and the near impossibility under industrial conditions of serving that role while also making a living. Where child-rearing and household chores had been integrated into the economic life of the family, women now faced a dilemma upon which their social 174

Romanticism and Chromophobia

class, their femininity, and their success as mothers would be judged. In the case of clothing, this dilemma played out in the desirability of impractical clothing existing in tension with the requirement for practical clothing. In terms of color this meant brighter and more expensive hues were reserved for special occasions and as a marker of higher status, while more muted colors were economical for daily wear and would wear better in the fields or factory. Looking ahead to the extreme end of the spectrum, Queen Victoria’s innovation of the pure white wedding dress would fix the idea of white as a sign of feminine purity and virtue, while doubling down on the concept of the supremely impractical dress; a color so pristine as to be wearable only once. This is not to say that masculine identity was without its own anxieties during the Industrial Revolution. Two major style markers for men underwent a dramatic shift by the mid-nineteenth century. One was facial hair with full beards, mutton chop sideburns and extravagant moustaches becoming nearly universal. The other was the increasing sobriety of dress, described as the “great masculine renunciation,” in which velvets, silks, surface embellishments, patterns, and bright colors were swept away (Takeda et al. 2016). In their place were durable and practical fabrics, cuts emphasizing simplicity and functionality, and a color palette restricted to black, grey, brown, blue, and white. This is of course speaking in the broadest terms. The exceptions of the dandy or fop, in his various manifestations, confirm the rule. And clothes for leisure pursuits and to wear in the home at evening, such as smoking jackets, provided opportunity for anything from a staid stripe or checkered pattern to ornately patterned silks from China. Both the adoption of dramatic facial hair and the renunciation of materials, colors, and forms now deemed feminine are generally understood in terms of a hyper-masculinity formed in response to emasculating forces in the industrializing world. Among these are the threat to upper-class masculine identity perceived in the gradual enfranchisement of women and men of color previously excluded from the mainstream culture of fashion. There is also the shift from labor on the farm to labor in the city, some of it being desk work, which is often cast as a path of decreasing virility. If nothing else, the effect of collective labor in a factory, with each participant reduced to a single cog in a complex machine, may have compared poorly with the more independent life of the farmer, as falsely nostalgic as that portrayal may be. Regardless of cause, the workman’s clothes and the captain of industry’s dark suit share an emphasis on practicality and function, with colors, fabrics, and cuts better suited to the dirty conditions of urban work. In the newly solidifying gender codes of the era then, men were required to be usefully engaged in the world, and to give up the frivolous colorful life of the home, and well-to-do women had their usefulness denied them, and were confined to expressions of impractical femininity. Naturally neither all men nor all women took this lying down, and thus a lady’s donning of woolen grey slacks or a gentleman’s selection of a jewel toned jacket took on political as well as sartorial connotations. The mid-nineteenth century French intellectual Charles Baudelaire, a founding member of the Decadents, was one of the originators of the idea of modernity, a concept which he linked explicitly to fashion in the person of the dandy in his essay “The Painter of Modern Life.” Baudelaire, who was himself known to dress with great distinction, noted that dandyism “is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance” but consists partly in the “pleasure of causing surprise in others, and the proud satisfaction of never showing any oneself ” (Kolocotroni, Goldman, and Taxidou 1998, 108). It is clear from the prominent mention of color in the clothes of Baudelaire and others in his milieu that the use of bright, expensive, and contrasting colors was a key part of the dandy’s toolkit. Those colors also had their political or socially rebellious subtext. Baudelaire attested to this aspect of the dandy, saying “all share the same characteristic of opposition and revolt” (Kolocotroni, Goldman, and Taxidou 1998, 108). It was exactly a rejection of utility, in favor of pleasure and beauty, that the late nineteenth-century cultural figure Oscar Wilde presented to the world through his writings, lectures, and—conspicuously commented 175

Color Theory

upon by friends and enemies alike—his personal style. He spawned a movement of aesthetes, committed to an ethics rooted in aesthetics; a call to rescue our awareness of the good things in life from a myopic focus on economic gain. Wilde deployed furs, gems, and brightly colored silk waistcoats to “transform dandyism into a vehicle for homoerotic presence and a sexualized symbol of the Decadents” (Meyer 1994, 77).

The invention of photography Photography in its infancy is not conventionally discussed as a matter of color as, other than in isolated experiments such as Maxwell’s, photography was dominated by the restraints of black and white until midway through the twentieth century. But of course we have already established that the notion of black and white as something other than color is one of those supposed facts of color theory which this book seeks to cast in doubt. And the ability to capture a facsimile of the visual world—and to draw with light, as the word “photograph” promises—suggests a watershed moment in color theory. But what is photography’s significance? How does it change human culture? Perhaps initially it was a wonder of science and a vindication of the physicist’s particular approach to the inner nature of light and color. It is certainly unique among the visual arts in the scientific authority it wields. But there is also a mystery to photography, as anyone who has worked in a darkroom has felt when dropping the exposed paper into the bath of developer and rocking it back and forth under the red light. The image emerges as if by magic, a ghost moving from the invisible world into the visible. We can picture Daguerre or Fox Talbot or Niepce, and their followers—a new sort of artist technician; even a sort of showman—venturing into this new territory with no possible understanding of what they were unleashing. The images they made were mostly portraits at first— creating and filling an intense craving in the public to document and preserve their existence. Perhaps the images they produced held a pure optimism, a hopeful forward-looking assurance that something of themselves and of their loved ones will live on after them. For us the view is different, full of beauty and wonder, but also tinged with loss. We see a doppelganger of a child, almost breathing on the plate or print, and know she has grown up, aged, and died long ago. Perhaps the most accepted aspect of photography is its relationship with painting, filled with rivalry and imitation. Even as observers were quick to see the death of painting in photography’s startling veracity, early photographers of the “picturesque” school, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, sought to imitate the formal qualities of painting. And photography’s advocates have continued to struggle for admission to the canon of high art that the broad public accords to painting (see Figure 5.12). They composed their images as a painter would, lit them for a modeling of forms as a painter would, and then developed techniques for hand coloring the finished prints, to better imitate the lifelike colors of painting. If photography did not kill painting, it certainly had a revolutionary effect on it. In terms of subject matter, history painting suddenly became a wooden anachronism. And the compositions of painters began to return photography’s compliment by imitating the odd cropping and dynamic angles that seem to come naturally to the camera’s lens. And the painter’s colors may have been altered most of all. For black and white photography made two issues moot in painting. First, it showed that color understood as the rainbow’s hues was not needed in order to show a convincingly real simulation of the visual world. Second, it forever made that kind of verisimilitude secondary to the medium of painting. Many painters continue to attempt to depict what they see, but it is generally taken for granted that the subjective will enter into this equation in degrees from subtle to absolute. As the following chapters will show, photography liberated color from its descriptive role. Henceforth color for its own sake would be a natural aspect of painting and would also dominate our hopes for color theory. 176

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Figure 5.12 Julia Margaret Cameron’s photography, like others of the “picturesque” school, sought to imitate the formal qualities of painting. Art Reserve / Alamy Stock Photo.

Color Use Activity 5.2 Romantic color 5 Return to color theory. Create a color model that describes the physical as well as the moral and spiritual dimensions of color properties. Begin with a shape that speaks to your spiritual intuition—be it a sphere, pyramid, star, or frog. Does the center have some significance? The extreme points? Such significance ought to be reflected in the color stationed there. You may soon find yourself involved in contradictions. You may either overrule them or step back and simplify. If you simplify down to fewer properties you may have more success. As some color models are two-dimensional and avoid value, so you might focus on just warm, cool, and the condition of the soul. Romantic color 6 Go into a garden and observe the flowers throughout the course of dusk, seeking out cases of the Perkinje effect—in which colors (such as the green of a leaf) first appear brighter than those nearby

177

Color Theory

(the deep red bloom) but then drop into dimness in near darkness while those nearby colors assume a new prominence. Create a painting, perhaps simply an abstract pattern, designed to appear differently at the beginning and the end of dusk. Romantic color 7 Consider that various perceivers see color differently. Your two eyes may do so. Color-blind individuals do so more dramatically. And we know that animals perceive different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Research the wavelengths that are seen by, for instance, a bee, dog, or color-blind person. Create a color model for that perceiver. Will there be gaps where we perceive color and they do not? What about where they do see color and we do not? Where does ultraviolet belong on the color wheel? Purchase a pen that uses ultraviolet ink (some are sold as spy pens for children and come with lights in the cap that allow you to see the ink). Use the ink, in combination with other colors, to create art for bees.

Chromolithography and mass visual culture As the nineteenth century progressed, the revolution that had been movable type was greatly accelerated by the creation of steam powered presses and numerous other small and large innovations in producing and reproducing words and images. Photographs were initially used as models for woodcuts and engravings to be placed on the press bed, but methods for directly printing through photographic means were eventually found. Meanwhile Le Blon’s early eighteenth-century development of a method for printing full color images from three primaries finally had its day through the medium of lithography. Lithography, literally printing with stone plates, uses waxy drawing media to treat the stone’s surface through multiple stages so that it repels water. The result is that anything the artist could draw, with all the ease and dexterity with which they may draw upon paper, the printer could now print in very large quantities. Using three stones for the three primary colors, and generally a fourth black stone, resulted in full color images of remarkable lushness. The colorful and whimsically flexible medium of chromolithography had its heyday in the second half of the nineteenth century. It seemed custom made for an age of growing consumerism, with distinctive logos and packages for foodstuffs adding to the emerging concept of brand identity, and any number of printed ephemera, such as the newly developed greeting card, serving as a mass form of art. “Suitable for framing” was a concept that rapidly extended to any place where locomotives could deliver goods from factories (see Figure 5.13). The impact of such new graphically rich ephemera is nicely evoked in The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder, when she describes the attention Laura spends on an image of the Good Shepherd, placing it in a frame of embroidery on thin silver metallic cardboard of her own crafting and giving it to her younger sister Carrie as a Christmas gift. “ ‘Oh, how lovely. How lovely,’ Carrie whispered” (Wilder 1968, 179–82). Even on the frontier and in danger of running out of food, this family are connected (albeit intermittently) to the East coast by railroad, and they participate in a global society mediated by such graphic artifacts. The presence of this color reproduction technology, in a culture prepared to make such avid use of it, is a point in our relationship to color from which there is perhaps no turning back. At least so long as there is

178

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Figure 5.13 The colorful and typographically flexible medium of chromolithography had its heyday in the second half of the nineteenth century. Printed ephemera, such as the newly developed greeting card (exemplified by this image by Louis Prang, a pioneer of the form) served as a mass form of art. Nearly anyone could afford and enjoy these “suitable for framing” images. Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo.

capitalism there will be an intimate relationship between color, and shopping, and our emotional appetites. And together photography and chromolithography are the dawning of a new age in visual culture; a mass media driven by industrial steam presses and distributed by new modes of transportation. This was an age when every kind of image, whether of an ancient fresco or a child’s drawing, whether a sharp impression of the world we see or a surreal pastiche of other worlds, is available to us all—produced and reproduced indefinitely. The impact on visual culture is still being worked out today.

The Crystal Palace and the Grammar of Ornament The 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations—dubbed “The Crystal Palace Exhibition” after the glass-and-iron engineering marvel in which it was housed—provides a locus for innumerable observations about Victorian culture. The building itself, constructed in a matter of months and prefiguring 179

Color Theory

the building prowess and novel construction materials of the twentieth century, introduces an aesthetics of modernism. Literally and figuratively transparent in function, this soaring glass container approached form, material, and color in the stripped down futuristic manner that would become de rigueur, from Eifel’s tower to van der Rowe’s skyscrapers. The clarity and restraint of glass, as a color choice, would come to dominate the skyline of the twentieth century. Within the Palace’s vast hall were tall trees, statues, dinosaurs, and a collection of the world’s raw resources, technological marvels, industrial muscles, and decorative arts, with an emphasis on the spoils of the British Empire (see Figure 5.14). The Palace was relocated, and later destroyed by fire, but the legacy of the Great Exhibition can be seen today in several museums in an area of London alongside Imperial College. Of these, the Victoria and Albert Museum is one of the world’s premier institutions devoted to design and the decorative arts, and it preserves the sense of the empire’s eclectic scope. No one style is on display; rather, the style is that of an encyclopedia, and while the text of the many galleries reads, figuratively, “arts of China, arts of India, arts of Korea,” and so on, the subtext is one of dominion over all of these things. Likewise the empire’s decorative schemes leaned increasingly towards the eclectic as the century wore on. Notwithstanding the overall background of conservative taste, indeed confirming that taste in some carefully balanced manner, the ornament and colors of key buildings, monuments, and fashionable residences became an opportunity to show off Oriental extravagance and antique styles.

Figure 5.14 The so-called Crystal Palace introduces an aesthetics of modernism in architecture, in which the clarity and restraint of glass, as a color choice that alternates between translucency and brilliant reflection, would eventually become the standard. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

180

Romanticism and Chromophobia

An important example of the latter was the Palace of Westminster, generally called the Houses of Parliament. Reconstruction after a fire prompted a contest won by the architect Charles Barry for his Gothic Revival style design. With a heavily ornamented exterior reminiscent of Gothic cathedrals, and a lush interior, there is both indulgence and severity in the design. Jewel tones, stained glass, rich red fabrics, and glittering gold punctuate the building’s deep spaces and dark recesses. More literally encyclopedic of Victorian decorative culture is Owen Jones’s large tome of chromolithographic prints, the Grammar of Ornament, which brought together the diverse decorative patterns of the world’s many cultures (see Figure 5.15). Presented as a resource for the inspiration of creators and consumers of designed objects alike, the book is divided by civilization, including “Savage Tribes,” “Egyptian,” and “Hindoo” designs (Jones 1972). Each section of the Grammar is introduced with a contextualizing essay, and Jones places his own rules and regulations for the use of these designs (he rails against overly-direct copying), and for the best use of color in design, at the front of the book. This preface, titled “General Principles in the Arrangement of Form and Colour, In Architecture and the Decorative Arts, Which are advocated Throughout this Work,” is

Figure 5.15 Owen Jones’s encyclopedic Grammar of Ornament typifies the Victorian passion for elaborate ornamentation and bold color combinations derived from far flung corners of the empire. Florilegius / Alamy Stock Photo.

181

Color Theory

more or less conventional in its approach to color. Color for Jones is secondary to design and used in order to define forms, delineate transitions in the pattern, and emphasize volumetric elements. Owen Jones’s prescriptions for color use reveal that he was well aware of the progress of color theory, particularly Chevreul’s work on simultaneous contrast. This broad acceptance of such color theories, rooted in the perception of color, is an important development in the mainstreaming of Goethe’s physiological approach. He also cites the theories of Field, whose notion of tertiary colors as mixtures of secondaries (and thus producing muted primaries) is particularly idiosyncratic. In fact it seems likely that Jones borrowed the form of his title from Field’s Grammar of Colour, though such a phrasing was not unusual. Jones’s principal use of Field’s theories, however, was to adopt his numerical calculations for color harmony, allied with musical theory. Each primary, secondary, and tertiary color was given a numerical value by which to calculate its weight in a balanced color palette. These numbers reveal a pronounced asymmetry in the color system, as they progress (for instance) from three for yellow, five for red, and eight for blue, suggesting more a spiral than a circle; a spiral in keeping with musical octaves, which return to the note C with every octave, but not an identical C, rather one which has been translated upwards or downwards. The realities of color application in a design mean that this delicately refined system amounts to suggestions to be modified in the coloring-in of some preset form. Finally, we must acknowledge the bottom line: Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament is a monument to Victorian culture, with its love of exorbitant complexity, its embrace of the latest color printing technology, and its self-assured appropriation of global cultural resources. Color use in painting: Romanticism and other alternatives to the academy If Romanticism was a search for meaning in the wake of the Enlightenment and a critique of its grounding of knowledge in a rational and mechanistic world view, then that meaning was found both in new subjects and new forms of literature and art. Those subjects often included the awesome natural world around us, with human interference either absent or diminished and overpowered. Alternatively, creative attention was placed on themes from the medieval period or before—taking in the lives of the saints or the gods and heroes of lost civilizations. These topics could not be painted or lyricized in the same manner as the academies and conventional taste would have them, lest the search for new meanings be a hollow diversion. Rather, new ways of seeing the world and depicting it were developed in order to offer an alternate paradigm to the Newtonian world view. In color, Romanticists found the means to achieve new forms in which to cast the world, often with the aid of advances in chemistry and the science of color perception. Color would also transcend the role of form, to become a subject in itself. The natural world proved to be a limitless arena for color play, for the direct expression of mood, spiritual reflection, and raw emotive power. Nineteenth-century artists in every corner of the Western world turned to the vistas of their various notions of a heartland—landscapes at once remote and desolate and yet containing the history, spirit, and future promise of the nation in varying proportions. These emotional registers were achieved through the depiction of vast spaces, the drama of light and dark, and through luminously glowing veils of color. We may choose as examples the work of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich in the century’s opening years and that of Frederic Edwin Church in the century’s second half. Friedrich’s evocation of Northern European spirit relies on depictions of barren frozen landscapes, ancient ruins, smoky forests, and moonlit vistas. The painting style is crisply controlled, with clean draftsmanship and little sign of the artist’s hand. The emotional restraint of this paint handling reinforces the severity of the scenes he depicts while focusing attention on the emotional impact of composition and supremely subtle veils of color. His Abbey in an Oak Forest (1810) makes the contemplation of death, and of that which is deathless, an explicit subject (see Figure 5.16). While monks carrying a coffin past an open grave provide confirmation of this topic, 182

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Figure 5.16 In images such as the Abbey in an Oak Forest, Caspar David Friedrich uses restrained paint handling while focusing attention on the emotional impact of composition and supremely subtle veils of color. DEA PICTURE LIBRARY / Getty Images.

they are obscured in the dark bottom half of the painting so that the viewer first takes in the solemn spectacle of the ancient ruined church and rugged oak trees. Those trees evoke a spiritual core that predates the Christianization of Germany; and color and light grimly express the reality that human lives and human works will pass into the mists of time but sublime nature was here before us and will remain when we are gone. Frederic Church was a leading light of the Hudson River School, the first art movement in the United States to gain international recognition. His nationalist spirit was authenticated by his decision not to travel to Europe to perfect his studies, as most American artists did. Two paintings serve up a contrast, perhaps a contradiction, in the spirit of the age. On the one hand was the emotional or spiritual world which words could not describe but of which color could stir some recognition in our souls. On the other hand, faith in scientific progress, and in the potential for technical innovation to achieve great things, grew apace. Church was inspired by the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt to travel to South America record the Americas in ways that married creative means with scientific inquiry. His image of Mount Cotopaxi erupting is indeed informed by a great deal of scientific knowledge about the biology and geology of the region, but it is first and foremost an exercise in employing color to inspire awe tinged with dread. We are confronted with molten rivers of red and orange, flowing across both sky and earth, with a cold contrasting blue in the sky and the hazy mist hanging over a chasm in the foreground. The burning lights of mountain and sun seem to line the forest and rocky cliff sides in gold foil. This powerful and dramatic scene, it is noted, was made during the bloodiest war in U.S. history, threatening to rip the nation asunder in the manner of a catastrophic event (see Figure 5.17). Church’s earlier painting, and the one which brought him fame as well as fortune, was his 1859 tour-deforce Heart of the Andes (see Figure 5.18). This painting, roughly five feet by ten feet, was presented in much 183

Color Theory

Figures 5.17 and 5.18 Frederic Church’s paintings contained the contradictions of his age. On the one hand, Mount Cotopaxi evokes the emotional or spiritual world which words could not describe but of which color could stir some recognition in our souls. Heart of the Andes, on the other hand, reveals a faith in scientific progress and in the potential for technical innovation to achieve great things. Detroit Institute of Arts. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, Gibbs-Williams Fund, Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Fund, Merrill Fund, Beatrice W. Rogers Fund, and Richard A. Manoogian Fund. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Margaret E. Dows, 1909.

184

Romanticism and Chromophobia

the same manner as popular panoramas, as though depicting exactly what one would see through a window. And in that scene, meticulous care was taken to depict plant life, geology, ecological zones, and so on exactly as scientific study had found them to be. Color here was to be reserved for such descriptive purposes, with the caveat that it might also, when joined with the depiction of space and luminous sky, convey the grandeur and vast resources of a continent, or even a hemisphere. In all these examples of nineteenth-century painting, the ever-growing stockpile of high quality pigments in new and richer hues can be seen to jump off the canvas, challenging the assumption that in painting, design is ascendant over color. At times these new approaches to color would manifest as an interest in recording the brilliant spectacle of a landscape experienced en plein air, as is the case with Constable; at others, we see color approached as a topic in itself, a powerful emotive force in the hands of the painter, as we see in the works of Turner. John Constable’s numerous landscapes of the English countryside, for which he became famous, were often too large to have been conveniently painted on site. As was common practice until then, and as artists like Church would do decades later, Constable worked in the studio from sketches and studies done from life, including his instructively comprehensive cloud studies, to construct ideal landscapes that appear with all the force of direct experience. Constable’s paintings, such as his famous The Hay Wain of 1821, rises above the norm with the glittering activity of the brush, mimicking the agitated quality of light reflecting off of myriad surfaces on a blustery day (see Figure 5.19). Color and light in these works are more akin to the work of the impressionists, whose efforts would indeed be painted on easel-sized canvases directly from nature, than they are to the idealized grandeur of Friederich or Church.

Figure 5.19 Constable’s The Hay Wain employs the glittering activity of the brush, mimicking the agitated quality of light reflecting off myriad surfaces on a blustery day. Ian Dagnall / Alamy Stock Photo.

185

Color Theory

If Constable’s work foreshadowed that of the impressionists, then J. M. W. Turner provides an even more prescient glimpse of the abstract expressionist preoccupation with color for its own sake, as well as with expressive mark-making. Turner’s subjects and themes often overlap with the German Friederich. These include seascapes, the sublime spectacle of nature, and ships rendered in black or white, evoking the spirit’s journey between worlds. This latter may be seen in the ghostly white titular vessel in The Fighting Temeraire (1839) or the hint that white and black are, in and of themselves, awful powers that we can see in Peace, Burial at Sea (1842) (see Figure 5.20). But for all the similarity in thematic content, Turner’s handling of the medium could not be more unlike Friederich’s. For Turner, turbulent waters and stormy skies were not only worthwhile subject matter, but also convenient opportunities to push the depiction of recognizable imagery almost to the breaking point. Often, as in The Slave Ship (or Slavers throwing overboard the dead and dying—typhoon coming on) of 1840, Turner’s canvasses were first and foremost spectacular exhibits of the artist’s passionate meditation on a given theme in pure visual means that transcend ordinary language. As water, clouds, rain, and wind might interact in countless ways their objective form is virtually boundless. That open-endedness provided the artist with license to break new ground in his approach to color. Indeed, Turner may be the first fine artist in the Western tradition to take color as a subject in itself, worthy of contemplation alongside any other divine or

Figure 5.20 J. M. W. Turner depicts the sublime spectacle of nature, and ships rendered in black or white, evoking the spirit’s journey between worlds in Peace—Burial at Sea. DEA PICTURE LIBRARY / Getty Images. 186

Romanticism and Chromophobia

sublime powers. This elevation of color, and Turner’s deep involvement in the literature of color theory, is evident in his tour de force painting of 1843, Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) The Morning After the Deluge—Moses Writing the Book of Genesis (see Figure 5.21). Here the artist has absorbed Goethe’s dynamic, even narrative conception of color. Light and dark take on their roles as forces from which God created the universe and the colors that spring forth appear as characters in a story caught up in a drama of conflict and resolution. The attention Turner gave to color and its potential for personal expression was idiosyncratic in its timing and degree, but it conforms with the overall trend in Romanticist painting as well as works by later artists who built upon the legacy of Romanticism. In some sense, much previous art had implicitly acknowledged the emotive potential of color in the restrictions they used to contain it. Plato had warned that poetry and the theatre had the power to persuade us on an emotional basis against the judgment we might otherwise make rationally. The centuries-old pre-eminence of disegno over colore was clearly aligned with the dichotomy of reason as against emotion. Thus when Romanticists championed the access of creative genius to higher truths, and the passionate emotions above cold calculations, it was only reasonable that they give license to the use of color as a direct indicator, and catalyst, for emotion.

Figure 5.21 Turner may be the first fine artist in the Western tradition to take color as a subject in itself, worthy of contemplation alongside any other divine or sublime powers, as may be seen in Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) The Morning After the Deluge— Moses Writing the Book of Genesis. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.

187

Color Theory

Figure 5.22 Colors clearly evocative of blood, fire, and the imminent demise of fragile beauty are used by Eugene Delacroix in his Death of Sardanapalus. Leemage / Getty Images.

Eugene Delacroix, a French Romanticist painter who was praised by Baudelaire, employed shocking subject matter and transgressive use of color and exuberant brushwork. His Death of Sardanapalus depicts a veritable orgy of death, with the king lounging at the center of destruction (see Figure 5.22). He appears to have ordered the murder of all the members of his harem, and the burning of his palace, so that his enemies cannot possess them. The scene is dominated by a river of red flowing diagonally across the painting and contrasted by smoky backgrounds, creamy white bodies, and glints of gold. The colors are clearly evocative of blood, fire, and the imminent demise of fragile beauty. Delacroix, like many other artists of the time, was keenly interested in Chevreul’s observations of color interactions and sought to use their seductive power to overwhelm viewers’ misgivings about the evils they contemplated or the unrestrained appeal to sensual responses. By the late nineteenth century, as impressionism was upsetting the art establishment in Paris, England’s Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood sought a reform rooted in more ancient values. Their embrace of incredible detail, rich symbolism, and visual delight took medieval craftsmanship and spiritual power as its inspiration. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a key member of the group, whose paintings sought out intense color effects, as in his 1870 painting Beata Beatrix (see Figure 5.23). In this painting, meditating on his deceased wife, spiritual transfiguration is made visible both through the color symbolism of a red dove and through the sensory impact of color on the viewer. Dante Rossetti’s sister, Christina Rossetti, herself an important poet 188

Romanticism and Chromophobia

Figure 5.23 Dante Gabriel Rossetti sought out intense color effects for his painting Beata Beatrix in which a spiritual transfiguration is made visible both through the color symbolism of a red dove and through the sensory impact of color on the viewer. World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo.

of the period, makes a direct assertion in verse of the medieval view that color is real in this world and a part of the potency of the objects and contexts in which we find it. Her sweetly childlike poem Color begins: What is pink? a rose is pink By a fountain’s brink. What is red? a poppy’s red In its barley bed. Rossetti and Rossetti 1977, 432 But for all their appeal to ancient wisdom and untutored intuition, the Pre-Raphaelites’ use of color also incorporated cutting-edge technology, as members of the Brotherhood sought out the latest lake pigments created by the color theorist George Field through a new chemical process. Furthermore, they were among the many artists who sought to combine colors in ways that maximized their effects on the viewer, guided by Chevreul’s observations on simultaneous contrast and optical mixing.

189

Color Theory

Conclusion The nineteenth century was the apex of color theory as a discipline of its own, making great theoretical and pragmatic progress and playing a central role in discussions ranging from physics to race to beauty. Color theories proliferated, each with its own set of primaries, its multidimensional model, and its reconciliation between empirical evidence and a priori notions of symmetry. For all the overt scientific rejection of Goethe’s Farbenlehre, his emphasis on the phenomenon of sight proved to be central to the application of color theory as well as much of the ensuing scientific progress on the physiological aspects of color perception. But that emphasis was equally in tune with the Romantic and German preoccupation with the linkages between our inner psychological or spiritual world and an outer world imbued with sublime power. In the poetic imagination of the age, contemplation of color was capable of bringing about a communion between those worlds. As scientists gradually discovered ways of considering the experience of color for its own sake, some artists overturned the disegno and colore hierarchy and embraced color for its uniquely expressive properties. None of these developments can be separated from the larger historical context of the Industrial Revolution, the abolition of slavery, and sexual politics. Understood as a transformation of society, the Industrial Revolution saw the use of color as a code reinforcing or disrupting ideas about gender, race, and class. And as we will continue to see in Chapter 6, the advancement of color theory proved to be at least as beneficial to the purveyors of new products of mass media as it was to artists and designers understood more traditionally. References Dalton, J., 1798. Extraordinary Facts Relating to the Vision of Colours: With Observations. n.p.p.: n.p. Ferber, M., 2010. Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Glen, H., 1983. Vision and Disenchantment: Blake’s Songs and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Goethe, J. W. von, 1840. Theory of Colours. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Goethe, J. W. von, 1971. Goethe’s Color Theory, American ed. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Goethe, J. W. von, 2016. The Essential Goethe. Edited by M. Bell. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jones, O., 1972. The Grammar of Ornament. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Kant, I., 1912. Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. n.p.p.: Open Court Publishing Company. Kolocotroni, V., J. Goldman and O. Taxidou, 1998. Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Magnus, R., 1949. Goethe as a Scientist, Life of Science Library 12. New York: H. Schuman. Melville, H., 1995. Moby Dick, or, The Whale. Könemann, Hungary : Köln. Meyer, M., 1994. The Politics and Poetics of Camp. London and New York: Routledge. Nicolson, M. H., 1963. Newton Demands the Muse: Newtons̓ Opticks and the Eighteenth Century Poets, History of Ideas Series. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. Orel, H., 1973. English Romantic poets and the Enlightenment: Nine Essays on a Literary Relationship, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth century, vol. 103. Banbury, UK: Voltaire Foundation. Painter, N. I., 2010. The History of White People, 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton. Rossetti, C. G. and W. M. Rossetti, 1977, The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions. Schopenhauer, A., 1994. On Vision and Colors: An Essay. Edited by D. E. Cartwright. Providence, RI: Berg. Sharpe, L. (ed.), 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Goethe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Takeda, S. S., K. D. Spilker, and C. M. Esguerra, 2016. Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715–2015. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Wilder, L. I., 1968. The Long Winter. New York: Harper & Row. Winckelmann, J. J., 1880. The History of Ancient Art. Boston: J. R. Osgood. 190

191

CHAPTER 6 THE SCIENCE OF THE INVISIBLE: COLOR CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS AND SPIRITUAL COLOR

On an anvil it appeared highly malleable, and in the dark its luminosity was very marked. Stubbornly refusing to grow cool, it soon had the college in a state of real excitement; and when upon heating before the spectroscope it displayed shining bands unlike any known colours of the normal spectrum there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the unknown. H. P. Lovecraft, The Colour From Out of Space The zeitgeist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is difficult to summarize, in that the conditions of industrialization both incentivized conformity with the needs of industry and inspired ongoing Romantic refusals of those societal changes. It is easy to be misled by the term Industrial Revolution to suppose that the key events are simply technological. But, as was discussed in Chapter 5, the revolution in question was a reordering of society which disrupted ways of life, dislocated communities, and impacted on the home, religion, and every other aspect of life. The link might be made simply by observing that technological requirements and economic interests were the force bringing about these realignments, as if one were to introduce a magnet into a pile of iron filings. In the interest of efficiency and profit, an increasing move towards standardization, reproduceability, and precision in communication was felt in all areas of endeavor where profit was a possibility. Color theory was certainly such an area, and furthermore the interests of science overlapped with industry significantly here as naturalists sought to accurately describe the colors of the minerals, flora, and fauna under their study. Governments and bureaucracies also had reason to strive towards reliable methods of measurement and consistency in terminology with national bureaus of standards seeking to bring order to color. But at the same time, and occasionally in confused conjunction with these trends, expressions of interest abounded in spiritual truths as revealed by ancient cultures, preserved in “the East,” and as newly revealed by various self-appointed sages. H. P. Lovecraft’s blend of science fiction and horror, as seen in this chapter’s epigraph, captures some sliver of this ambivalence. There is an appreciation bordering on awe at the insights such scientific instruments as the spectroscope may allow into the otherwise invisible properties of the world. But there is also an insistence that those probings into the unknown are merely a hint of a world far more extensive and powerful than objective science can possibly describe. And in this, one of his best loved short stories, Lovecraft chooses to describe a malign alien presence in terms of color—a color “almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all.” This sensation that is not a color as anyone has ever known it must nonetheless be described that way for want of any other vocabulary. Here we have what are signature traits of color as it had come to be spoken of in the Western world: as a challenge for objective description, as an emotional and irrational threat, and as a stand-in for all that is ineffable. The turn of the century would indeed produce programs for measuring, standardizing, and discussing color while also witnessing numerous efforts to preserve a certain spiritual realm, inaccessible to material science, but into which color might be an avenue or means of communication. 193

Color Theory

Theosophy was one of the more widely known movements seeking out this sort of deeper wisdom, but many writings not obviously by or for any particular community of seekers would casually discuss such things as the human aura, chromotherapy, inner-sight and other color related but non-empirical concepts (Ashcraft and Gallagher 2006). Importantly, both color science and color mysticism borrowed the rhetoric of the other camp, with empirical treatises being embellished by grand statements about the benefits of harmoniously colored surroundings and the possibility of a new era of human fulfillment, while esoteric treatises insisted on the objective truth of their findings. This new spiritualism was often termed “spiritual science” and argued that while the focus of study was turned inward towards the invisible rather than out towards the physical world, the methods for contemplating the invisible were just as rigorous as those of ordinary science. The upshot was that by 1900 many extremely divergent activities—lectures, exercises, and writings—may be called “color theory” though they have almost nothing other than that topic in common. In the parlance of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2012), we are again speaking of two completely separate paradigms, admitting utterly incompatible axioms, basic questions, standards of evidence, and potential answers. In standard texts on color theory widely available today, the difficulty of covering these incompatible worlds of color theorizing has generally been handled by the expedient of ignoring the work of such spiritual writers as Rudolf Steiner and Claude Bragdon. While narrowing one’s focus is necessary to any discussion of a diverse topic like color, we would argue that this approach has been taken without the notice due to such an approach, and results in occlusions which become visible by the inconsistencies that appear in the subsequent narrative. How, for instance, to speak accurately of Kandinsky’s discussion of color (see Chapter 7) without acknowledging the very sources he cites in his classic text Concerning the Spiritual In Art? Or how, then, might we make sense of color wheels, discussed today in virtually every art classroom from early childhood to undergraduate school, that display three equally spaced primary and three equally spaced secondary colors in defiance of the very color science they claim to express? Furthermore, where judgment is to be made, as to the relative merits of a more empirically objective vs. a more subjective approach to color, the case is not easily decided. The empirical approach led ultimately to the science of colorimetry, which was often developed by committees of scientists who would spend decades perplexed over the difficulties of placing the reality of color. In order to reduce color to that which can be objectively measured, colorimetry is forced to emphasize a physics in which the experience of color is excluded and in which color as such has no real existence. As we will see in Chapter 8, that difficulty was not lost on the scientists themselves and they attended to the problem with relative nuance. But at the end of the day the product of colorimetry are machines used in paint stores that measure electromagnetic radiation—not color. As for the unverifiable claims of spiritual science, these are at least attentive to the experience of color itself, and are part of a reform-minded world view that has seen great success and influence in certain branches of education, art, psychology, therapy, agriculture, and community building.

Color nomenclature for naturalists A distinctive branch of color theory throughout the nineteenth century were the many efforts by naturalists to more precisely describe the colors of their objects of study. These scientists wished to overcome the difficulties of describing a particular brown or grey color in the vague terms of modern speech by having a consistent or standard reference to point to when they specify the color they have observed. Such efforts to standardize color names (nomenclatures) often embodied incipient efforts to group and categorize colors (taxonomies) in much the same manner that species are organized. These taxonomies for naturalists indicate 194

The Science of the Invisible

the beginning of a new way of conceptualizing color and sensory experience in general. They take for granted the possibility of pinning down that which is generally seen as ephemeral. They presuppose that experience may be meaningfully conveyed by the abstraction of language or numbers. And the color taxonomies and measurement standards they lead to may be seen as an effort to tame color and rationalize it by abstracting it from its context in perceptual experience. Though these efforts run in parallel to those pursued by physicists and artists, up until the late nineteenth century these naturalists do not show much evidence that they are familiar with the advances being made in mainstream color theory. The interest in specifying the color of the object of study (whether birds, insects, minerals, or other elements of nature) leads these efforts to be less concerned with the broader context of vision, the illusion that physics makes of the color of objects, and the ways in which color is altered in perception by various sorts of interaction. Wolfgang Goethe’s breadth of scope may be seen as all the more remarkable then, given that his primary scientific interests other than color were also in natural history. The German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner developed a taxonomy of fairly narrow scope for his field of study which was then expanded by the British flower painter Patrick Syme to make it applicable to a much

Figure 6.1 Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, in the expanded Syme’s edition, is the color reference which Charles Darwin took with him on the voyage of the Beagle, illustrating the role of color systemization in the expanding project of natural science. Courtesy of The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology.

195

Color Theory

broader range of scientific subjects (Syme and Werner 1814). Syme’s edition of Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours (1814) then became an extremely influential natural science reference work (see Figure 6.1). William Swainson and John Richardson’s Zoology of the Northern Parts of British America (1831), for instance, notes “In the descriptions, ‘Werner’s Nomenclature, by Syme,’ has been adopted for the standard for the names of the colours, the specimens having been invariably compared with the coloured patterns previous to noting down the hue of the plumage” (Advertisement, para. 2). But Syme’s edition earns a particular place in history because it is the reference on color which Charles Darwin took with him on his famous voyage on the Beagle (Ashworth 2015). Other color taxonomies include the Italian mycologist and botanist Pier Andrea Saccardo’s Chromataxia (1891), which was more limited in range but had the benefit of offering translations into multiple languages, and two efforts by the American ornithologist Robert Ridgway. Robert Ridgway’s earlier work, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists (1886), was focused primarily on the needs of ornithologists and those creating color illustrations of bird species, and in many ways (see Figure 6.2) it was comparable to the work of Werner, Syme, and Saccardo. It is interesting however to note his consideration of the process of color mixing. His color mixture triangles (see Figure 6.3) show primaries being

Figure 6.2 Ridgeway’s Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, seen here, was similar to other works by and for naturalists, but inspired in him a desire to encompass color science more broadly in order to provide a more universally applicable color guide. This would ultimately result in his Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. Courtesy of The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology.

196

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.3 These triangles depicting color mixture, from Ridgeway’s Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, echo the procedure used by Moses Harris, in which muted secondaries, mixed from more saturated primaries, are in turn combined to create even more muted tertiaries. Courtesy of The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology.

combined to create secondaries and then these secondaries being mixed to create tertiaries. This follows the procedure of Moses Harris, whose System of Colour was also motivated by an interest in studying nature. This kind of tertiary—a mixture of secondaries rather than simply a hue on the spectrum between a secondary and a neighboring primary—results in a focus on more subtle muted color mixtures, the kind one is more likely to find in the natural world. It is the difference between a bright reddish orange and a deep brick red. But Ridgway seems to have become aware of the haphazard nature of most such color taxonomies for naturalists, including his own. He became convinced that a much more thorough color reference, grounded in color science, was required in order to truly serve all the natural sciences. He sought to create a comprehensive dictionary of colors and in pursuing this goal he became very well versed in the color science of the times. This effort at comprehensiveness was aided by collaborative discussions with the Smithsonian Institution, which for some period of time proposed to publish the book, though Ridgway eventually found this arrangement, and the constraints on his vision it imposed, were not workable for him (Lewis 2012). It wasn’t until 1912 that he selfpublished his Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, and as the title suggests, the effort at a color taxonomy, a breakdown of color into categories and subcategories, was now fully formed. Ridgway took great care to

197

Color Theory

specify not only the colors he was using but the pigments and pigment manufacturers used in the color samples, reflecting increasing awareness of the fugitive nature of many color products. His knowledge of color theory is evident in his writing but more easily quantified in his citations, which include over twenty color theory resources, about half of which were other color taxonomies (Ridgway 1912, 11–12). Interestingly, he gives very little notice, and negative notice at that, to Albert Munsell’s theories, despite that theorist’s general success in gaining acceptance in both educational and color standards contexts (Ridgway 1912, 17). Much more favorable is his review of Milton Bradley’s texts (both of these theorists are discussed below), and the associated proposals which J. H. Pillsbury advocated (1–2). The Industrial Revolution was also the dawning of the age of mass media, and the ubiquity of chromolithographed imagery is a distinguishing feature of this era. The reproduction of color—the idea that it is not a singular experience but rather one that can be specified, transmitted to far flung locales, and created again— is tremendously important. As we will discuss in the concluding chapter, this changes the power of the color from that of a singular achievement such as we might find in the work of Raphael, to that of omnipresence such as we experience when we recognize that the red of a can of soda is Coca-Cola red. The attitudes and efforts behind these naturalists’ color nomenclatures would turn out to be a necessary precursor to that transformation.

Contending with disciplinary fragmentation Robert Ridgway’s effort to overcome his discipline’s limitations and grapple with diverse perspectives on color is testimony to the fact that over the course of the nineteenth century, color theory, like many other areas of inquiry, had become increasingly fragmented. Even within the world of conventional color science there were deep disagreements over how the eye and brain process color experience. The debate between Hermann von Helmholtz and proponents of the trichromatic, or tristimulus theory, and Ewald Hering and proponents of the opponent process theory bitterly divided the scientific community. One turn-of-the-century color theorist who strove to survey the whole of the varied landscape of color science and present it in a manner useful to artists and designers is Emily Noyes Vanderpoel. Vanderpoel’s work is not often cited with the notable exception of the positive regard in which Robert Ridgway held it, as evidenced both in his bibliography for his Color Standards and Color Nomenclature and his naming of three colors, Vanderpoel’s Blue, Green, and Violet, after her (Lewis 2012, 252). Overcoming the serious career obstacles women faced at the time, Vanderpoel was a noted artist and member of New York society. Her book Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color lives up to its title in not being dogmatic about a particular color theory, nor pretending that we can simply present a set of settled facts about color (Vanderpoel 1903). Instead, she surveys the questions that exist about color and encourages the reader to explore them. Her writing is well informed on the subject of the Helmholtz–Hering debate and she discusses the writing of Christine Ladd Franklin (Vanderpoel 1903, 21–4), another remarkable woman of the times who had published in Mind, Oxford’s distinguished journal on psychology (Franklin 1893). In Mind, Mrs. Franklin proposed a hypothesis regarding the structure of the cells in the optical nerve that, if accurate, would account for the evidence presented by both Helmholtz and Hering (1893). Mrs. Franklin’s work fell into obscurity over time but was cited by some including the American psychologist Mary Whiton Calkins in her text An Introduction to Psychology (1901, 464–70). But Vanderpoel’s Color Problems was not merely well informed, it was also sensitive and creative. She presents the reader with color notations taken from nature and color analysis of a variety of art and design objects by means of grids of colored squares (Vanderpoel 1903). Furthermore she may be the first to publish a color theory text incorporating transparent colored gels, tucked into an envelope 198

The Science of the Invisible

among the book’s end papers. These gels are intended to be placed over certain of the color plates within the text, allowing the reader to experiment with that form of subtractive color mixture. In certain ways, Noyes Vanderpoel would anticipate a trend towards a workshop approach which would be seen in late twentiethcentury color theory, such as in Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color (2006), which emphasized the student’s own sensory exploration over a certain theoretical paradigm or dogmatic set of proclamations on color.

Early childhood education during the Industrial Revolution One realm of public interest where both empirical and spiritual philosophies overlapped throughout the Industrial Revolution was that of early childhood education. This chapter will take Albert Munsell and Rudolf Steiner as convenient and prominent exemplars of the empirical and spiritual approaches, respectively—and both of these men spent considerable time and energy advancing their own versions of educational reform for young children. Indeed, the impact of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century early childhood education reform movements on modern art is far reaching, as was recently demonstrated in the exhibition and catalog produced by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, entitled Century of the Child (Kinchin et al. 2012). While Friedrich Froebel began his Kindergarten movement in the early nineteenth century, and coined the term itself in 1840, the reform movement in early childhood care and education caught on much more widely in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Kinchin et al. 2012, 30). To Kindergarten we can later add Maria Montessori’s and Rudolf Steiner’s educational philosophies, as well as broad cultural interest in these topics and an accompanying industry of instructional children’s games and toys. In general the focus of these movements was on free play and encounters with nature, in contrast to strict rule-following, rote memorization, and efforts to restrain childish behavior (Kinchin et al. 2012, 30). Nonetheless, applications of these theories varied and the needs of industry were sometimes appealed to, with appropriate training in trades worked into some curricula. For example, instruction in drawing was often reduced to the training appropriate to an industrial draftsman, and color education was sometimes aimed at the needs of the textile industry (Kinchin et al. 2012, 30–56). The general notion of the improvement of the individual child, to reach their full potential by gradual and age appropriate stages, could fall anywhere along a spectrum from awakening the sensitive soul to forming a productive worker and consumer. Friedrich Froebel espoused an educational philosophy that emphasized nurturing and empathizing with children’s emotional needs as opposed to disciplining and punishing them for failing to meet adult standards of behavior (Kinchin et al. 2012, 30). Metaphors of flower blooms unfolding prevailed in this conception of child development. Among those emotional needs were the need to play and the desire for creative expression. A prominent feature of the Kindergarten curriculum were the Froebel Gifts—a series of educational toys to be presented to children sequentially as they reached the appropriate stage of development (Kinchin et al. 2012, 33). Probably the most famous of these were the Froebel blocks—simple wooden forms in basic geometric shapes, sized conveniently for young hands. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was given these blocks as a child and attributed an early awareness of spatial relationships to their use (Kinchin et al. 2012, 40). And the blocks are often listed first among the Froebel Gifts more broadly as important precursors of abstract art. But the first Froebel Gift, given to the youngest learners, was a set of colored balls of yarn (Kinchin et al. 2012, 33). Froebel discusses these in terms of acquainting children with the basic laws of space and physics; of mass, shape, color, and elasticity (Wiggin and Smith 1895, 5–8). He speaks of the possibility for such a ball to fly upwards and its inevitable return to the earth (Wiggin and Smith 1895, 23). And he speaks of the ball as having energy in itself in its innate elasticity. Color is discussed generally in terms of how it acquaints the child with surface and form, and what it says about the properties of the object—whether good to eat, ripe, dangerous, 199

Color Theory

and so on (Wiggin and Smith 1895, 18–23). Many of these themes—of flowers, of an awakening conscience, of an awareness of virtue and danger, and of what we have come to call emotional intelligence—can be seen in a poem from The Mottoes and Commentaries of Friedrich Froebel’s Mother Play (Froebel 1895). The text notes that this bit of verse is in the form of a child speaking to the flowers but is intended for the mother and expresses feelings that are unconscious in the child. It opens “Dear flowers, you teach me what is good, and warn me of what is evil” (Froebel 1895, 309) and later gives a theory of the role of color and of the senses more generally: Teach me also your language. Help me to understand what you say in colour, in form, and in the fragrance with which you fill the air. Ah! I know what you are saying. “Love the truth. Avoid the pleasures which bring forth pain.” I know that you wish to exercise all my senses, so that I may learn to recognize and love the good. Froebel 1895, 310–11 Numerous color theorists and artists of both the Romantic and modern movements were preoccupied with children and children’s growth and education. Philipp Otto Runge, Goethe’s protege and developer of the color sphere, discussed in the previous chapter, was also an important German Romantic painter. Two of his paintings are widely reproduced: The Hulsenbeck Children (see Figure 6.4) and Morning, the latter being

Figure 6.4 Phillip Otto Runge’s painting The Hulsenbeck Children is one of his many works that conspicuously reflect upon the child’s world and natural processes of growth and education. PAINTING / Alamy Stock Photo.

200

The Science of the Invisible

frequently discussed as a demonstration of color theory. But both also conspicuously reflect upon the child’s world and natural process of growth. And Johannes Itten, a major figure in the Bauhaus school, and so discussed at length in the following chapter, was a kindergarten teacher before moving on to higher education, and was recruited for, and chiefly in charge of, the basic foundational course which all students took before moving on to more specialized areas of study (Kinchin et al. 2012, 74). This course had no set outcomes and was meant to get students to think creatively, to open themselves up to new ways of seeing the world, and to sensitize them to the properties of the various materials they might work with—all of which is in accord with kindergarten pedagogy. Both Louis Prang and Milton Bradley, whose art supply and children’s toy companies we know today, were also interested in color theory education for children. Louis Prang was perhaps America’s foremost chromolithographer, and his other claim to fame as an early inventor of greeting cards was mentioned in Chapter 5 (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute 2015). He and his future wife Rosa Gerber would develop children’s art supplies and educational packets for teachers that sought to incorporate insights into children’s unique visual experiences (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute 2015). Milton Bradley was a particular advocate of kindergarten education. Many of his products in the toy and game line were intended to educate through play, and he also became preoccupied with color theory and color education for children. Bradley followed the scientific efforts of the time towards systematizing and standardizing both nomenclature and specifications for color. He produced colored papers for sale as educational supplies to be cut and arranged by school children. The colors were carefully dyed to reflect precisely the portion of the spectrum allotted to them (an overstatement of the abilities of chemists both then and now) in order to deliver a set of what was becoming thought of as the standard colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. These colors were as specified by J. H. Pillsbury, who published articles in Science (1893) and Nature (1895) setting forth the precise wavelengths for these proposed colors (6587, 6085, 5793, 5164, 4695, and 4210 Angstroms respectively) (Pillsbury 1895, 390)—and lauding Bradley’s work on producing corresponding materials for children (Pillsbury 1895, 390–1). Foreseeing a new era in color education, Pillsbury wrote, “Hence it is that the introduction of systematic colour work in Kindergarten and primary school has so much of encouragement to those who desire a reformation in the use of terms which describe colour perceptions” (1895, 392). Milton Bradley also published Elementary Color (1895) and Watercolor in the School Room (1900). These basic texts on color theory were up to date and took in the three variables of hue, purity, and lightness or darkness, understood by then to fully describe all surface colors. Though there was a profit motive involved in the promotion of a color education system for which Bradley’s company stood ready to supply the materials, he was a true believer in color education for children and self published some of his materials when his namesake company chose not to. And Bradley was cited in glowing terms not only by Pillsbury (1895, 391–2) but also by the ornithologist Robert Ridgway, who published Color Standards and Color Nomenclature in 1912, a leading color text for naturalists (20 and 42). But while turn-of-the-century color theorists were wont to envision the impact of their theories on the work of creative artists, the education of children was often described in terms of the preparation of a future workforce. The truth is, a painter has little need for a precise taxonomy of color terms. But by the twentieth century, industry trade journals were crying out for better methods of ordering up, producing, and then reproducing the very color a consumer would be inclined to buy in the upcoming season. And they needed such a system to be designed so that their workers could understand it, or workers who arrive in their dye houses would be prepared to implement it. The typical discussion of this need in such journals, and in the prefaces to the period’s books on color theory, decried the general sloppiness of color terminology, as well as the woeful ignorance of basic color theory even among educated members of society. The inventive names of the producers of dyes themselves were very often ridiculed for their unintelligibility and blamed for 201

Color Theory

exacerbating the general state of confusion. And a contrast was very often drawn with the state of nomenclature in music, where specific sounds can readily be recorded on a piece of sheet music, a universally accepted system which enjoyed widespread awareness among the general public. We have Ridgway’s comment about “such nonsensical names as ‘ashes of roses’ and ‘elephant’s breath’ ” (1912, 13). And in a contemporary book entitled The Colorist, J. A. H Hatt asserts, “There is of course a pressing need for an accurate description of a color by mail or telegraph in a simple formula,” and “It is the purpose of the author to arrange for the manufacture of a color wheel and a set of standard Maxwell discs of sufficient accuracy to meet the requirements of commerce” (1913, 78–9). Pillsbury, who so confidently defined the six basic colors and promoted Milton Bradley’s work, envisioned the efficient and profitable outcome of these efforts to standardize color terminology in that same article in Nature: “A firm dealing in large quantities of coloured material desires to order stock in a particular colour which they have not used, and of which they have therefore no samples” (1912, 392). This business will one day, Pillsbury tells us, be able to simply send a note with the precise color as defined by its quantifiable attributes indicated in a few brief characters of text, and the manufacturer, familiar with this same system, will then deliver the requested goods in exactly the correct color. Le Blon’s 3 and 4 color process and the eventual use of such processes as CMYK, suggest that the obsession of 20th century avant garde artists with deducing the basic elements and particularly the basic colors of some universal visual language, up through the middle of the 20th century, had as much to do with the needs of industry and an aesthetics (even a spirituality) rooted in the concept of the machine, than it did with the realities of painting. Though Pillsbury’s system does not seem to have won out in the effort to define this scheme, such a state of affairs is indeed what the turn-of-thecentury and early twentieth-century color theorists achieved. Among the most successful and influential of these systems was that developed by Albert Henry Munsell.

Smuttynose Island and the origins of the Munsell color system At some point between 1892 and 1898, Albert Henry Munsell set up his easel on Smuttynose Island, a small tourist destination off the coast of Maine, and was inspired by the colors he saw to create the most influential of all American color theories (Munsell 1973, 2–3). He was familiar with the Isles of Shoals, being called upon to make reservations for his artist friend Mr. Denman Ross at the grand Oceanic Hotel on nearby Star Island, a handy destination for Bostonians seeking an escape from the city, including a few noted writers and artists (Munsell 1973, 2–3). Munsell would have come to Smuttynose as a member of the educated elite, an artist trained in European traditions and possessing a business-like, scientific penchant for precise measurement. Smuttynose’s raw, barren natural environment offers ample if restrained color lessons to the sensitive observer. The shells underfoot when one first steps off the small craft they have steered into Smuttynose’s natural tidal cove form a universe of color in microscopic form. Then there are the flowers, foliage, moss, and stones alongside which are strewn the worn lumber and rusting chains of human occupation, or the seabirds and butterflies who alight there. We may suppose that artists like Munsell were also drawn there carrying with them a romantic notion of nature as we encounter it at or beyond the frontiers of civilization. And finally the colorful history of the island—from sunken Spanish ships and pirate treasures to a grisly axe murder just a couple of decades earlier—might play a role in the inspiration of the artist. But Mr. Ross and Mr. Munsell had a habit of setting out before dawn to paint, and Munsell twice mentions his paintings of clouds during this period, including one ominously titled Warclouds (Munsell 1973, 2–3). It was the drama of ocean-front weather, and the rich display of a coastal sunrise, that made their impression on Munsell that fateful day. He quickly returned to his studio to paint those cloud colors on a sphere—a form 202

The Science of the Invisible

suggestive of wholeness and balance—and whose rotational potential he frequently mentioned. He set this sphere on an axis like a globe and so began his efforts at creating his own color model (Blaszczyk 2012, 45). A color theory, we have argued throughout this book, ought to account for the way color affects us; the way we may occasionally be struck by it when on a walk in an abstracted frame of mind, as though the color itself were reaching out to us and into us. Something of this sort may lie at the root of Munsell’s vision, but it would soon be obscured by the pragmatic system Munsell would develop. The “color sphere” was fully conceived by 1900 and would then evolve dramatically over time to become the Munsell color space still in use today. What began with an artist’s synthesizing intuition of color as a dynamic balanced force in nature would become a color system wholly integrated with the concerns of industry and mass communication. Albert Munsell was an American artist who studied, practiced, and taught art in a thoroughly academic tradition. His was not the disruptive art of the modernists but rather one thoroughly grounded in both the techniques and values of the European salons. His award winning The Ascension of Elijah, reproduced in Faber Birren’s Munsell: A Grammar of Color, fully demonstrates his commitment to an art that exalts high ideals, participates in traditions of Western culture, and demonstrates mastery of the nuances of painting (1969, 15). Throughout his writings on color theory Munsell asserts a clear aesthetic agenda which was at odds with much of the color use of his times both in avant-garde art and in the emerging mass media; a commitment to color harmony and subtlety of color distinctions that was matched only by his determination to ground his theories in empirical fact. As it would turn out, these two ideals were not fully compatible and Munsell is notable for his pursuit of the empirical even where it conflicted with his cherished aesthetic values. By the time Albert Munsell began work on his color system, mainstream color theory had fully embraced the emphasis on the physiology of the eye which Goethe inaugurated. Chevreul, whose papers Munsell examined, had been the principal amplifier of these avenues of research, tying them so successfully to practical problems (Munsell 1973, 1). In America, Ogden Rood produced an important update of color theory that was influential for color theorists like Munsell and artists like Georges Seurat, whose pointillist method depended on theories of optical mixing discussed by both Chevreul and Rood. Munsell’s diary records a cluster of inspirations for his original conception of a system of color based upon a sphere. One of these are discussions he had with his friend Mr. Ross, who drew a spiral as a way of visualizing color (Munsell 1973, 3–5). Interestingly, Goethe also had a color spiral among his efforts to consider color relationships, and the form would seem to indicate an effort to expand upon the idea of a color circle, potentially pushing it into a third dimension and adding a more dynamic aspect to color models (Goethe 1971, 173). Albert Munsell went about constructing his model in a manner one is tempted to call particularly American, or even New Englander, in its conformity with standardization and good business sense. He went about making no mere color model, but what he aptly termed a “Color System,” which was at once a color model, a color taxonomy, and a color nomenclature. Plenty of others would seek to work with scientific rigor, but few pursued the empirical data above and beyond some greater concept of overall form, as Munsell would. And no one thus far had created a system in which the limitations of current color measurement and color chemistry were taken into account, and in which a place was nonetheless reserved for future advances in color science. Thus it is the case that unlike any work before his, Munsell created a color theory that continues to be in wide use to this day. While the latest edition of the Munsell color system is significantly transformed from its original form, the standards by which it has been changed were largely envisioned by Munsell himself, and are very much in keeping with his methodology. Indeed the most significant of those changes was enacted by him at the end of his life, abandoning the spherical model in favor of a more ungainly form as data dictated. While the aesthetic inspiration for his original color model hearkened back to a Greek notion of order and simplicity of form in all creation, an outlook consistent with the vast majority of color theorists, Munsell was able to set this ideal aside in the name of accuracy. 203

Color Theory

The Munsell color sphere and its successors The basic elements of Munsell’s theory are still taught today, in more or less relaxed fashion, in numerous college-level art courses. Often these basic elements include the three-dimensional and roughly spherical form of the complete color model, those dimensions established in a cylindrical coordinate system (see Figure 6.5). We are presented with a vertical axis for the central grey scale ranging from white at the top to black at the bottom, a perimeter akin to an equator for the hues of the spectrum in addition to purple, and degrees of purity ranging from zero at the central axis and increasing as one moves out from that axis in the direction of the perimeter. Munsell termed these three qualities value, hue, and chroma. Value is sometimes termed key or simply referred to as an achromatic or neutral scale. And chroma is more often called saturation, purity, or intensity—though Munsell chose his term deliberately to help clarify his decision that this quality would increase at a perpendicular angle to the value axis, rather than radiating out in all directions from the center of the sphere. The difference is subtle for the casual user, but crucial for laying out the thousands of carefully stepped color chip samples with which Munsell would fully express his system. This kind of cylindrical coordinate system helps us orient to the clock-face logic of a color circle in a way that the X, Y, and Z axis of a Cartesian coordinate system does not. But the drawback is that the arrows that radiate out from the center, from grey to higher and higher saturations of hues such as yellow or blue, grow further apart as they reach higher saturations. Thus high chroma color samples often fall between the sample chips provided in smaller collections such as the Munsell Color Company provides for student-level exploration. Meanwhile more muted colors are more likely to find a good match in the more densely packed samples in that same set. Munsell occasionally used the analogy of an orange to describe this model, a multi-colored fruit with the sections of the orange allowing one to pull out and consider all of the various tints (a color with white added), shades (adding black), and tones (adding grey) of a given hue (see Figure 6.6). Thus one could imagine the green section of this fruit and picture the inner edge as a grey scale, the outer edge as curving smoothly from

Figure 6.5 Munsell’s color models, which evolved through several iterations, have all been laid out according to a cylindrical coordinate system like this one. Illustration by Aaron Fine.

204

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.6 Munsell used the analogy of an orange-like fruit to explain how one may explore the color sphere in terms of sections for each of five hues. The New Munsell Student Color Set, 3rd ed., 2011, page 10.

white at the top, through light green, to a full rich green at the widest point in the arc, and bending back through dark green to black at the bottom. Inside the boundaries of this D-shaped section of color would lie all the more or less subtle gradations of green that are mixtures of green, white, and black. But we should note that on the other side of the orange, in the section opposite green when viewing the model from above, would be a section of color that is green’s complement. This color complement could also be mixed with green to moderate its chroma and so create a color between “maximal” green and grey. Once that complement exceeds green in visual strength, we would find it no longer resides in the green slice of the fruit but in that slice on the opposite side. But exactly what hue is that complementary color? Many color models in use to this day are based upon a color wheel with three primaries equally spaced and three secondaries at the exact midpoints between them. In that case, green’s complement is red. But Munsell puts a color he calls Red Purple in this spot. He determined his color complements by carefully balancing colors on what are commonly called Maxwell’s discs, though he patented his own device of this type, which may rotate to optically mix colors placed on the surface of the disc in varying proportions. Munsell determined that any two colors of equal chroma that create grey when combined in equal proportions in this way were color complements, and belonged opposite each other on the hue circle. As a result he ended up with a circle of colors that does not have the same spacing between colors as either the spectrum itself (which is very uneven in its spacings of colors as we perceive them) nor the traditional wheel based on three primary colors. Munsell first presented a model with five basic colors: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. These five colors, however, are not quite consistent with the popular notions of what a true color by a given name is. The red, yellow, and purple do seem close to the colors that, for instance, Milton Bradley and Pillsbury hit upon. But the green, and blue especially, are not quite what we think of as “grass green” and “true blue.” This was Munsell’s first step away from convention for the sake of color accuracy. 205

Color Theory

Figure 6.7 The Munsell hue wheel featured five hues (and opposite each, an intermediary hue) whose placement followed empirical evidence of which colors optically mixed to create grey, rather than arranging the conventional, and seemingly culturally determined, notions of what a basic set of colors might be. The New Munsell Student Color Set, 3rd ed., 2011, page 5. These five colors, together with their complements yellow red, green yellow, blue green, purple blue, and red purple make up a ten-hued wheel (see Figure 6.7). This color wheel does not spring readily to the mind’s eye, but it is where the colors fall when arranged according to their optical balance around a grey center point. Here at least Munsell was able to save balance, a key to his aesthetic agenda, along with accuracy. And Munsell made it clear from the start that he agreed with those scientists and captains of industry that we are ill served by the random, confusing, and contradictory set of color terms used in ordinary speech. But in practical terms for educators the obstacle is there nonetheless, to widespread acceptance and comprehension of this innovative new system. Another nod to easy measurement was his initial set of ten basic hues, with decimal values between them (Birren 1969, 18–20). He also used ten steps along the other two axes of measurement with zero and ten being the maximal values of pure black and white, but chroma extending outwards from zero to various limits, depending on the maximal intensity of that hue (Birren 1969, 23–25). With this coordinate system any new colored pigment that might become available in the future would find its home ready and waiting for it in Munsell’s system. And with this capability the notion of a color gamut becomes easier to conceptualize. A color gamut is a range of colors made possible under a given set of constraints. The color gamut of a painter using any set of red, yellow, and blue colors will be more limited than the color gamut which adds a bright green pigment. Any mixture of yellow and blue to create green will be of

206

The Science of the Invisible

lower chroma than the brightest green pigment available. Thus, Munsell realized that in the case of subtractive color mixing using pigments, the notion of primary colors as those from which all others can be mixed is exploded. The highest chroma of any given hue is always a pigment reflecting that frequency more than any others and is never exceeded by a blending of other hues. For this reason, Munsell’s color system does not speak of primary colors at all. The selection of colors for painting or printing, he concluded, was simply a balance based on the practical limits of using more and more pigments. Any new high-chroma pigment will add to your color gamut, but the law of diminishing returns applies. For painters, printers, ceramicists, filmmakers, digital designers, and so on, other factors particular to the media also intrude, such as the need to consider the opacity of their inks or paints, the ways they might interact, the various viewing platforms, their permanence, and so on. The spherical model of color was presented by Munsell in his book A Color Notation in 1905 (16). Soon, however, he found that color could not be made to fit within such a neat and tidy package. Simply put, the various hues each have different degrees of chroma that they may attain, particularly within the limits of the pigments available, and they do not reach their peak saturation at the same value level. Yellow reaches its greatest intensity at a much lighter value than purple does. Therefore the outlines of an accurately defined color model are inevitably asymmetrical. Munsell’s earliest articulation of that asymmetrical model was the “color tree,” envisioning the vertical value scale as the trunk of the tree and horizontal branches jutting out perpendicularly at various heights and at various distances to represent the greatest chroma measurements of each hue (Munsell 1921, 18). Thus the darker purple branch juts out near the base of the tree in one direction, with other hues pointing in their respective directions and at the value height of their greatest saturation, ending with yellow near the top of the tree. The image conveys balance in its own way, and makes the point about an irregular form in an appealing way, but does not serve for doing the kind of detailed work Munsell’s system was intended to do. Thus, the version we see in the edition which was in preparation at his death presents the “color solid” as a revolutionary if misshapen lump that represents color as Munsell had found it to be through twenty years of painstaking measurement and calibration. Still later, under the auspices of the Munsell Color Company, whose existence helped ensure the ongoing relevance of the Munsell color system, the notion of a color space was added to the system (Long 2011). A color space is a conceptualized threedimensional space defined by color coordinates. These spaces have various forms just as the many color wheels and color solids vary, but they allow one to chart all manner of color gamuts within that system. Thus the Munsell color space (see Figure 6.8) provides coordinates to accommodate all visible colors, which is the largest color gamut for humans, as well as all more constrained color gamuts, using more limited light sources or pigments, and so on.

Evolving uses of the Munsell color system An examination of the various editions of the Munsell color system that have been released is instructive regarding the evolution of color models but also provides insight into the true place of these new constructs of color theory. As an artist and educator himself, Munsell clearly aimed to serve the needs of creative individuals and art instructors, and those aspects of his theory are prominent in the first manifestations of his color theory. But as a man of his time his creation is really a manifestation of the Industrial Revolution and a color science more in tune with mass media than with fine art movements then or since. As a taxonomy and nomenclature, Munsell has been adopted in many cases in science, industry, and by the United States Bureau of Standards. And Munsell has been taught, according to the vagaries of educational fashion, in art schools to this day. But no art school or other organization has adopted his aesthetic principles as some sort of set of rules 207

Color Theory

Figure 6.8 Munsell’s color solid was his response to the discovery that color measured empirically is not symmetrical but indeed rather lopsided. With this arrangement Munsell was able to set the parameters for a system that would withstand future additions of new pigments and recalibrations according to better methods of color measurement. The concept of a variably shaped color solid would eventually give way to the notion of a “color space.” The New Munsell Student Color Set, 5th ed., 2017, page 12. for art making. And rare is the painter who truly composes their work based on those principles. There are more opportunities in fields like design and architecture to use such a color system because of the way those disciplines must work in a premeditated fashion. But even here, the actual adoption of his rules of color harmony would be a personal, and fairly idiosyncratic decision. The earliest fully developed system by Munsell was presented in A Color Notation (1905a), which title emphasized that it was a system for recording colors akin to the very familiar system of musical notation. This volume was referred to in Munsell’s other materials as a “teacher’s manual,” and those other materials which accompanied its publication included a pamphlet aimed at teachers (Children’s Studies in Measured Colors), a pamphlet advertising the system generally (Munsell Color System), a pamphlet advertising the art materials and educational aids available under the system (Munsell Color System Crayons, Enamel Cards, Balls, Spheres), and a color-chip sample card for the watercolors available under the system (Water Colors Used in the Munsell Color System) (1905a). Throughout the system, Munsell emphasized the importance of developing refined taste, the discernment of subtle distinctions among muted colors which were to be balanced against each other such that any successful composition in color would be verifiable by spinning similarly proportioned pie sections of those colors on a disc. If the colors optically mix to middle grey then 208

The Science of the Invisible

the colors are well balanced. Otherwise they are not. His system allowed one to know in advance which colors would balance optically because they would also balance mathematically. Thus a red at chroma five would balance an equal quantity of blue green at chroma five, or twice the quantity of blue green at chroma two and a half. In Children’s Studies in Measured Colors, Munsell writes a series of paragraphs as a sort of manifesto of taste and principles of color education with the major points emphasized by italics (1907). These are: “Beginners should avoid Strong Color,” “Quiet Color is the Mark of Good Taste,” “Balance of Color is to be sought,” “Beauty of Color lies in Tempered Relations,” and “The Tuning of Color cannot be left to Personal Whim” (Munsell 1907). These sorts of aesthetic dictates were widely rejected in the many modernist art movements of Munsell’s day. Instead of presenting children with a package of the brightest colors, as Bradley and Pillsbury did, Munsell had his crayons and watercolor sets (originally produced by Wadsworth, Howland & Co.) built around a set of the five basic colors in his system all muted to the chroma level five. He called these the “middle five colors” and each one measures exactly five in value as well as chroma (Munsell 1905a, 21–7). These subtle versions of what Munsell terms red, yellow, green, blue, and purple are curious, in-between colors which don’t have an obvious name in English. One might call them ruddy grey, mustard, sage, slate blue, and dusty magenta, though these vague terms would obviously run counter to Munsell’s system which precisely defines them as R/5/5, Y/5/5, G/5/5, B/5/5, and P/5/5. Here the empirical color system shows its discontinuity with culture and language. When one studies Munsell’s and other empirical color systems one finds there are vast areas of “color space” that defy naming within the terms of everyday language. We have named the colors that seem salient to us, but the world is full of colors that we’ve never bothered to speak of. And large patches of what is objectively and measurably a given hue do not seem to be that color according to common usage. Yellow is the most obvious of these cases, where anything but the lightest and most saturated of that hue’s modifications is unlikely to be called a yellow. The rest are at best what one would call khaki, brown, or green. Interestingly, Munsell’s middle colors would become modish as sophisticated palettes for art deco decorative arts, such as the glazed tile work on the facades of some early twentieth-century buildings. And the salmon, ochre, jade, and peacock hues of flapper dresses and wallpaper of the 1920s and 1930s seem lifted from Munsell’s colors, though we know of no direct influence of one on the other. So Munsell’s scheme of education begins by presenting children with these middle colors and with exercises in recognizing, identifying, and balancing them. The aims of his lesson plans, as stated in the brochure listing his line of color education products, were “To name each color clearly . . . To arrange colors by their qualities . . . To group them so as to produce harmony” (Munsell 1905b, para. 9). The pamphlet begins, however, with a polemic against the bright colors given to children in nearly all lines of children’s art supplies then and today, and he especially condemns the use of spectral colors such as were sold by Milton Bradley: So different are these colored crayons, enamels, and balls from those generally given to children at the outset of their color training that a word of explanation is desirable. Color study suffers from two causes: an error and a defect. The error lies in trying to rival the brilliancy of the spectrum in pigments. The defect appears in the absence of clear names and measures for color. 1. THE ERROR Analine colors, which are both harsh and unreliable, have been much used in schools to imitate the solar spectrum. They represent the maxima of color sensation. Their violent hues fatigue the eye as violent

209

Color Theory

tones fatigue the ear. Nature reveals them only at rare intervals and for a few moments. The spectrum really belongs to an advanced stage of scientific study . . . He [a child] should be given tempered colors in the middle register for his early experiments, both because they save him from harsh and discordant color, and also because he can understand their simple relations and gradually learn to unite their three qualities, hue, value, and chroma, in measured degrees. Munsell 1905b, paras. 1–2 This idea of starting children out with muted colors, and instilling restraint in the use of high chroma colors, is almost entirely lost today. And Munsell is usually introduced in high school or college if at all. The David Hornung Color: A Workshop Approach for Artists and Designers does advocate beginning college-level color theory education with activities focused on muted colors, and these studies are arguably superior at sensitizing the student to both subtle distinctions among colors and the variation along the three different axes of Munsell’s system—the hue, value, and chroma scales (2005). Though Munsell’s original line of color education products have not been available for decades, the Munsell Color Company sells the popular New Munsell Student Color Set which provide sheets for each “section of the orange,” with the correct boxes in place showing the range of values and chromas in that hue. Those boxes are empty and the student is supplied with color chips to be placed in the appropriate spots (see Figure 6.9). The exercise is a bit of a puzzle, both pleasurable and challenging. Many of the chips can be placed rather quickly and then a few will challenge most students with the distinction between, say, a darker green blue and a greyer green blue. Both sensuous and intellectual, this activity can be an affecting moment in the color education of students of any age. After the success of his first iteration of the system, Albert Munsell continued to measure, calibrate, and refine his work. The general scheme of A Color Notation was fully realized but also reformed in the Munsell Color Atlas, a painstakingly measured and calibrated collection of color chips arranged according to the three-dimensional coordinates of hue, value, and chroma (Munsell 1913). He used his own “photometer,” a light-measuring device, to obtain the value score of each chip, spinning discs to calibrate chroma strength around middle grey, and a standard of equal perceptual steps between chips (Munsell 1973, 41–7). In these last two aspects then, the object of study is not so much the paint chip as it is the perceiver’s impression of the chip. This is the dawning of the new science of colorimetry and reveals the coming discussions, even arguments, over what it is that we call color—or where it resides. It was the Color Atlas that solidified the fact that the color sphere was an idealized abstraction, and that color itself was a more lopsided affair. Owing to the various strengths of chroma each color can attain (the strongest red is very much higher in chroma than the strongest of its complement, blue green.) and the value level at which they attain them (high chroma yellow is much lighter in value than high chroma purple), a true representation of the colors and their relationships, which insists upon equal perceptual steps between samples, will be unbalanced. This new more accurate and asymmetrical color system is called the Munsell Color “Solid,” rather than “Sphere.” At the time of his death in 1918, Munsell was working on a revised and updated presentation of his system in coordination with the Strathmore Paper Company, who then published The Grammar of Color in 1920. This lavishly produced and beautifully designed volume solidifies the link between color theory systems based on measurement and standardization and the completely congruent interests of industry. Meanwhile the educational component seen in A Color Notation is now entirely absent, and Munsell’s agenda for aesthetic reform is significantly downplayed. The strict rules about good taste were replaced by a more nuanced discussion of balance and comfort, the role of harsh colors in certain forms of advertisement, and even the

210

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.9 The Munsell Color Company provides sets of color chips and cards for students representing each of the ten standard hues on the hue circle. Boxes marked with “X” on each card indicate the range of color (maximal chroma at each value) for that hue, and students are tasked with assigning the correct chip to each spot. Deciding between a subtle shift in value versus chroma is daunting but the beautifully produced colors and the pleasure of a puzzle balance out the experience. Priya Kambli, photo of Munsell Student Color Set.

strategic use of dissonance in aesthetic schemes. Under a section titled “Balance of Color,” Munsell writes, in rather Aristotelian terms: The sense of comfort is the outcome of balance, while marked unbalance immediately urges a corrective. That this approximate balance is desirable may be shown by reference to our behavior, as to temperatures, quality of smoothness and roughness, degrees of light and dark, proportion of work and rest. One special application of this quality is balance which underlies beautiful color. The use of strongest colors only fatigues the eyes, which is also true of the weakest colors. In a broad way we may say that color balances on middle gray. 1920, 11 This theory of the beauty of color being based on balance is persuasive, at least in cases where “comfort” is the goal. And it has its connection to color science in that balance is a middle grey at which complementary colors will arrive upon mixing. But the theory also has its leap of faith, that balance is something relevant to color at

211

Color Theory

all, in the face of his own evidence that color is not an altogether balanced phenomenon. And the selection of the point of balance, the fulcrum of his system, as the middle point on the achromatic scale has much to recommend it. But so might the point within the color solid which is its center of gravity—wherever that might be. But aside from a page or two on the wisdom of using colors conducive to the eye’s comfort, A Grammar of Color is in essence a tool of the trade for the printing industry, produced by a paper supplier and distributed to their partners in industry, particularly those who might buy their paper. This volume was equal parts color theory text and paper sample book for the use of designers and printers in their efforts to mass produce printed products in the newest distinctive paper lines of the Strathmore Paper Company, and using the myriad ink colors available to the twentieth-century printer. Strathmore had a vested interest in making it easy for printers to know what the effects would be of different colored inks on their various papers, something those printers would otherwise have to discover by trial and error and with the use of costly trial samples. A Grammar of Color supplements the color theory section with a series of “harmonious” samples of color pairs printed on each of the Strathmore papers. These samples were printed five to a page but in the form of tabs that can then be tucked under and over a blank paper of the same color folded over from the opposite direction. This procedure allowed the printer to isolate the chosen color sample from those adjacent to it. In addition, a pocket at the back of the volume contained blank sheets of the color samples, each with a window cut into it for laying over the previous arrangement and thus viewing that color sample against yet another paper surface (see Figures 6.10–6.11). This entire product made an ideal leave-behind or gift to any partner or potential client in the publishing industry—as one copy (in the collection of the Linda Hall Science Library) demonstrates, bearing an affixed label inside the front cover reading: “A Grammar of Color” presented to ARTHUR W. TOWNE with the compliments of Strathmore Paper Company Munsell 1920 The label was clearly printed up in bulk with the area for the recipient’s name left blank and then typewritten in for each case. It is reasonable to suppose that this recipient was the Arthur Towne of Blake, Moffitt, and Towne, a prominent printer on the US West Coast. Such links between color theory and industry can also be seen in trade journals for dye manufacturers. The Color Trade Journal reviewed A Grammar of Color just a few months after its release, lauding its beautiful presentation and noting how the combinations of papers and printing inks enhances the practicality of the volume. Stating that the ordinary businessman and even many printers would be unversed in the underlying color theory, the reviewer says, “This book should be of great value to the advertising and publicity departments of these enterprises, as well as to the printer and designer of such advertising copy” (Matthews 1921, 19). Albert Munsell’s great work had its conscious inspiration in his own creative practice, and in his mind its justification included the aesthetic education of children and ultimately society. But the conditions for its inspiration and its reception were largely framed by the Industrial Revolution. The consequence is that his system, and others like it, are both powerful tools in our world and limited views of what color might be.

212

Figures 6.10 and 6.11 The Strathmore Paper Company’s publication of Munsell’s The Grammar of Color was lavishly produced with die cut colored flaps to allow the printers at whom it was targeted to combine and sample the color interactions of various inks and colored Strathmore papers, underscoring the connection between these kinds of color systems and the needs of industry. Courtesy of The Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology. 213

Color Theory

Colorimetry and color forecasting Up until World War I the textile industry in the US was dependent on reports from the fashion industry in Paris to determine the colors for the upcoming season. The disruption which the war caused in Europe did not greatly affect the US economy and meant US dye houses were left to find other means of deciding on the colors of cotton, wool, hosiery, leather, and other materials they would offer those manufacturers. In addition to this dependence on France for fashion trends, German dye manufacturers were acknowledged to be able to produce better, more consistent colors and at a cheaper cost than those in the US. Thus even if the decision as to which colors to produce was reached, the ability to reliably produce them was in doubt. To fill these needs the Textile Color Card Association (TCCA) was born in 1915; a cooperative enterprise with member representatives from various industries, they formed a new sort of organization which endures to this day. Their method was to draw upon the observations and insights of a committee of industry representatives with an awareness of consumer behavior, and their two goals of color standardization and the forecasting of changing color trends are somewhat in tension. On the one hand, the goal was to create a standard set of textile swatches with agreed names so that “true blue” could be reliably produced and reproduced. On the other hand, in a manifestation of what would come to be called planned obsolescence, they sought to greet each season with the new varieties of colors which customers could be expected to purchase. Working closely with industry leaders and trade journals such as the Color Trade Journal, the TCCA produced and disseminated its first color card of 106 staple colors in 1915 (Rorke 1931, 651). They then created annual color cards which helped manufacturers identify which colors would be in demand in the coming year. These were trumpeted in the pages of the Color Trade Journal in terms that tied these trends to such phenomena as the frugality and patriotism of wartime, the ups and downs of the economy, the impact of cultural interests in exotic locales, and the impact of fashion designers. An oft-quoted source at the TCCA was that of Margaret Hayden Rorke, an actress from Brooklyn and a suffragette. Ms. Rorke was a tireless advocate for the work of the TCCA, and a skilled diplomat in drawing the various competing businesses into a cooperative enterprise. The terms in which the color cards were presented are a kind of interdisciplinary mixture of soft sciences brought to bear on consumer culture. It is a kind of rhetoric we are familiar with today but which was new at the time, and offered an opening for women into discussions on color not otherwise available to them. A “woman’s perspective” was considered valuable in this field and many women would come to find careers as colorists, consulting with manufacturers, working as interior decorators, creating fashion, and writing about these domains in the pages of women’s magazines. The vocabulary of color forecasting was a heady brew of enthusiasm, psychology, and market data analysis—with frequent recourse to the exoticizing of non-Western cultures. Consider these quotes from the journal’s pages: The card is a veritable pageant of color, opened by what can aptly be called a prelude of evening shades, that recall the charming color combinations of a Watteau picture . . . Three new browns bordering on copper and rust tones are aptly named Indian, Gypsy, and Eskimo. Another group of browns show the duller tones with less gold in their making. These are named Arab, Sahara, and Mecca. Two rich mahogany shades are called Cuba and Morro. Matthews 1921, 24 The effort to standardize color across multiple industries immediately lent greater urgency to efforts to measure color for precise specifications. Many columns were written decrying the chaotic nature of color terminology and comparing it to the ease with which music composers specify what sounds they want the musician to produce. The science of colorimetry was born in this context and added spectography to the tools 214

The Science of the Invisible

available (such as mixture on Maxwell’s discs and simple comparison against a known standard) to analyze color samples. Over time these new branches of color theory, including color forecasting, colorimetry, and government color standards, would replace color theorists with committees, professional societies, and government bureaus. Arguably the chief landmark of colorimetry efforts is the 1931 CIE color space, discussed in Chapter 8.

Color Use Activity 6.1 The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw two very divergent trends in color theory, with little or no overlap in their theoretical framework; they were nonetheless equally entertained in the cultural imagination. Advances in color science, color standardization, and color theory systems led to a golden age of color theory which built upon the previous centuries of inquiry to create systems of color and color nomenclature still relevant today. Simultaneously a widespread interest in spiritualism led to discussions of color that embraced clairvoyance, colored auras, and mystical explanations for color phenomena. Classic color theory 1 Turn from theory to the direct evidence of the senses, this time as calibrated by some universal color standard, in depicting natural specimens. For example, having located a collection of rocks, butterflies, or similar objects, start by creating carefully measured and precise line drawings of the objects under study. Then compare the colors of the object to such color nomenclature references as Ridgeway’s Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. Once the correct color is selected, match the color from the reference, doing your best to disregard the accidents of light, shadow, reflection, and so on, which you would experience in viewing the object in nature. Classic color theory 2 Experiment with mixing colored light using flashlights and colored gels. Or, if you can do so, arrange a visit backstage with a theatre lighting technician—you will be able to observe the aesthetic, psychological, and practical implications of the routine facts of additive color mixture. Classic color theory 3 You can also mix color that converges on grey, rather than white or black, by observing spinning discs of color. These “Maxwell’s discs,” so named because he was among the first to use them, were also used (and sold) by Munsell as the basis for his determinations of true compliments, as well as by Faber Birren, who added percentile indicators around the discs’ edges to allow for precise measurement of colors which combined to make grey. These and many other color theorists assert that any color combination that mixes to grey in this way is harmonious, and those which do not approximate grey are not harmonious. You can make your own discs from paper and mount them on spinning tops. Or such things are sometimes sold commercially, occasionally as toys.

215

Color Theory

Compare the color mixtures you get on the discs (partitive color mixture) with mixtures of the same colors as lights (additive mixture) and then again as pigments (subtractive mixture). Classic color theory 4 Purchase the student set of Munsell color chips sold by the Munsell Color Company and assemble the chips on the cards to create your own atlas of the Munsell color system. Some individuals will struggle to discern subtle distinctions of value and saturation and especially distinctions between the two, so it is good to work in a team. Use the set to explore the colors on your street. Try to match every color you can see using the color chips as your standard. Do you notice any limitations of the set? Are there noticeable gaps in the Munsell system? If so, where? Munsell believed that color combinations that balanced on middle grey were harmonious. Use color derived directly from your chips to create a series of simple abstract compositions that do and do not balance on grey and assess for yourself whether or not they are harmonious.

Spiritualism and the occult In many ways the flipside of the same coin to scientific progress, interest in all manner of paranormal experiences and traditions was burgeoning during Albert Munsell’s lifetime. The breakthroughs of science into the world of invisible phenomena, such as magnetism, electromagnetic waves, x-rays, microscopy, and eventually the atom, provided inspiration to those who sought mystic truths. Even as these alternative versions of reality sought to depart from what they saw as an overly materialistic and mechanical world view, they leaned upon the speculative style and popular reception of new theories in the sciences to prop up the legitimacy of their claims about the reality of the supernatural world. As P. M. Heimann points out, the legitimization which spiritualist movements sought was sometimes provided directly by the scientific community, as in the case of The Unseen Universe, published by two Scottish physicians in 1875 (1972). This popular volume drew on cutting edge science of the day to make an argument for the continuity of the soul (Heimann 1972). But Mary Baker Eddy’s appropriation of the term Science (with an insistent capital “S”) for the Christian Science movement which she founded, and her repeated references to recent discoveries in physics, electromagnetism, and so on, is perhaps the most obvious example of this cross-fertilization. Discussing her theory of mind healing in Rudimental Divine Science, she writes: Has not the truth in Christian Science met a response from Prof. S. P. Langley, the young American astronomer? He says that “color is in us” not “in the rose;” and he adds that this is not “any metaphysical subtlety,” but a fact “almost universally accepted, within the last few years, by physicists.” Eddy 1908, 6 Rudolf Steiner would come to speak of a Spiritual Science and was referred to as a “Scientist of the Invisible” (Shepherd 1954). In these instances of rhetorical borrowing between the spiritual and mechanical world views we can see the popular hope of the time for a reconciliation between scientific materialism and spiritual consciousness.

216

The Science of the Invisible

Though spiritualists of this period borrowed from the legitimacy of scientific practice, it is incumbent on us to note the directly contradictory nature of their approach. For “occult” means closed, and esoteric practices are antithetical to the exoteric impulse in science to lay bare its processes and results. Fundamentally, the spiritualist camp was never able to submit its results to independent verification. Many of those who claimed access to these otherwise hidden sources of wisdom gave lectures and published books on such phenomena as working with a medium to communicate with spirits and the dead, the human aura and its colors, the use of color and light to cure all manner of illnesses, and the spiritual significance of the various colors. And these views became commonplace, with casual reference to them being accepted in public discourse. We have as a well-placed example this excerpt from the thoroughly mundane and business-like Color Trade Journal “Color Tendencies in Modern Textile Design” by Flora L. Kaplan: Every human being vibrates according to his spiritual development and these vibrations cause an aura of color to form around the body. This aura is ordinarily not perceptible to the physical senses of the average person and can be seen only after many years of devotion to the development of the inner senses capable of perceiving the finer forms of matter beyond the physical. Until recently the laws pertaining to the mysteries of color were understood only by a comparative few students of the occult; in recent years, however[,] many in the practical business world have made a study of the teachings of the mystics of East India. 1919, 15 This passage contains most of the elements that are common to these new (or old, as they would have it) systems of thought. The esoteric ingredient is provided by the relative inaccessibility of the evidence to only a select or dedicated few. Then there is the intuitive faith that the phenomena is colored despite not being visible in the ordinary sense. There is also a vague division of the world into material and immaterial realms. Also common is the devout nod to India and the East in general. And finally the quasi-scientific discussion of vibration or energy can often be seen. These are the common threads which can be found in theosophy (Madame Blavatsky), anthroposophy (Rudolf Steiner), Mazdaznan (Ha-nish), Kirlian photography (Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, Walter Kilner), chromotherapy (Babbitt, Ghadiali), and any number of artists and creative professionals (Kandinsky, Bragdon). But a further exploration of these theories finds that little can be systematized across theories, and still less can be verified. This is not to say that we dismiss all such texts, least of all for their relevance to color theory. It is apparently a universal impulse for us to ascribe an emotional dimension to color, and that dimension is prone to slippage into the spiritual. As our task is to make sense of what people make of color, we must attend to the spiritual dimension of color no matter that there may be inconsistencies from one case to the next. Whether we chalk up such experiences to cultural conditioning or to the activity of divine agents, the change within us is connected to color and ought to be of consequence to an adequate color theory. For artists working with color in particular, it may be a matter of some urgency to reclaim the artwork from material analysis. While a play or poem may elude a purely mechanical study, by the early twentieth century science had advanced to the point where it might simply regard a painting as a wholly measurable arrangement of colors on a surface. For most artists though, the painting is not simply that but something more. It is this form but it is also the impact of the form upon the viewer. And what gives those forms their power? Something beyond the form, many would come to say, which lends spiritual force to certain arrangements of shape and color. Failure to take seriously the spiritual theories of color in play during this period is a failure to form an adequate color theory. Furthermore, these particular turn-of-the-century manifestations of esoteric thought were incredibly influential in twentieth-century art. And in the case of Rudolf Steiner we have a total theory of ourselves and 217

Color Theory

our place in the world that has been at least as powerful in practical terms as was the work of his contemporary Albert Munsell.

Rudolf Steiner Studying and explaining the life and work of Rudolf Steiner is challenging for a number of reasons. Scholarly attention has been largely lacking, with something of a stigma attached to amplifying ideas that fail common tests of reason and verification. On the other hand, those who do take up the challenge of communicating his vision are often clearly sympathetic with or even adherents to the tenets of anthroposophy, Steiner’s version of a science of the spiritual. These authors’ work often appears to lack objectivity, at times acknowledging that Steiner’s world view is one that requires a leap of faith before it can be adequately assimilated. Perhaps this is one of the reasons Steiner has been compared to the philosopher Spinoza. One suspects that Spinoza, whose philosophy is nearly mathematical in its inner workings, would take offense. But because Spinoza seeks to account for all of existence, his arguments must necessarily have a scope greater than logic itself; the foundation of any world view so comprehensive as his must rest upon intuition. Steiner’s foundation is his own selfproclaimed clairvoyance—his access to what he called the world memory (Kries and Vegesack 2010). Central to this revealed cosmology is the belief that the earth has lived through a sequence of astral stages, and that since the fall of the ancient civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria it has taken on an increasingly materialistic, ego-driven, and individualistic aspect—and a disconnect from the spiritual world. The human individual is taken to include not only a physical body, but ethereal and astral bodies, as well as an ego. In this cosmology the earth’s and humanity’s evolution together take on the characteristics of an organism, an individual with a particular character make-up, and a cultural zeitgeist in the full sense of the “spirit” of the times. Though early on he was affiliated with the theosophical movement whose most prominent leader was Madame Blavatsky, Steiner soon founded his own movement of anthroposophy. While theosophy was inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism, anthroposophy emphasized the importance of the Christ figure in world history, with Steiner explaining that the overall drift of Greek and Roman culture was too materialistic and individualistic and the incarnation of God was a reunification of the spirit world with our material world (Steiner 1964). During World War I, Steiner and his followers from many nations, on both sides of the conflict, worked peacefully together in Dornach, Switzerland to build the first Goetheanum, a sort of temple, performance and lecture hall, and activity center for the movement (Schwarz 1983) (see Figure 6.12). When this curiously domed wooden structure burned down on New Year’s Eve night 1922–3, it was replaced by a new, more ambitious Goetheanum in sweeping forms of concrete (“Home of Theosophy Burns” 1923). These architectural achievements are just the beginning of a long list of practical accomplishments of this unconventional mind. The buildings were of Steiner’s design and their influence can be seen in the work of le Corbusier and others. Steiner gave over 5,000 lectures in his lifetime and his theories were also influential in agriculture, care for the mentally disabled (in the form of the Camphill Communities), and most of all, education (Kries and Vegesack 2010). Today there are over 900 Steiner schools (known in the US as Waldorf schools) built upon his educational philosophy (Kries and Vegesack 2010). And biodynamic farming has its impetus in Steiner’s theories. In all of these fields a holistic understanding of the subject is to the fore, treating the organism as always having not only its own growth processes but also mechanical and spiritual dimensions. Thus the building is a shelter whose forms, doors, and windows must take into account the entry and escape of the soul. The farm is itself an organism whose spiritual and material processes must be kept in a life-giving balance. The disabled person has not only physical and mental but also biological and spiritual potentials. And the child’s growth on all dimensions of their being must be appropriately nurtured in order to reach its greatest 218

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.12 The original Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, which burned down on New Year’s Eve, 1922–3. The second Geotheanum, formed more completely of concrete, was built on the same site. Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.

potential. Many ongoing progressive efforts to live more peacefully, more in balance with our environment, more sustainably and more fully—from organic food methods to philosophies of creative abundance—derive from or are thoroughly in tune with the principles of anthroposophy.

Steiner on art and color The clearest statement on art which we have from Rudolf Steiner is The Arts and Their Mission, a publication of lectures given in 1923. He focuses this discussion on literature with asides that make it clear the tenets apply to all the arts. He bases his analysis of art history by linking the development of art to the ongoing separation of humanity from the spiritual world (Steiner 1964). In general, the creators of great art in literature are familiar names from the Western canon: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe (Steiner 1964). In many cases the role of art is as a corrective to the general trend of separation from spirit. At a time when people are losing their everyday acquaintance with the spiritual, as what some of Steiner’s contemporaries would call superstitions were gradually discarded, art provides humanity with insight into that other world. Though the person may no longer believe the teachings of the Church, they allow a suspension of disbelief when 219

Color Theory

experiencing art that provides a modicum of balance. But Steiner also took exception to some aspects of what is and is not considered canonical in art. He is generally dismissive of the attempts by Renaissance painters and their successors at depicting space through linear perspective and the modeling of forms with light and shade (Steiner 1964). He sees such illusions as foolish and dangerous as well as simply an inappropriate attempt at what is properly a sculptural matter (Steiner 1964). Medieval and Byzantine art held much greater appeal from this philosophical point of view (Steiner 1964). This aspect of his critique is perfectly in tune with modernism, which would increasingly reject the idea that art should depict the world as it appears to our eyes, and increasingly embrace the role of depicting some deeper reality. Rather than the creation of the illusion of space, Steiner felt the essence of painting was color—again putting him squarely with the avant-garde artists of his time. From his point of view, color simply is a spiritual thing and a means of communicating with the spirit world. Steiner’s ideas are influenced by Goethe’s, being decidedly focused on the subjective response and taking up a philosophical position from which Newton’s theories and perhaps all color science is at best trivia and at worst a dangerous mistake. The materialist interpretation of color fails, after all, to account for color’s significance for us as humans. It often even leads to the assertion that color is an illusion. Steiner rejects such thinking and returns to the age-old notion that color is something real—a potency of the things of the world. His explanation of that potency is related to his cosmology, asserting that colors in their mineral state as jewels, metals, and pigments are direct expressions of ancient spirit beings: “The moment we confront a green precious stone, we transport our eye into ages long past, and green appears because at that time divine-spiritual beings created that substance through a purely spiritual green” (Steiner 1964, Lecture III, para. 18). Steiner’s color theory in particular was laid out in all its visionary idiosyncrasy in a series of lectures he gave in 1923, which were later published as a slim book titled Colour. Even in translation his voice comes through as disarmingly calm, authoritative, and well reasoned—right up until he enters territory most readers will consider wholly unconnected to reality. He begins with a common enough philosophy of science premise—arguing that physicists err in departing from the experience of color in their quest for an explanation of color (Steiner 1971, 11–13). They themselves note the distinction between that experience and the electromagnetic vibrations they consider its cause, and they occasionally dismiss the impression of color as an illusion (Steiner 1971, 12). Steiner strenuously argues that color as we experience it is real, its effects on us are in keeping with its real powers, and its source is in the real nature of the colored objects in our world. He even appeals to our own experience of being colored: “[I]t would be quite absurd to divorce human life from the colour of human skin. It is quite a different physical experience to have pink cheeks or a greenish pallor” (Steiner 1971, 18). Next Steiner embarks on the first of a series of thought experiments, drawing in colored chalk on a blackboard but also calling up images in the mind’s eye (1971, 19) (see Figure 6.13). He asks us to imagine a green field and then picture a group of figures added to the scene (Steiner 1971, 12–13). These figures may come in various colors—first he imagines red figures and then peach-blossom (Steiner 1971, 13). His focus is on the way those colors affect us and one another. We are told, in keeping with much that Chevreul and Munsell would agree with, that the red colors activate the field of green, causing it to burn in its greenness. And the figures themselves seem active, as if they must be moving. Peach-blossom, on the other hand, is neutral and unaffected as if it were at peace in this landscape. Steiner seems to mean a rosy pink color by this term peach-blossom, but he also asserts that it is the color of human skin, and so may vary just as skin color varies. These peach-blossom figures in a green field seem to be so many Adams and Eves, at rest with themselves and with nature in the garden before the Fall. Steiner also makes a side-path in briefly mentioning blue, asserting that the blue seems to want to “make off ” with the green, and make it blue (1971, 14–15); the blue has a dissipative effect on the green. But as quickly as he calls it up, Steiner dismisses blue for a substantial portion 220

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.13 Watercolors of colored figures on a green field, and other color demonstrations, which follow along with Steiner’s discussion of color and simulate the chalkboard drawings created in the course of his lectures. Rudolf Steiner Press / Photograph by Priya Kambli.

of his lectures, as if he hadn’t really meant to introduce the color at this point in his discussion. Then, in a single step, he turns to radically less conventional color theory, glibly stating: From spiritual science you know that the plant owes its existence to the fact that, besides its physical body, it has an etheric body. It is the etheric body which is the cause of life in the plant. But the etheric body is not green. What makes the plant green is found it its physical body. Steiner 1971, 15 Steiner then reveals a complex spiritual system grounded in Aristotelian categories but far surpassing that source in complex interactions and claims of revealed truth. These classical categories are the kingdoms of mineral, vegetable, animal, and human (Steiner et al. 1997). The first is wholly mechanical and lifeless; the second is what he terms “etheric” and is the basis of all life. The plant then has both of these bodies—a lifeless mechanical form and an etheric body which represents its essential nature. Then there is the soul, which is the essential aspect of animals. And finally there is the spirit which is the essence of the human, whose four bodies exist on the plains of the mechanical, the etheric, the soul, and the spirit. Each of these categories is associated in a dynamic and even elusive way with a color Steiner asserts as basic. Those colors are green, peach-blossom, white, and black (Steiner

221

Color Theory

Figure 6.14 This spiral diagram model of color—featuring green, peach-blossom, white, and black—is another image derived from the chalkboard drawings made by Steiner in the course of his lectures. Rudolf Steiner Press / Photograph by Priya Kambli.

et al. 1997) (see Figure 6.14). And each is merely the image of one of these four categories, as it appears when illuminated by another of the four. Thus green is the image of the living plant, but only as illuminated by the lifeless body. The four colors are arranged in a circle, or really a spiral (see Figure 14), and connected each to its neighbor so that one is the “illuminent” and the other the “shadow thrower” (Steiner 1971, 24). One category is perceiving the other as a color which is only the “image” of that category. Thus Steiner tells us “Green represents the lifeless image of the living” (Steiner 1971, 22). He then completes the chain by intoning: Peach-blossom represents the living image of the soul White or light represents the soul’s image of the spirit Black represents the spiritual image of the lifeless. Steiner 1971, 22 These four colors he terms the image colors and makes clear that they themselves are in some ways deceptive: “In each colour we have discovered an image of one kind or another, but the colour itself is never the reality, only an image” (Steiner 1971, 22). This would seem to suggest a similar attitude to that of the physicist claiming color is an illusion. But he also underscores color as a path for us to have genuine knowledge of, and contact 222

The Science of the Invisible

with, the world. Color, to Steiner, is a conduit for the higher aspects of the human to come into contact with the biological and physical worlds: For it is sheer nonsense to say that colour is merely subjective. The “I” itself is within colour. The human “I” and the astral body are not to be separated at all from colour . . . It is the “I” and the astral body which reproduce colour in the physical and etheric bodies. That is the point . . . colour actually bears the “I” and the astral body into the physical and etheric bodies. Steiner 1971, 52

Steiner goes on in the later portion of these lectures to discuss three more colors, which he terms “lustre” colors (1971, 32–5). These are the more familiar set of red, blue, and yellow . These lustre colors are connected respectively to the ascending orders of the living, the soul, and the spirit. They are, he seems to say, a kind of emanation of those realms, and their mixture with the four image colors is an interplay between the various phenomena of those realms: “Here we have a definite colour-cosmos; we see the world as interweaving colour” (Steiner 1971, 35). It is hard to measure the influence of Rudolf Steiner’s color theory on the broader culture or on the art world in particular. It certainly was not a taken up as a whole by any school of artists or famous individual artists. Rather, the artists of the first half of the twentieth century, many of whom were certainly familiar with and drawn to anthroposophy, would choose to generate spiritual color theories of their own. With individuals of a spiritual persuasion choosing to go their own ways, and mainstream color theory completely ignoring Steiner’s views, one is tempted to say that Steiner had nearly no impact on color theory. However, as we will discuss in the following chapter, of the instructors at the influential Bauhaus art school, many sought to synthesize both the spiritual conception of color, such as Rudolf Steiner proposed, with the mechanical and directly measurable concept of color in the tradition of Munsell. Artists such as Robert Henri, and educators such as Johannes Itten, worked from a position of faith in the notion that measurement and spirit were not enemies; that in time, measurement would come to confirm spirit, and spiritual truths would provide material realities with a deeper grounding in meaning. Perhaps most influential is Steiner’s genuine belief in a world of the spirit and his particular way of picking up on the physiological effects of color, which Goethe’s color theory had introduced as a major area of color theory exploration, and taking those interactions as concrete indicators of what sort of spiritual power one is engaged with. Under Steiner’s color theory, when one dabs red paint on a green field one is wielding powerful forces. We can see Steiner’s own aesthetic most clearly in his architectural works—the first and second Goetheanum buildings—along with the sculptural and wall painting programs that adorned them. A flowing, gauzy wash of lines, shapes, and layers of color is used to depict stylized figurative works with one foot in medieval Christian art and another in symbolist modes suggestive of Odilon Redon. Certain works by Paul Klee or Paul Miro might be said to run in the same channels, though of a higher caliber than what we find produced by Steiner and his followers at Dornach, Switzerland. Walking into a Waldorf or Steiner school today one is liable to find a continuation of that tradition painted on the school’s walls. And in the contemporary context, such wall paintings are liable to suggest connections to psychedelic art of the hippie era, or new age aesthetics more generally. Waldorf schools also have a unique approach to wall color, said to come from Steiner’s directives. Many interpretations of color psychology call for a color choice based on matching a color’s perceived mood with the desired human response in that space; for instance, cool colors chosen to calm and warm colors chosen to stimulate the room’s occupants. Steiner considers this a mistake, pointing out that colors demand a compensatory reaction in the viewer: red causing the eye to see its opposite of blue-green. So Steiner proposes

223

Color Theory

cool colors to evoke a warm—or energetic—response, and vice-versa. He proposes that young children are naturally overenergetic and so their rooms should be bright red (in practice, a rosy pink wash) (Uhrmacher 1995, 396). He asserts that the children in this space will respond internally with a violet mood. As the children move up in grade level, they move through the colors of the spectrum towards green, blue, and then violet (Uhrmacher 1995, 396). By the time they are in their late teens they are notably hard to stimulate in class, so then cool wall colors are used to evoke a warm internal response. Steiner sprinkles a few more tips for the artist throughout his lectures, and much more is presumably lost as his involvement with art creation was substantial and relatively little was recorded. Somewhat unhelpfully he argues that painters shouldn’t use palettes, where colors solidify, but should keep them fluid in a pot where they are always changing (Steiner 1971, 45). More useful, for both the artist working with color and for the viewer seeking to understand how such colors are intended, is his injunction against straightforward and formulaic symbolism. He considers that manner of painting, in which each color has some prescribed meaning, inartistic: “Colour must not be treated as if it signified anything other than itself ” (Steiner 1971, 51). That sentiment is perfectly in keeping with the approach of nearly every prominent modernist painter up through abstract expressionism —working with the formal elements of the artwork with a faith in their inherent significance, without reference to anything outside of the artwork. He tells artist and art lover alike that “we should try to have a conversation with the colours so that they themselves shall say how they wish to be on the surface of the picture” (Steiner 1971, 53). The educational philosophy which Steiner developed and imparted to the Waldorf schools seeks to treat students in a holistic manner, embracing the development of their physical, living, ensouled, and spiritual selves. Central to the curriculum is art and creative exploration. Though there is a place for rote, step-by-step lesson-following, personal expression and aesthetic insight are emphasized as confidence and enthusiasm are instilled (Hallam, Egan, and Kirkham 2016). Studies have found that students enrolled in these schools score higher on assessments of creative expression with no diminishment of more technical art skills, as compared to students at publicly funded schools (Hallam, Egan, and Kirkham 2016). It is these schools, and other lasting institutions, that established that Rudolf Steiner’s world view, rooted in a cosmology well outside of the mainstream, was among the most effective of his day. Our more narrow focus on color theory will conclude by noting that where other theories fall short—in their stripping of meaning from color and their inability to account for the experience of seeing and being moved by color—Steiner provides an alternative. This alternative is one in which the experience of color is central, and is linked to what he took to be the fundamental realities of the world around us. It is a theory which imbues the act of painting with a power akin to that of a sorcerer. While the artists of the twentieth century did not generally make the kinds of supernatural claims he did, Rudolf Steiner’s Colour perfectly explains the modernist’s devotion to the potency and significance of color in and of itself.

Occult theory, science, color, and race Rudolf Steiner’s idiosyncratic color theory was only one of many in his time which we may term occult. They are occult in the sense that they purport to reveal hidden knowledge but are also themselves hidden in various ways, with the author of the theory enjoying privileged access to extraordinary perceptions of color that others may not detect. For many of these theorists, color is associated with a less material reality. Others, essentially quacks, purport to offer the more worldly good of medical aid, taking advantage of popular misunderstandings of, or areas of doubt within, science and medicine. But these color therapists explored a domain which occasionally has its successes. Efforts to determine the proper colors with which to decorate hospital rooms 224

The Science of the Invisible

began at least as early as the treatment of shell-shocked veterans of World War I and it is not quackery to assert some psychological effects of color and colored light, even if the type and degree of impact on the viewer is not terribly consistent. Special lights are of course now used as a treatment for seasonal affective disorder, and ultraviolet blankets are used to treat jaundiced newborns. The blue/yellow dichotomy of this last example could be viewed as a vindication of color theories starting with Goethe (and harking back to Aristotle) that put much faith in the significance and potency of complimentary colors and the organism’s demand for color balance. Examples of colored light therapy include Dinshah P. Ghadiali’s “Spectro-Chrome Metry,” which was both a theory, a line of supposed medical devices which he invented and marketed and which would shine light upon the body or into the eyes of the afflicted patient, and a training program for aspiring color therapists (Schwarcz 2003). There was also Edwin Babbitt’s book The Principles of Light and Color and his own line of chromo-therapy devices, the Chromolume, Chromo-Disk, and Chromo-Lens (1878). Scientific American described the craze for these treatments as the “blue glass mania” (1877, 352). Babbitt, a favorite of the later influential color theorist and color advisor Faber Birren, was happy to straddle both the spiritual and medical sides of occult color theory. He wrote extensively on the various colors of the human aura, an individual’s radiation of brightly colored yet invisible energy. This aura is supposed to be visible to psychics, and any ailment would be readily apparent to those psychics as a disharmony in the colors of the aura. His medical devices were supposed to be able to restore balance to those colors and thus cure the patient. His color diagnoses align with popular attitudes about the various colors today, asserting that “Red is always a stimulant” for the sluggish and despondent, while blue calms “feverish situations” (Colville 1913, 148–9). Less commonplace are his assertions that yellow is an “aid to intellectual development, paralysis, and all other nervous disorders,” while violet “the most spiritual of the seven prismatics is also an antidote for many nervous perturbations” (Colville 1913, 148). Babbitt offers a solution to those who aren’t able to fill their physical environment with the necessary colors—so long as they have the mental discipline, they may also make their “auric effluences objective on the plane of mental vision” (Colville 1913, 150). These theories are often reminiscent of the ancient and medieval medical concept of humors, whose proper balance was the key to health and which also linked body, mind, and even professional calling or position within society. Babbitt’s discussion relates more muted auric colors with more prosaic ways of making a living, such as brown indicating a gift for mundane affairs and grey being indicative of a “common worker” (Colville 1913, 163). In contrast, he tells us that the biblical coat of many colors is a reference to the myriad bright colors of the shaman’s aura (Colville 1913, 159–61). These reductive theories also involve a smattering of creepy race theory, as he tells us that red is associated with the vowel A and connotes the “Adamic or Red Race”—“the earliest of the seven races which find expression on this planet” (Colville 1913, 150–1). In tying an individual’s auric color to their type in these ways, Babbitt aligns his theories with the most ancient impulses to sort and categorize, which we see in many ancient cultures, such as we noted in Vedic tradition. Race theory is another faddish area of thought during this period and one which intertwines with the history of science as much as it does with spiritual philosophies and color theory. With eugenics becoming a popular field of inquiry, and plenty of racialist and even racist concepts embedded in the standard biology, anthropology, and cultural studies of the day, few spoke out against the idea that humans belong to biologically distinct races whose individuals are inherently different from those of another race. And the theory of evolution was (and continues to be) widely misapplied, as in the case of W. H. R. Rivers, whose studies in Papua New Guinea led him to claim that the natives there are less physically evolved than Europeans. The notion that evolution is a march of progress, rather than a continuous adaptation to varied circumstances, is widely 225

Color Theory

Figure 6.15 Advertisements like this one for Pears Soap trade on the racist notion that the non-white races of the colonized world are dirtier than their colonizers, and in need of their assistance in order to become more civilized.Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

conveyed by the image of the fish crawling from the sea, becoming a mammal, and arriving by stages at the upright posture of modern humans. We see each step as an improvement whereas the creature pictured in each case was every bit as “fit” as the others. Similarly, eugenics imagines that evolution teaches us that fitness lies in an idealized perfect monocultural stock, rather than in the genetic diversity which in fact makes up the healthiest (least disease prone, most widely abled) population. With vast portions of the earth under the dominion of the British and other European empires, it was widely taken for granted that the white race was manifestly superior to all others. At its most self-deluded state, this attitude included a patronizing false generosity in the notion of the white man’s burden—that non-Western cultures are unable to govern themselves and that role falls to the Europeans as an obligation rather than the violation of sovereignty that it was. In the Pears Soap advertisement (see Figure 6.15) seen here, that burden is bound up in the idea that non-white races are essentially dirtier and less self-sufficient than the white colonizer. We can see that children would internalize at a glance from the pervasive commercial

226

The Science of the Invisible

images of the time like this one that skin color, personal hygiene, intelligence, industry, and more—are all aligned in the most simplistic way with a racist dichotomy. The connection between these theories of race and color theory would appear at first glance to be tenuous. But the fact that these theories are cultural constructions with connections made to scientific evidence only when convenient reveals the links to be quite deep. As we will see in Chapter 7, the extremes to which color theory will distort its basis in scientific evidence often serve to bring it into alignment with equally tortured theories of race. Unfortunately one bridge between these arenas of thought was the spiritualist community, whose impulse to seek out alternatives to conventional science often slipped into an all too direct reflection of popular prejudices, which begins with the division of people into variously colored types, continues by relying on cosmologies and origin stories which narrate human development as passing through various stages of spiritual growth and support the belief in numerous kinds of divine and diabolical sentient beings, and occasionally leads to examples of nationalist belief in a chosen people and an ideal stock. In the case of Hitler’s Germany the superior race was thought to be imbued with a spiritual “Odinic force.” Throughout the twentieth century, linkages between color and character have steadily appeared in popular culture, with Martin Lang’s 1940 book, Character Analysis Through Color: A New and Accurate Way of Revealing the Secrets of personality, being typical of the concept. The trend continued with various personality tests which today pop up in social media explicitly tied to a color wheel—a mandala of personality types which serves as a sort of astrological guide to oneself and one’s relationships—in which a color provides the sign for our many complex gifts and challenges. There isn’t room in these pages to discuss every esoteric color theory or theory of sight of this period—we may only mention a few in passing. Charles Leadbeater is another influential proponent of theosophy, who claimed that clairvoyance included the ability to see that which is past, future, distant, or microscopic (1903). Leadbeater also claimed to see that which was simply otherwise invisible—the aura—a subject which also gained prominence as the photographic subject of Kirlian photography (1903). Dinshah Ghadiali, another member of the Theosophical Society, discovered Edwin Babbitt’s The Principles of Light and Color at the theosophists’ headquarters in Bombay (Ross 2007). When Ghadiali emigrated to America he combined Babbitt’s theories with Hindu and Parsee philosophy. These and many other individuals, who we may regard as writers, philosophers, quacks, or searchers have had their influence on the popular imagination and have had their revivals in later decades. And the ways they thought about color are echoed in conversations about color to this day among artists, designers, and color consumers of all kinds. Our choice here, to turn to the work of the architect Claude Bragdon as one last example of his kind, is based on the exceptionally practical and applied nature of his work.

Claude Bragdon Claude Bragdon is not primarily noted as a spiritualist or occult theorist; rather he is an example of how common it was for creative leaders and assorted intellectuals, as well as the general public, to place their faith in these new visions. Bragdon was a practicing and influential architect working in Rochester, New York, whose work is linked to the Arts and Crafts movement as well as the Prairie School of which Frank Lloyd Wright is the best known example. And, like Wright, Bragdon was a practitioner convinced of the moral improvement that architecture could work upon society, and steeped in the esoteric and spiritualist philosophies of his day. Bragdon’s most salient work involved his invention of a “projective ornament,” which was a means of spatial and visual organization of three-dimensional spaces and two-dimensional surfaces using patterns derived 227

Color Theory

from four-dimensional figures (1932). As exercises in projective geometry, the contours of these hyper-figures were projected into any design project in the same way that a light shining through a glass cube might project that cube’s contours onto a flat wall behind it. All of this geometry was conceived as being in continuity with age-old traditions regarding musical proportions, golden ratios, and a sort of divine order. One goal of this system, which it certainly achieved at least within Bragdon’s own life’s work, was to unify the design fields of architecture, graphic design, and all forms of surface decoration. Another goal, less easy to measure, was to unify a society fragmented by industrialization and class divides. Bragdon’s divinely inspired higher geometry or projective ornament was meant to replace historically and culturally indicative design vocabularies to which designers had traditionally resorted. Like other modernist aesthetic doctrines, the goal was to create an aesthetic that was timeless and that transcended cultural context—a utopia of ornament that was to be neither occidental nor oriental. In The Frozen Fountain, Bragdon recapitulates much that he had addressed in earlier writings, seeking to provide a handy design manual for the visual designer or artist of any sort. He does this within an appealing narrative format. Using his renowned black-and-white ink illustrations, reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsly and Winsor McCay, he introduces the reader to a protagonist named Sinbad who goes on a voyage into the world of higher geometry (Bragdon 1932). The titular frozen fountain is a conception of time and space seen as a single four-dimensional static form, “frozen” from the perspective of eternity, and full of crystalline intricacy and wonder when viewed from infinite angles. At the end of this book, Bragdon belatedly considers color and how it may connect the viewer to a higher reality (1932) . The effort is not as fully realized as the long geometrical and mathematical explorations and makes fewer definitive pronouncements but still seeks to base the study and use of color in an attention to unseen forces—in the sun and in ourselves. Claude Bragdon begins by placing physiological and emotional responses at the center of study. By the time of his writing in 1924, the concept of warm and cool colors was a widely accepted distinction and he asserts that this is the most basic, or primary, aspect of color. The concept of warm and cool colors is applied both to the color wheel as a whole, dividing one side from the other, as well as to more discrete sections of hue as well, so that a generically warm color such as red may be warm or cool relative to its neighboring colors. Of competing importance is the notion of color complements, which he says we may know as we know lovers—by the way they behave when they are near each other (Bragdon 1932, 117). But he is especially interested in the way compliments may be determined by the eye’s demand for the opposite of that which fatigues it. Bragdon recommends training the inner eye to recall each color’s complement by a series of exercises wherein a brightly dyed strip of fabric is gazed at until the complement begins to appear as a halo, then pulling the cloth away revealing an after-image in the complementary color (1932, 118). The process is to be repeated until the artist can predict, in their mind’s eye, what will shortly be shown by their physical one. Bragdon moves on to discuss the age-old analogy between color and music, and the use of musical harmonies to generate color harmonies by means of a correspondence between musical wheels and color wheels. He gives a careful analysis of the advantages and limitations of the method, providing Louis Wilson’s approach as a promising example (Bragdon 1932, 120) (see Figure 6.16). But he concludes that the same results can be achieved by “more direct methods” and proceeds to discuss those advocated by his contemporary and associate, the painter Trautmann (Bragdon 1932, 121). This approach to the color wheel, and training one’s sensitivity to color properties, reminds one of a Ouija board with a group of people groping their way towards a sensible arrangement of colors collaboratively. When lecturing on color, as in a classroom setting, the primary axis is defined by a line connecting the sun and the eye. The sun is associated with ultraviolet light and thus the color violet; the eye with the color yellow, violet’s complement. Two tacks representing these colors are 228

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.16 Here Bragdon illustrates Wilson’s notion of a color circle tied directly to a musical one, seeking to ground color harmony in musical harmony. Knopf 1970 reprint of 1924 Libraries Press book / Photograph by Priya Kambli.

stuck one above the other into a board and a rubber band is stretched between them, and then the class is invited to consider the possibilities inherent in stretching the band left or right—warmer or cooler— modulating the range of colors to various degrees proportional to the tension of the band. Together the class determines that the color represented by the most extreme stretch to one side of the central axis ought to be called red. They then conclude the opposite point is blue, or at least “blueness.” These two axes form what Bragdon calls the color cross, and are the framework around which further subdivisions of the color wheel are arranged (1932, 123) . He discusses how harmonies may be achieved by considering the properties of warm and cool, complement, and proportion (Bragdon 1932, 124–5). And he asserts, with an apparent flexibility about the actual details, that the resulting color wheel and its harmonies are the same as achieved in Wilson’s musical wheel analogy (Bragdon 1932, 118–21) (see Figure 6.17). In fact the two wheels have very different colors arranged in opposition to each other across the circle. Bragdon essentially treats the musical approach as an impractical and overly-theoretical method for the creative practitioner, whose methods suit a less belabored and practical circumstance. But the musical wheel acts as a sort of independent confirmation of the reliability of Bragdon’s (via Trautman) conclusions; it seems to be invoked as validation of the intuition of the visual artist. 229

Color Theory

Figure 6.17 Bragdon ultimately champions his friend Trautmann’s color circle as being more intuitive than the painstaking process of linking color to music. The emphasis here is on two axes: one resulting from the reciprocal connection between the sun (violet—or ultraviolet) and the eye (yellow); the other, on that between warmth (redness) and cold (blueness). Knopf 1970 reprint of 1924 Libraries Press book / Photograph by Priya Kambli.

Color Use Activity 6.2 Spiritual color 1 Seek out someone who reports that they have the ability to see human auras. Ask them to describe the colors they see in the auras of yourself and other willing participants. Create auric portraits of these people. Spiritual color 2 Keep a dream journal, paying particular attention to the colors you notice in your dreams. Consider the possible unconscious symbolism of these dream colors and create designs in which the use of color is informed by these theoretical color meanings.

230

The Science of the Invisible

Spiritual color 3 Paint the rooms of your home, school, or work space according to the scheme laid out by Rudolf Steiner. Spaces for young children should be warmer, starting with red and moving through orange and yellow as they age. The colors should not be applied as solid opaque masses but should instead be applied as loose transparent layers evocative of curtains or veils of color. Spiritual color 4 The concept underlying Steiner’s use of warm colors for young people and cool for older people is that the colors in our environment bring about a contrasting reaction in our inner selves. Thus the stimulant of red provokes a calming blue response in the young child. Will the same be true for health disorders of the mind or body? When you next have a fever of the sort for which you would normally take acetaminophen, instead go to your red room and spend the day recuperating there. Or, when you next feel lethargic or depressed, take yourself to your blue room and spend your day there. Record how these rooms make you feel.

Color use: culture and counterculture A hallmark of societies in the modernist period is the presence of counterculture: one or more threads within culture that are formed and explicitly define themselves in opposition to the mainstream. In more traditional cultures, including European culture before the dislocations of industrialization, creative works can be seen as expressions of that traditional culture. While there is a certain critique offered in the plays by Aeschylus or Shakespeare, the canonical works of those periods were more or less tolerated, and sometimes sanctioned, by the state. The great visual art of the Renaissance also has its provocative aspect but is nonetheless a visualization of the world as the ruling classes wished to see it. But with Romanticism and the subsequent movements of modernism we begin to see creativity wielded by artists located on the fringes of society and scorning the mores of that society. Those countercultural works both result from and generate fashionably rebellious subcultures. Bringing the narrative up to the period reviewed in this chapter, we can cast the impressionists, the Fauvists, the cubists, and the many subsequent varieties of expressionist and avant-garde artists as so many refusals of mainstream taste. Obviously this fractiousness complicates our effort to generalize about the color use of the period, for contradiction is built in. And we do not suppose that most people considered themselves strictly as part of the mainstream or of some counterculture. For the counterculture offers a tempting space of relief from a daily life that is more time-regimented than ever. And the conditions of the mainstream in industrial society have brought about the dislocations, the urbanization, and the anonymity that are ideal circumstances in which to explore a lifestyle outside of proper society. We will see that attitudes towards color are very much in keeping with this complexity; color is marshaled as an important signifier bearing social cues for individuals navigating such uncertain cultural terrain. Propriety, masculinity, and industry might be seen in clothing or the facades of buildings in muted tones of grey, black, or brown. Indulgence, femininity, and the Victorian home called for bright color and rich patterns. Both of these were well within the bounds of propriety. The aesthetic program of moderation advocated by Munsell would have done very well anywhere one wished to make a good impression on respectable people. One can find color palettes that might well have been generated using

231

Color Theory

Munsell’s system or are at least in sympathy with his aesthetic priorities, in all the decorative arts of the period. Thus wallpaper, architectural tilework, printed fabrics, and book design from this period will reveal Munsell’s carefully balanced and muted colors. But the major art movements of the period were largely moving in an alternative direction. This alternative to good taste took many forms, with a staggering procession of art movements succeeding one another beginning in the 1880s, but may be best exemplified by the work of the Fauvists, where color is used as an assault on the senses, a rebuke to taste, and a statement of aesthetic independence. Our examination of the period, however, begins a bit earlier with Manet’s landmark 1882 painting, The Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

Color use: from Manet to the Fauves In The Bar at the Folies-Bergère we are brought into one of the Belle Epoque’s most famous nightspots, a bar and dancehall that was the epitome of Parisian culture. Manet’s color is part of a tightly packaged set of effects that included a confusing space as well as artificial light, sparkle, sheen, and mirrors, all of which will be major concerns of visual culture for decades. Lighting is only one of many things about the image that is pointedly unheroic. Direct, a bit washed out, and coming from multiple directions—this light is the opposite of the bold play of light and shadow used by nineteenth-century academic painters to sculpt their figures on the canvas. And this is not an image of a great hero or symbol of virtue; it has a very worldly subject whose expression speaks of the anonymity of a new urban lifestyle. Opinions differ as to what exactly we are being shown, with most acknowledging that there is a wall-sized mirror behind the barmaid, itself a dazzling new optical presence. And the figures in the mirror, though the angle may be off, are often supposed to be that same young woman and ourselves—the viewer. Even without confirming that, her gaze—directly at us and sparing us none of her own isolation—breaks the traditional fourth wall of the painting. We are implicated here, and the smoky glittering disorientation of the space in which we find ourselves is part and parcel of our evening’s walk on the wild side. Color, in The Bar at the Folies Bergere, is fragmentary and flat, rich and significant (see Figure 6.18). A blackish-blue palette of clothing and recesses, contrasted with creamy golden-hued surfaces, provides a certain unity. But other colors sit starkly on the canvas: the little bright green boots of a girl on a swing (above our heads and disembodied), the bright orange, green, and ruby bottles and fruit of the bartending trade, and the iconic red triangle of Bass beer. This latest, a remarkable change in the world, is a corporate brand: a particular color with a particular shape, which tells us that a consistent, reliable product is in that package. Bass was the very first trademark to be registered under the UK’s Trade Mark Registration Act of 1875 (Baker 2013). The Bass Brewery, a giant global enterprise by the end of the nineteenth century, produced over a million and a half barrels a year (Baker 2013). This new element of visual culture, a product of mass media technology and industrial methods, gets its power from its ubiquity. Here we see it as only one of many essential elements of the Parisian milieu, but such things would eventually dominate the visual landscape, and fine art as well. Groundbreaking artists like Manet and Courbet would soon be followed by the impressionists and, after them, a profusion of competing “isms.” The impressionists took advantage of new industrial production and chemistry which provided the artist with an ever growing and more vibrant array of manufactured paints in the new tube packaging. These packages kept paint from drying out, spared the artist the labor of mixing paints, and allowed easy transport of all the necessary equipment out of the studio and into nature. These painters’ interest in unexpected juxtapositions of small dabs of color, in contrast to the gradual building up of transparent layers, went hand in hand with the impulse encouraged by the new colors and new packaging—to apply paint directly from the tube and onto the canvas. In general the trend progressed by stages, with most 232

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.18 In Manet’s The Bar at the Folies-Bergère we see flat and fragmentary colors, and a scene dominated by artificial light reflecting off mirrors and glittering surfaces. This is the light and color of a new urban, and modern, space. incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo.

impressionists creating complex textures of pure color, hazy films, and inspired brushwork—while postimpressionists such as Vincent van Gogh and the Fauves turned to increasingly more radical and direct blobs and smears of thick impasto paint application. This is the beginning of a high point for color in the history of painting, turning the tables utterly on disegno in the age-old painter’s debate. Deep sculptural modeling of forms with value, and precise draftsmanship are all but obliterated in this new wave of pure color expression. Paint from a tube has incarnated color and light in a soft, flowing, irrepressible form. And painters gradually came to see color and light itself as the true subject of painting. Standing as both an exemplar of and a distinctly systematic exception to the rest of the post-impressionist styles is pointillism and its chief proponent, Georges Seurat. Value and sculptural form remain important to Seurat, with his early soft and mysterious black-and-white drawings being among his most evocative. Seurat absorbed the theories of Chevreul and Ogden Rood, particularly with regard to the optical mixture of colors, and sought to create a new, more luminous form of painting by means of innumerable tiny spots of color each blending with its neighbors in the eye of the viewer, and floating in a glowing grey fog in which the canvas surface appears to dissolve (see Figure 6.19). Other artists sought out the night, and the strange and unsettling lighting and colors one finds in the bars, concert halls, and brothels of Parisian nightlife. In At the Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec gives us a vision of that life which borders on the nightmarish, with bizarrely lit characters occupying a space dominated 233

Color Theory

Figure 6.19 Seurat’s pointillism technique was an attempt to make the most potent possible use of the new understanding of optical mixture brought about by Chevreul’s research into color, and ultimately derived from Goethe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, 1960.

by murky gold and peacock tones. The figures’ pallid complexions and garish make-up is cast in an unflattering glow with the dramatically foregrounded and cropped woman in the bottom right bathed in a wash of light from below. One feels as if one were inhabiting a circus, with a tenuous grip on the sane and reassuring world of those who lead an ordinary daytime existence, and perhaps with too much of the popular and hallucinogenic drink absinthe in one’s system. The perspective of the space is allied with the unusual cropping and discordant colors, as a wide-angle view takes in a deep and mysterious space as well as the wooden railing and floor boards at our feet (see Figure 6.20). This same approach is employed in Vincent van Gogh’s The Night Cafe (not pictured), a depiction of a pool hall whose floorboards are seen plunging towards the viewer from straight ahead and then curving to accommodate a gaze directly down at their rough grain. These same boards are given a fascinating treatment of thickly applied yellow paint-as-light. This artificial light is cast by the disturbingly yellow lamps overhead and one can almost feel the unhealthy force of their glow throughout the room. A tasteful color treatment, such as Munsell would advise, would seek to offset the jarring contrast of red and green with a cooler hue and the muting of one or more of the colors in the scene. Instead, this late night scene appears to be a space with no relief from the unsettling psychological unease and isolation that grips both the viewer and the other occupants of the room. We can now return to the topic of the Fauves—the “wild beasts”—who formed a disenchanted and anarchically inclined counterculture to the industrious and proper world of Edwardian manners. The attitude of the Fauves towards society and European civilization was that it was a thin and false veneer over a seething 234

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.20 We find that nightlife scenes of the turn of the twentieth century, such as the one depicted in Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge, are often bathed in an artificial light, giving them an unsettlingly queasy color palette. PAINTING / Alamy Stock Photo.

and monstrous reality. We are deluding ourselves, their work proclaimed, that we are anything other than savage animals. The form this outlook took in their paintings was in a use of color that was jarring, frequently depicting orange figures with blue shadows, within off-kilter compositions and with paint applied crudely. The work is carefully made to appear careless, and refuses to provide a soothing example of masterful technique. Color in these works is only tenuously connected to what the eye sees, seeking to reveal the invisible underbelly of madness lying just beneath the surface. Taking André Derain’s Regent Street, London as an example, we can see composition, color, and shape as aligning to produce an unsettling spectacle (see Figure 6.21). What could simply be a pleasing tableaux of a bustling metropolis is instead filled with dangerous, unpredictable movement, jostling figures, and ominous signs. The grey London atmosphere and slick streets are set off by black and blue masses punctuated by bright orange blotches. And dominating the scene of kicking, ungainly horses, darting figures, a bicycle, and a well-dressed couple on a stroll, is a coachman situated at the vanishing point. Sitting high on his coach, the driver raises his whip against the sky, his hat a tilted wreck, his face a mute thumbprint of orange. Color’s association with the emotional and irrational is perhaps hinted at in the works of Manet and then the impressionists. Later it begins to materialize as an otherworldly atmosphere in the divisionist color space of Seurat. But it is on full display in the night-time interiors and disjointed landscapes of the Fauves. 235

Color Theory

Figure 6.21 André Derain’s Regent Street, London uses moody greys punctuated by a highly contrasting blue/orange scheme to create an ominous effect. Peter Barritt / Alamy Stock Photo.

Color use on the Electric Avenue New visual culture around light and lighting was not only found in the work of painters but also in photography, cinema, and graphic design. As electricity came to line city avenues and parks with glittering lines of streetlights and photographic reproduction became more efficient, the image of lights as spectacle became associated with progress and glamor. Chrome, mirrors, and water features found in landscape architecture and interior design provided reflective surfaces for picturesque urban spaces. And flapper girls donned shimmering fabrics, spangled slip dresses, diamonds, pearls, and dynamic fringe and tassels to make the most of the new electric environment in which they found themselves. Faces were made up in glossy lipstick and shimmery eye shadow. Jazz-age cinematography couldn’t capture the rainbow’s hues but it could effortlessly convey the sensuality of light on bodies and the excitement of a night out in the city. The dye famine of World War I, in which Germany’s superior chemical production of dyes and pigments was halted or cut off from American industry, meant color choices were limited for a time but then that new capacities to produce and market colors were developed (Blaszczyk 2012, 71). While the war years saw sober colors enhanced by patriotic themes in US clothing, and forced a shift in army uniforms from blue to khaki green, the years after the war saw the US market developing a taste for brighter and more exotic colors, as the country entered a new era of prominence on the world stage (Blaszczyk 2012, 71–2, 107). These trends are available for historical analysis because of the fantastic data collected over decades by the TCCA, now the 236

The Science of the Invisible

Color Association of the United States (Lesile Harrington 2018, personal communication). All of these efforts to standardize color within industry owe their practicability to Munsell and other color theorists like him. These textile color cards are where the true impact of such systems lies, far more than in the art of the modernists. Meanwhile, ostensibly in less commercial realms, but occasionally crossing over into that category, the exploration of color as a spiritual phenomenon was a strong theme in avant-garde art. Among the most interesting of these, due to her ironically famous obscurity, is Hilma af Klint, a Swedish artist and sometime follower of Rudolf Steiner, now credited as a true pioneer of non-objective art.

Hilma af Klint and spiritual color use The number of turn-of-the-century writers, philosophers, and artists striving to express the spiritual commitment of their age are too numerous to cover. But a special place is needed to acknowledge the pioneering work of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint. Nearly forgotten, she has recently received significant art world attention, with a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (Westermann 2013). The work for which she is most famous, a cycle of paintings and works on paper titled Paintings for the Temple, includes arguably the first instance of completely non-objective painting in the Western tradition. Begun in 1906, this remarkable series features confident geometric abstract works predating Kandinsky’s non-objective paintings and the constructivist and suprematist artworks of the avant-garde artists of the early Soviet Union. And while Hilma af Klint was drawn to anthroposophy, and would eventually meet with Rudolf Steiner, this groundbreaking work was made before those encounters (Westermann 2013). Much is made of the notion that af Klint made these paintings in seclusion, as though she worked in an isolated fishing village on some far northern fjord (Westermann 2013). In fact she was in the cultural heart of Stockholm, where she very likely saw contemporary modernist art such as an exhibit by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. Something is also often made of the way her efforts were, until recently, rather thoroughly forgotten. As it turns out, there is another contributing factor to this omission from history, in addition to the disregard women artists experienced then as well as today. This reason is connected to the allure of that which is unknown—of the esoteric. It is simply that Hilma af Klint herself chose to exhibit that work only rarely in her lifetime and left instructions that it should not be exhibited until at least twenty years after her death (Westermann 2013). The pioneering work in af Klint’s career was a series of paintings that came about as a result of seances she was involved in with a group of women who called themselves “The Five” (Westermann 2013). The women reported that during these seances they communicated with spirits, one of whom—a spirit guide— commissioned Hilma af Klint to paint an artistic message for humanity from January to November of 1906 (Westermann 2013). This message, concerning the true nature of the world spirit, became the central work of her life, and was the context in which she made the first non-objective artworks of the Western tradition. This was nothing less than a stunning breakthrough in modern art. Ten of the earliest of these works were large-scale paintings, involving an idiosyncratic sacred geometry and colors which took on gender roles (see Figure 6.22). Hilma af Klint identified blue as feminine, yellow as masculine, and green as the unity of the two. And these sacred geometries frequently included spirals, which she conceived as curving upwards, a constant return to the starting position that nonetheless involves progress towards a higher plane. In the spiral we find an echo of both Munsell and Goethe. In the two basic colors, the blue feminine and the yellow masculine—and in their resolution as green—we have pure Goethe. These things have precedents—but in a purely non-objective art, color finds a new unfettered field of play. Without a visible reference point, color is freed from serving to describe what is seen, and becomes a symbol of its own power, a force interacting with the other colors, and in league with line, shape, scale, and the other elements of form. For af 237

Color Theory

Figure 6.22 In af Klint’s artworks, created in service to a spiritual quest, Western art has what may be its first wholly non-objective painting. Without a visible reference point, color is freed from serving to describe what is seen and becomes a symbol of its own power. Far from being an error or an illusion, color is regarded in such contexts as a conduit to a higher reality. Art Collection 3 / Alamy Stock Photo.

Klint, and arguably a majority of early modernist artists, such color is a higher reality, a spiritual truth, and a potency in itself. Though separated by gender, by distance from the art world epicenter of Paris, and by the esoteric nature of her project, Hilma af Klint was engaging with color in ways that were absolutely in step with avant-garde art of the early twentieth century. A few years after she undertook her commision for her spirit guide, Henri Matisse would work on a commission for a wealthy Russian art collector, creating The Dance, an image which would seem to depict Rudolf Steiner’s description of the interaction of red and green (see Figure 6.23). As Steiner led his audience through a thought exercise on the impact of placing red figures on a green ground, he says “I would have to paint them as if they were dancing in a ring. A ring of red figures dancing in a green meadow would appear quite natural” (1971, 14). The movement of Matisse’s nude figures is free and light, aided by his effortless linework. But their dark red hue and carved anatomy may add a note of dangerous power. Their bodies veer off and then back into the circle, their gazes are not on one another but at the ground, off to the side, or inward. Their feet fly over the ground, bending it with the tips of their toes. In interviews about his life’s work, Matisse considers each color as a particular force. His Fauvist use of color did not seek to harmonize the colors, balancing a dominant color with responsive colors, but rather to marshal each color in its full strength so that they might sing together (Matisse, Guilbaut, and Courthion 2013).

238

The Science of the Invisible

Figure 6.23 The Dance, by Matisse, bears an uncanny resemblance to Steiner’s color lecture image of red figures on a green field, and embodies a very similar philosophy about the spiritually charged potency of colors. classicpaintings / Alamy Stock Photo.

During these same final pre-war years the cubist innovations of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque initially took the focus off color as they sought to change the way that space is depicted. Experimenting with multiple perspectives and a breakdown of the distinction between figure and ground, analytical cubism may have adopted its muted palette of greys and browns as a way of simplifying colore in order to better focus on the new style of disegno. However, later synthetic cubism, and post-cubist movements such as futurism and vorticism, did not hesitate to add bright saturated colors into the mix of elements now at play within their images. In the next chapter we will be looking at the ways modernist artists, particularly those at the influential art school of the Bauhaus, sought to assimilate the twin aspects of turn-of-the-century color theory—the empirical and the spiritual. Before we move on to that discussion, we will look at one more landmark use of color, created by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich—Black Square. Black Square, first exhibited in 1915, bears many of the qualities which Hilma af Klint had quietly developed in her work nine years before (see Figure 6.24). In this composition, which critics have called the “zero point” of painting, objective depiction is completely discarded and an intangible world of feeling is held up as the highest or even the only value in art (Drutt 2003). Malevich, like many spiritualists of the time, knowingly exploited the spiritual traditions of Russia and the East. He consciously draws upon the potency of the icon in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, reducing the visible to simple geometric shapes of black and white. In this work he is advancing the modernist faith in the symbolic power of such basic geometric forms as the circle, triangle, and square with an understanding of black and white, a sort of alpha and omega of color, in spiritual 239

Color Theory

Figure 6.24 Malevich’s Black Square seeks to establish the most potent elemental arrangement of color and form possible. A black square introduced into a white square is suprematism’s ultimate spiritual event. The purity of the artist’s statement is perhaps undermined, however, by a joke about race. incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo. terms. This is color as a force as old as creation, the first stirrings of Genesis. From this zero point, Malevich proposed to build a new visual language of pure expression. The painting predates Rudolf Steiner’s color lectures by many years but the same strong current of thought is evoked by his notions that white and black are of the soul and of the spirit. And Steiner’s statement “If you use black on a white surface you introduce spirit into it; the effect of a black stroke, of an area of black, is to spiritualize the white,” aptly describes the dynamic at play in this simple symmetrical placement of a black square on a white canvas (Steiner 1971, 21). Here formalism, an approach to art which emphasizes the form (in terms of such things as lines, shapes, and colors), is not an anodyne set of tools we use to make a composition. It is a spiritual philosophy that takes those forms as spiritual forces in the artist’s hands. Where Hilma af Klint’s work would rest in obscurity only to rise to some celebration over a century after its creation, Black Square had a profound impact in its day but has had a tumultuous life since then and a whiff of scandal quite recently. While enjoying a brief renaissance just after the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian avant-garde art soon became a target of Stalinist repression (Schjeldahl 2003). Kazimir Malevich was convicted as a formalist, and 240

The Science of the Invisible

his art was confiscated (Schjeldahl 2003). Arguably some of his fame in the West is due to this creative martyrdom. But then there is the context-shifting discovery, made only in 2015 by researchers at State Tretyakov Gallery in Russia, who used a microscope to discover a message hidden under the paint (Neuendorf 2015). The lettering appears to read “Battle of negroes in a dark cave” and is thought to be referring to an 1897 comic by Alphonse Allais—a flat black rectangle captioned, “Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night” (Neuendorf 2015). Considered a witty remark in its day, the joke has a clear relationship to other racist imagery of the period which mocks the aspirations of Black people, ridicules their appearance, or simply treats the spectacle of black bodies as entertainment. The hidden quote raises doubts about the seriousness of Kazimir Malevich’s spiritual project, and provides a helpful reminder for our study, which is that even when couched in a rhetoric as abstract and far from political realities as can be imagined, concepts of color are always mingled with the full range of other cultural attitudes we carry with us—and in Western industrial societies often quite pointedly connected to the issue of race.

Conclusion Let us touch again on Lovecraft’s extraterrestrial color, a “something, I know not what” of vision. On the one hand the master of Gothic horror is saying this is a color unlike all others. But he is equally trading upon color’s more general reception as an experience we can never quite put into words. At the very moment in history when colorimetry (the precise measurement and specification of colors) became possible, the idea that color is fundamentally connected to some transcendent reality was more popular than ever. Just as color science was able to speak confidently of color’s three measurable properties by which all colors could be classified, widespread spiritualism proposed that color is no more measurable than the aetherial body. And we have indications that it was common to hold beliefs consistent with both sides of this coin. For the interpreter of auras was quick to hold up Kirlian photography as evidence of the scientific validity of their world view. And the proponent of an empirically validated color model or new industrial standard for colors was wont to discuss the ideal harmony or energetic vibrations of a particular color palette. This chapter has paired Albert Munsell with Rudolf Steiner, whose lifespans overlapped within just a few years, and whose relative impact on color theory has not been reflected in the history of color theory. Munsell is of course found in most color theory texts, while Steiner is almost completely absent from those accounts. And while Steiner’s particular brand of color theory did not spawn any significant art movement in his name, neither did Munsell’s. But both names were on the lips of many of the most important and influential artists of the twentieth century, particularly at the Bauhaus. And the spiritual approach to color theory which Steiner exemplified was at least as consequential to the history of modern art as was Munsell’s color sphere. We will explore more about this duality, and the effort to synthesize the empirical with the spiritual, in the next chapter. For it was at the Bauhaus that the art establishment made its most serious effort to date to conform with the needs of industry, even as they embraced a faith in art as a means of accessing the spiritual. And we will learn that the fate of the Bauhaus was mixed, as were the results of this effort to unify these competing visions of color.

References Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, 2015. Louis Prang Papers, 1848–1932. https://www.aaa.si.edu/ collections/louis-prang-papers-9709/biographical-note.

241

Color Theory Ashcraft, W. M. and E. V. Gallagher, 2006. Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, vol. 3. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Ashworth, W. B., 2015. Patrick Syme—Scientist of the Day—Linda Hall Library. Kansas City, MO: Linda Hall Library. https://www.lindahall.org/patrick-syme/. Babbitt, E. D., 1878. The Principles of Light and Color. New York: Babbitt & Co. 10.5479/sil.212066.39088000131623. Baker, C., 2013. “Behind the red triangle: the Bass pale ale brand and logo.” Logoworks. https://www.logoworks.com/blog/ bass-pale-ale-brand-and-logo/. Birren, F., 1969. A Grammar of Color: A Basic Treatise on the Color System of Albert H. Munsell. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. Blaszczyk, R. L., 2012, The Color Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bragdon, C. F., 1932, The Frozen Fountain: Being Essays on Architecture and the Art of Design in Space. New York: A. A. Knopf. Calkins, M. W., 1901. An Introduction to Psychology. New York: MacMillan Company. Colville, W. J., 1913. Mystic Light Essays. New York: Macoy Publishing & Masonic Supply Company. Drutt, M., 2003. Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications. Eddy, M. B., 1908. Rudimental Divine Science. Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society. Franklin, C. L., 1893. “A new theory of light sensation.” Science 22, no. 545: 18–19. Froebel, F., 1985. The Mottoes and Commentaries of Friedrich Froebel’s Mother Play. Translated by Henrietta R. Elliot and Susan E. Blow. New York: D. Appleton and Co. Goethe, J. Wv., 1971. Goethe’s Color Theory, American ed. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. Hallam J., S. Egan and J. Kirkham, 2016. “An investigation into the ways in which art is taught in an English Waldorf Steiner school.” Thinking Skills and Creativity 19: 136–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2015.07.003. Hatt, J. A. H., 1913. The Colorist. New York: D. Van Nostrand Co. Heimann, P., 1972. “The ‘Unseen Universe’: Physics and the Philosophy of Nature in Victorian Britain.” British Journal for the History of Science 6, no.1: 73–9. “Home of theosophy burns; incendiarism suspected in destruction of Steiner’s temple near Basle,” 1923. New York Times, 2 January. https://www.nytimes.com/1923/01/02/archives/home-of-theosophy-burns-incendiarism-suspected-indestruc-tion-of.html. Hornung, D., 2005. Color: A Workshop Approach for Artists and Designers. London: Laurence King Publishing. Kaplan, F. L., 1919. “Color tendencies in modern textile design.” Color Trade Journal 9: 14–15. Kinchin, J., M. Hoch, T. Harrod, T., and A. O’Connor, 2012. Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Kries, M. and Av. Vegesack, 2010, Rudolf Steiner: Alchemy of the Everyday. Stuttgart: Vitra Design Museum. Kuhn, T. S. and I. Hacking, 2012. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lang, M., 1940. Character Analysis Through Color: A New and Accurate Way of Revealing the Secrets of Personality. Westport, CT: Crimson Press. Leadbeater, C. W., 1903. Man Visible and Invisible: Examples of Different Types of Men as Seen by Means of Trained Clairvoyance. New York: John Lane. Lewis, D., 2012 The Feathery Tribe: Robert Ridgway and the Modern Study of Birds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Long, J. T., 2011 The New Munsell Student Color Set, 3d ed. New York: Fairchild Books. Lovecraft, H. P., 2016. The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. New York: Quarto Publishing Group USA. Matthews, J. M. (ed.), 1921. Color Trade Journal, vol. 9. New York: Color Trade Journal, Inc. Matisse, H., S. Guilbaut, and P. Courthion, 2013. Chatting with Henri Matisse: The Lost 1941 Interview. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. Munsell, A. H., 1905a. A Color Notation, a Measured Color System, Based on the Three Qualities, Hue, Value, and Chroma, With Illustrative Models, Charts, and a Course of Study Arranged for Teachers. Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Co. Munsell, A. H., 1905b. Munsell Color System: Crayons, Enamel, Cards, Balls, Spheres. Boston: Wadsworth, Howland & Co., Inc. Munsell, A. H., 1907. Children’s Studies in Measured Colors. Boston: Wadsworth, Howland & Co., Inc. Munsell, A. H., 1920, Grammar of Color. Westfield, MA: Strathmore Paper Company. Munsell, A. H., 1973. Munsell Diary: volume a, 1899 through May 1908. New York: Rochester Institute of Technology. https://www.rit.edu/cos/colorscience/ab_munsell_diaries.php.

242

The Science of the Invisible Neuendorf, H., 2015. “Shocking Insights into Malevich’s ‘Black Square’.” artnet News. https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/ kizimir-malevich-black-square-363368. Pillsbury, J. P., 1895. “A scheme of colour standards.” Nature 3, no. 52: 390–2. Richardson, J. and W. Swainson, 1831. Fauna Boreali-Americana: Zoology of the Northern Parts of British America. London: John Murray. http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/ice/id/1366/rec/4. Ridgway, R., 1891. A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. Ridgway, R., 1912. Color Standards and Color Nomenclature. Washington, DC: Ridgeway. Rorke, M. H., 1931. “The work of the textile color card association.” Journal of the Optical Society of America 21, no. 10: 651–3. Ross, S. A., 2007. “Let There be Light: The Healing Art of Spectrome-Chrome.” WRF. http://www.wrf.org/men-womenmedicine/spectrochrome-dinshah-ghadiali.php. Saccardo, A., 1981. Chromotaxia. Patavium: Typis Seminarii. Schjeldahl, P., 2003. “The prophet: Malevich’s revolution.” New York Times, June 2. https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2003/06/02/the-prophet-2. Schwarcz, J., 2003. “Colorful Nonsense: Dinshah Ghadiali and his Spectro-Chrome Device.” Quackwatch. https://www. quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/spectro.html. Schwarz, B., 1983. “A study of Rudolf Steiner’s first Goetheanum.” M.A. thesis, Michigan State University. “Scientific American, June 9, 1877: prevalent manias,” 1877. Scientific American, vol. 36. New York: Munn & Co. Shepherd, A. P., 1954. A Scientist of the Invisible: An Introduction to the Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Steiner, R., 1964, Arts and Their Mission. Rudolf Steiner Archive. https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA276/English/ AP1964/ArtMis_index.html. Steiner, R., 1971. Colour. Forest Row, Sussex, UK: Rudolf Steiner Press. Steiner, R., W. Kugler, and L. Rinder, 1997. Knowledge of Higher Worlds: Rudolf Steiner’s Blackboard Drawings. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Syme, P. and A. G. Werner, 1814. Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, vol. 2. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne and Co. Uhrmacher, P. B., 1995. “Uncommon schooling: a historical look at Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, and Waldorf education.” Curriculum Inquiry 25, no. 4: 381–406. Vanderpoel, E. N., 1903. Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color. New York: Longmans, Green and Company. https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/colorproblemspra00vand. Westermann, I. M., D. Lomas, H. Zander, and P. Rousseau (eds.), 2013. Hilma af Klint: A Pioneer of Abstraction. Stockholm, Sweden: Hatje Cantz. Wiggin, K. D. S. and N. A. Smith, 1895. Froebel’s Gifts. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

243

CHAPTER 7 HIGH MODERN: COLOR USE AT THE BAUHAUS AND IN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

At last, however, he came to a halt. He was describing, as all young poets are forever describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked (and here he showed more audacity than most) at the thing itself, which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. After that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre. Virginia Woolf, Orlando In a 1937 interview recorded for BBC radio, Virginia Woolf discussed the uselessness of dictionaries (Macdonald 2016). For if one already knows the word they have in mind it will help them find it, but dictionaries utterly fail us in our most pressing need for words—deciding which to choose and the proper order to put them in. One might make the same argument regarding color models such as the one Munsell constructed: the colors are all filed there in a manner that makes them easy to find, but what we ought to do with them now that we can find them remains a mystery. Indeed, Woolf goes on about the difficulty words present to the writer in much the same way we will find Josef Albers does about colors for the painter. Words are always changing, she tells us, and never exist by themselves but always hang together in groups. They mean different things to each of us and on different days. They live not in dictionaries but in the mind, where they serve to indicate the multifaceted world by being multifaceted themselves. In the epigraph above, the young boy Orlando, not yet grown into a woman, is brought up short by the difficulty of selecting words to match a particular color. Woolf tells us the color has destroyed the poetry, but also that words have a reciprocally devastating effect on nature. This seems to be in keeping with an idea that enjoys wide currency today; that there is something about color—something we know not what—that cannot be described. And we are often unhappy with the too analytical results of applying words to visual art. The puzzle of early twentieth-century color theory is that we had succeeded, in some sense, in describing color quite precisely—so that a particular color might be specified to the printer and a reliable match will result. The artists and theorists discussed in this chapter, from the Bauhaus to the New York school, were no more clear on this gap between empirical description and experienced phenomenon than we are. They girded round themselves numerous dictionaries of color, and honed their definitions of a “true” red or a “full color” green, all the while pointing elsewhere, outside of our reality, to a spiritual world submerged in color. In Orlando, Virginia Woolf pursued color doggedly, even as she noted the dangers of doing so in words. She introduces us to a boy with “eyes like drenched violets” and describes his Queen, the first Elizabeth, as having yellow eyes, like a hawk. She places the boy in the light from a stained glass window depicting his ancient family’s coat of arms. His head of dark hair, red cheeks, and almond white teeth are thus illuminated by the sun. His strong lean body is painted in the colors of a leopard. His hand, as it pushes the window open, is colored “red, blue, and yellow like a butterfly’s wing.” In these lines Woolf revels in a very ancient notion of color. It is color as signifier of something real within the world, and color as a transformative element in the 245

Color Theory

light, suffusing that which it strikes with symbolic power. Later, and again pondering the struggle to write, she rails against nature for creating us out of such diverse stuff—of “rainbow and granite”—and links color to memory. All the variegated flotsam of our experience is stitched together by a single thread guided by a seamstress she names Memory. She then switches the matter, holding that the items threaded—“those little colored rags”—are themselves memories. These rags present themselves to our mind’s eye, and flit away again, with little or no warning and making the task of storytelling well nigh impossible (Woolf 1928). This sensitivity, to the poor match between the phenomena of our lives (of which we seem to take color to be salient) and the means we have to name them, would guide much of the art and philosophy of the twentieth century. In Chapter 8 we will consider Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour and the weight he gives to the limits of what can be said. For this chapter we find both a flourishing of new color models and a growing abandonment of them by those who would paint. While Johannes Itten formalizes the color wheel most commonly taught to young art students today, Josef Albers moves away from color models entirely, and into a direct study of color as deceiver. And Jackson Pollock replaces theory with action, putting the rainbow and granite realities of nature in play on his canvas, rather than using the canvas to describe those forces. This chapter’s focus on two more-or-less tightly defined vectors—the Bauhaus (in its three sequential locations) and the New York school of abstract expressionist painters—is a necessary simplification of the cluttered reality of color theory and color use in the mid-twentieth century. The ground has been set in Chapter 6 so that the effort at synthesis that the Bauhaus represented, explored in the first section of this chapter, is readily apparent. The transition to the United States, a result of the devastation of World War II, but also a moment at which the contradictions of that synthesis could be overcome or at least forgotten, is likewise narrowly focused on the work of a handful of artists and critics. Within the New York school we find a devotion to a purely spiritual or anti-utilitarian color approach that nonetheless retained certain prejudices about color as being decorative and feminine. The milieu in which the Bauhaus school was founded was one of successive and competing art movements, or “isms.” Impressionism, Fauvism, cubism, and post-impressionism, which flourished in the one or two decades immediately adjacent to the turn of the century, were all already receding into the past. The work those movements had done to unmoor color from observation, and to compress and shatter the picture plane by leveling the visual field in patches of color or through a confusion of figure ground relationships, had liberated a new generation of artists from traditional concerns. These artists sought the new forms of art that must rise after the overthrow of the old. And the idea that history had a spirit demanding progress in certain inevitable directions was very much a guiding principle. The expressionist groups the Blue Rider and the Bridge were centered in Germany and nurtured several of the young talents who would join the school. This German expressionism, as well as futurism in Italy, was somewhat less relevant by 1919 when Walter Gropius first began to hire teachers, while dadaism, surrealism, de Stijl, constructivism, and suprematism were either the newest thing or yet to come. These last noted “isms” formed the immediate context for the school’s utopian ideals. They confirmed and conflicted with Bauhaus principles in various ways but in general formed the world from which Gropius sought to retire— espousing a non-dogmatic approach to the arts that revived craft while embracing modernism.

Before the Bauhaus The small collection of artists, architects, and other creative professionals who gathered as instructors at the Bauhaus in its short fourteen-year history formed a critical mass of disparate avant-garde approaches to color. Many of them were explicitly connected to theosophy or similar spiritualist movements while also being knowledgeable about advances in color science. The discussion of color theory at the Bauhaus is complicated by 246

High Modern

their use of words like “objectivity” and “functional” to refer to widely divergent methodologies and intended outcomes. Today, when we refer to Bauhaus education and formalism we generally do so with little or no conception of the eclectic spiritual notions that contributed to the atmospherics surrounding the birth of those ideas. Besides the esoteric spiritual leanings of several of the instructors, and their embrace of the ongoing radical re-evaluation of the purpose of creative practice, there was the traumatic experience of World War I to be assimilated. All of these contributed not merely to an atmospheric we might struggle to grasp, but veritable weather systems of context that have since passed away, leaving us with a collection of relatively sterile ideas and doctrines. We should note some of the experiences of key members of that group previous to joining the faculty. Wassily Kandinsky had already secured an international reputation as one of the first purely non-objective artists. He also became well respected as an art theorist with the publication of his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which is notable for its devotion to theosophical principles. Having begun life as an economist, and serving on the faculty of a significant art school in the nascent Soviet Union, he was committed to the notion that art must transcend the material world and that color, disassociated from observation, was central to that effort (see Figure 7.1). His critique of Western culture was that it was overly materialistic and was in need of a spiritual healing that only the arts could provide. Such opinions put him at odds with more populist tendencies in his home country but also are part of the contradiction within the Bauhaus idea (Kandinsky et al. 1964). Kandinsky’s long-time ally in art and education, Paul Klee—with his musical rather than materialist background—was creatively disinclined to present a systematic set of laws of color. Nonetheless his Pedagogical

Figure 7.1: Kandinsky argued that art must serve as a spiritual antidote to the materialist tendencies of the modern age. Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo. 247

Color Theory

Sketchbook—a collection of his notes for teaching at the Bauhaus—gives us a clear, if poetic, approach to color that comes from a lifelong struggle with that subject. His decision to forego a path into the world of music and into the visual arts went against his parents’ preference and set aside certain advantages he had in that direction precisely because he sought to express himself in a field that he saw as more open to new experimentation. Though occasionally spiritual in tone, his writings on art do not derive from a particular espoused tradition (Klee and Moholy-Nagy 1968). In contrast to that ambiguity we have Johannes Itten’s avowed Zoroastrianism to consider as part and parcel of his commitments as an artist and educator. More clearly committed to education per se than either Kandinsky or Klee, Itten takes his place in a particularly German, but internationally consequential, tradition of educational reform that includes Froebel (the originator of the Kindergarten movement) and Steiner (“Waldorf ” or Steiner schools). Actually an avowed follower of Mazdaznan—a revival of Zoroastrian ideas that originated in the United States—Itten incorporated rituals and practices of that faith into his extremely influential “Initial Course,” the required entry level course for all Bauhaus students, constituting a probationary precursor to admission to more specialized areas of study. This course, itself the basis of foundations art curricula to this day, included the twelve-part color wheel, with its sets of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors now universally taught in primary education the world over. All three of these important and early members of the Bauhaus faculty had been associated with expressionist art movements in Germany before and/or during World War I. Movements such as the Bridge and the Blue Rider were in sympathy with the Fauvists’ radical claiming of the psychological means and ends of art—and with the spiritual exploration of the preceding decades. But these artists—Itten, Kandinsky, and Klee—also sought to find methodologies and theories that could help solidify and transmit their artistic practice. They would go on to build an apparatus for doing so at the Bauhaus.

The Bauhaus idea The Bauhaus or “House for Building” was described by its founder Walter Gropius as an idea. Though its realization is a matter of debate, that idea was to form a school not constrained by any overly prescriptive dogma, and free from association with a given person, structure, or curriculum (see Figure 7.2). It was simply a school devoted to the reunification of art and craft, and the tearing down of walls dividing the practice and experience of art from everyday life. Self-avowedly utopian in its intentions, the Bauhaus was thus allied with several other movements of the period including constructivism in the Soviet Union and De Stijl in the Netherlands. It was also therefore at odds with the many dystopian or anti-rational responses to World War I—as well as pre-war social, political, and economic upheavals—including Fauvism and dada. This idea, that the divergent strands of modern society such as science and religion or creative expression and industrial production could be reconciled, faced inevitable challenges. Those challenges were ultimately rendered moot by the greater peril of National Socialism—and the premature closing of the Bauhaus as a result of Nazi interference may be the reason we are able to cling to the idea of the Bauhaus as a singular entity. If it had gone on for decades, those internal contradictions may have torn it apart. At any rate we can easily see contradictions manifested in the earlier and later stages of the school, loosely corresponding to its initial period based in Weimar and subsequent flourishing in Dessau. Despite those internal contradictions, the Bauhaus was an idea that inspired devotion and that was given concrete vitality in the form of a true community of eclectic teachers and students. It was a unique virtue of Gropius, whose inclination towards a more industrial application of their work would eventually win out over more expressionist tendencies at the school, to attract and retain the loyalty of rather more spiritually inclined artists. Kandinsky and Klee had their disagreements with the functionalist drift of the school but stayed with 248

High Modern

Figure 7.2: Feininger’s woodcut of a cathedral adorned the cover of the original Bauhaus prospectus, proposing a modernism in which spiritual needs would be satisfied by an art that dissolves the divide between high and low art. © DACS 2020. the program and voiced approval of the presence of disparate viewpoints in competition with one another. This is not to say that divisions amongst the student body, more or less mimicking the political divisions imperiling the Weimar Republic, were always absent or inconsequential. And Itten’s Mazdaznan enthusiasms were at times the cause of competing cliques within the community and were clearly thought of as a problem by some at the school (Neumann 1993).

Bauhaus terminology It is worth taking some time to sort out a few of the terms the members of the Bauhaus were prone to use and the preoccupations they signify. Perhaps the most central and confusing pair of terms are form (and formalism) and function (or practical application). We are today quite familiar with the phrase, attributed to American architect Louis Sullivan, “form follows function,” and are apt both to take that as the straightforward expression

249

Color Theory

of Bauhaus ideals and to assume formalism to be a kind of functionalism and vice versa. Form and function in their Bauhaus manifestations were in fact somewhat opposed, each problematic in its own right, and one of many internal conflicts that Walter Gropius aspired to synthesize. While form does refer to the concrete or visible elements of expression—which the Bauhaus instructors distilled down to the kindergarten concepts of line, basic shapes, primary colors, and so on—the emphasis on form at the Bauhaus was an emphasis on subjective responses to those forms and/or the spiritual powers those forms embodied. As such, formalism became dangerously associated with tendencies in art seen as overly subjective or individualistic. Such subjective leanings were detected in Kandinsky’s educational programs for the Soviet state and led the Soviet art education apparatus to reject his proposals. But Bauhaus sensibilities were just as likely to be offended by overly formalist work, as in the case of Oskar Schlemmer, the director of theater programs at the Bauhaus from 1920 to 1929. Upon departing for another position, he wrote in a letter to a friend: Hannes Meyer (Gropius’ successor as Director of the Bauhaus, and a committed communist) and a group of students reject the Bauhaus Theater productions as irrelevant, formalistic, too personal. Kandinsky supported and defended me, as did Klee—and both said: the people at the Bauhaus will only later realize what they have lost. Wingler and Stein 1969 In that quote we can see the opposition between formalism and “relevance,” which may be taken to mean socially relevant or relevant to the lived needs of the people—and thus closely related to function. On the other hand, a purely functional approach ran the risk of being seen as overly materialistic, profit driven, or devoid of meaning. These problems were exacerbated by the rejection of avant-garde art by the general public. Those at the Bauhaus with Marxist leanings thus had to contend with the specter of being accused of taking an elitist approach to art and design. This may have been especially painful for the artists advancing avant-garde programs, as they were seeking to build an art that was universally accessible, based on colors and forms that would have an inherent power to affect the viewer regardless of background or education. As Paul Klee put it poignantly in a lecture given in 1924 titled On Modern Art: We still lack the ultimate power, for: The people are not with us. But we seek a people. We began over there in the Bauhaus. We began over there with a community to which each one of us gave what we had. More we cannot do. Klee 1924 In the study of color, these tensions created two overriding drives. The first was an abhorrence of color that was either overly decorative or superficial—as in architecture, some color schemes were derided for obscuring or negating the space. But, secondly, the resulting search for color that is not superficial but rather of a higher significance was, in turn, in danger of being seen as overly subjective or spiritual. Thus formal studies and quests for spiritual truth were constantly taking on the rhetoric of objectivity and universality. Kandinsky sought colors that arose from “inner necessity,” while Itten emphasized the “objective” nature of modernist discoveries in color theory. Although artists such as Paul Klee referred to the qualitative as opposed to quantitative nature of color on a fairly regular basis, there was nevertheless a strong desire to quantify and standardize color in the manner that Munsell had achieved. 250

High Modern

Color Use Activity 7.1 The artists of the Bauhaus were interested in breaking the visual world down into its most essential elements. In color this quest reinforced the idea of primary colors and basic shapes which were also key elements of early childhood education—an area of innovation in Germany. The primary triad of blue, red, and yellow tended to win favor over a set of four including green, or other selections, possibly because of the cultural significance of the number three. As to shapes, the circle, triangle, and square are listed as most basic—along with their three-dimensional analogues the sphere, cube, and pyramid or tetrahedron. The attention given by the ancient Greeks to these shapes supported this interest, as does the simplicity of constructing their forms. It was a simple step, of the sort that again the ancient Greeks would make, to associate each of the three primary colors with a particular one of the three basic shapes. Additional social or cultural properties, such as earthy, heavenly, proud, withdrawing, and so on, were then used to describe or even justify the match between color and shape. And, finally, mixtures of shapes such as lozenges (a square plus a circle) and pentagons (a square plus a triangle) were paired with corresponding mixtures of colors (the secondary colors of orange, green, and violet) as objects to be studied for further theological or psychological significance. Famously, when he was head of the wall painting workshop at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky sent out a questionnaire to all Bauhauslers asking them to identify which of the three primary colors they associated with each of the three basic shapes. The fact that most respondents confirmed his own theory on the matter may be significant or may be due to the uncontrolled circumstances of the experiment. As in previous chapters, if you are working on the following activities in a group setting, compare and critique your work. Color questionnaire Using a ruler and compass, draw a circle, square, and equilateral triangle in as perfect a form as you are able, and so that the shapes have roughly the same area. Then consider the direct translation, below, of the questionnaire distributed at the Bauhaus by Kandinsky. Give thought to the matter and respond to the questionnaire accordingly. Profession: Sex: Nationality: For purposes of investigations, the wall-painting workshop requests solutions to the following problems: 1. Fill these three forms with the colors red, yellow, and blue. The coloring is to fill the form entirely in each case. 2. If possible, provide an explanation for your choice of color. Explanation: The Bauhaus, ed. Joseph Stein, 1969, 74 Color shape exercise A common exercise given to students in the Basic Course at the Bauhaus was to construct various shapes and color them in with carefully selected colors. Create a color–shape wheel, using compass and ruler, with the three basic shapes equidistant around the perimeter. Then construct combined shapes at points

251

Color Theory

on the wheel equidistant between the basic shapes. These “secondary shapes” may vary from person to person as a combination of circle and triangle (for instance) may result in something resembling a teardrop, a three-sided form with rounded corners, or some other form. Simplicity should be the goal, however. Finally, fill in the basic shapes with the colors you currently hold to be most appropriate, and fill in the secondary shapes with colors created by mixing the colors of their constituent forms. Annotate your color–shape wheel with psychological, theological, or other cultural traits you associate with the primary color shapes, and then the combinations of those traits you associate with the secondary color shapes.

The “Basic Course” Even at the time of this writing the foundations art curricula at most accredited art schools are dominated by ideas of formal analysis that are explicitly tied to our received understanding of Bauhaus pedagogy. And indeed the exercises in manipulating simple lines, shapes, colors, textures, and so on given to current first year undergraduates do superficially resemble those given at the introductory or “Basic Course” at the Bauhaus (also called the Preliminary Course or Vorlehre). Johannes Itten was among the first instructors hired by Walter Gropius to work at the Bauhaus and was immediately put in charge of that crucial course. Itten’s earlier pedagogical training had put him in a position to appreciate both the elementary shapes identified by experts in childhood development as the circle, triangle, and square as well as a conception of psychologically primary colors defined as those whose qualities partake of no aspect of another color. Thus an ideal of the perfect (geometrically Platonic) circle or square was likened to the ideal of a “pure” red or green as those which in no way suggested either blue or yellow. In much the same manner as other self-evident mathematical concepts, these basic elements of the visual world were considered to be objective truths (Wingler and Stein 1969). However, Le Blon’s three- and fourcolor process, and the eventual use of such processes as CMYK, suggest that the obsession of avant-garde artists with deducing the basic elements and particularly the basic colors of some universal visual language, up through the middle of the twentieth century, had as much to do with the needs of industry and an aesthetics (even a spirituality) rooted in the concept of the machine as it did with the realities of painting. The Basic Course also sought to engage students with materials in open-ended tactile experimentation designed to elicit their natural affinity for one or another medium of expression, thus serving as a sorting mechanism for the placing of students in a particular studio area after completing the Basic Course. That specialization, in turn, would ideally lead to a capstone consisting of a collaborative applied building project such as the construction, furnishing, and decoration of a home—thus reuniting the arts and crafts, creative expression, and daily necessity. Some of this later curriculum is no longer dominant in art education, or is subject to periodic revivals of “service learning” or internship-based projects. But today’s introductory or foundation curriculum is frequently devoted to rote learning of the formal elements which are seen as a set of basic tools to be mastered before learning to create in a given medium. It is an approach which has entirely forgotten the political and spiritual context which had given it meaning. In adopting Bauhaus terms and pedagogy today, it is important to be aware that those formal elements were originally seen as active, nearly animate forces. And formalism was part of a world view more or less lost to us today. For example, as preparation for a day’s class work, Itten regularly led his students in breathing and callisthenic exercises designed to strengthen their concentration. Far from being philosophically neutral, these exercises were fundamental to Mazdaznan religious practice, along with vegetarianism, colon cleansing, and 252

High Modern

other ascetic disciplines. In the course of his work in the classroom, Johannes Itten found many converts to his brand of neo-Zoroastrianism. It is hard, but important, for us to remember how unlike our own culture the Bauhaus was, and how enmeshed formalism was in that milieu (Neumann 1993). We might also note that the words of the Bauhaus masters in general, and of Johannes Itten in particular, make it clear that imitation and repetition of an instructor’s own style by students would have been a practice in contradiction to their pedagogical philosophy. In fact what Walter Gropius was doing in selecting the most progressive and avant-garde artists he could find and giving them broad freedom to teach as they chose was expressing a faith in the power of fresh creative thinking to stimulate talent and provoke new solutions to society’s challenges. Itten derided teaching from some syllabus dictated by teaching colleges as being like those doctors who simply dole out pills and never seek to cure the problems ailing their patients. And Gropius asserted that in the Basic Course, “Concentration on any particular stylistic movement was studiously avoided.” Of that title, “Basic Course,” Itten wrote, in Design and Form, “Originally this title indicated neither a special syllabus nor a new teaching method.” He goes on to identify three goals of the course, the first of which was “To liberate the creative forces and thereby the artistic talents of the students . . . Gradually, the students were to rid themselves of all the dead wood of convention and acquire the courage to create their own work.” Second to this goal came the aforementioned exposure to various materials such as metal, stone, wood, paint, and so on. And third was the more familiar “principles of creative composition,” which include what he called “laws of form and color” which “opened up to them the world of objectivity” (Itten 1975). So we find that Itten, and many of his contemporaries, believed in principles of form and color that were objective. These laws seem to replace the previous grounding of art instruction in the careful copying of the work of masters or of nature more directly. In those cases the observable model formed a sort of objective touchstone against which performance could be measured. Artists at the Bauhaus, both of a more expressionist and a more utilitarian bent, indicated a self-consciousness about being accused of overly subjective teaching or creations. They sought a greater truth that transcended the materialism of naturalistic imagery while avoiding the pitfalls of a total dissolution of reason and civilization. The term “objective” came to stand for this goal, even as it seemed to mean different things to different people.

Itten’s color wheel As we have seen in previous chapters, the precise geometry of a color wheel or other model depends upon numerous theoretical commitments. The number and identity of the primary colors is always significant, as is the theorist’s embrace of color harmony on the one hand and the empirical data of color perception on the other. In these matters Itten leaned towards simplicity and balance, creating a color wheel that is easy to learn and retain, but relatively disconnected from color science (see Figure 7.3). Notwithstanding this assessment, Itten’s color wheel and color sphere are clearly efforts to synthesize the material and spiritual traditions of color noted in the previous chapter. He embraces, for instance, the prismatic order of the colors—arranging them around the circle in accordance with their sequence (though not their proportions, as in Newton’s wheel) in the rainbow. Given the widespread use of this model to this day, his approach has been remarkably successful. Regardless of how committed a theorist may be to empirical methods, all color models contradict the essentially phenomenological nature of color. Color, being the very material of visual experience, can only be abstracted from that experience in problematic ways. All color models help us to imagine that the properties of color might be meaningfully considered in and of themselves, and present us with an object of contemplation that seems to transcend reality. Itten’s color wheel in particular forms a kind of mandala—a model of the cosmos that displays properties of color in an orderly fashion linked to macro and microcosmic insights. His 253

Color Theory

Figure 7.3: The color wheel adopted by Itten, with its easy-to-remember geometry combining three primaries, three secondaries, and six tertiaries, has become the default color wheel to teach to children the world over, despite how little it is supported by color science. It is a form that is easy to remember, easy to use for constructing theoretically balanced color palettes, and resonates with the sort of spiritual geometries seen in George Field’s color star and in various types of mandalas. © Peter Hermes Furian / Dreamstime.com.

“Farbenkugel” is commonly translated as “color sphere” but he uses the term “color star” in his book Design and Form (see Figure 7.4). That star pattern allows him to peel the sphere in segments like an orange—showing off the full surface area of the sphere at a glance. But, given its clear resemblance to a star or sun, it is hard to escape the connection to the forty-eight-ray sun image on the cover of such Mazdaznan literature as the Sun Worshipper periodical published in Chicago by the founder of that sect, Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish (see Figure 7.5). Likewise, the geometry of Itten’s color wheel conforms beautifully to ancient numerological forms, as well as Babylonian number systems, far more than it conforms to the characteristics of the visible spectrum. The first commitment of Itten’s color wheel is to a set of three primary colors identified as red, yellow, and blue. These primaries are arrived at by a kind of inner contemplation of the objective essence of the colors in which the “true” red is that which we subjectively know to be most set apart from blue or yellow. The primaries are placed at the points of a geometrically perfect equilateral triangle, evocative of Christian symbolism. We have noted the interest by Goethe and others in identifying the three primaries with the Christian Holy Trinity—and Mazdaznan theology, being inclusive of the Christ story, allows for similar interests. Yellow is placed at the top of this triangle—a departure from Goethe’s model and an embrace of yellow in its Zoroastrian role as symbol of divine light and knowledge. The remaining nine points of the wheel may be located by a geometric construction process in which one rotates and superimposes the existing form upon itself. The next 254

High Modern

Figures 7.4 and 7.5: Itten’s color star has a geometry strikingly similar to that on the cover of a periodical, The Sun Worshipper, which spread the word of Itten’s Mazdaznan faith. © DACS 2020. Photograph by Priya Kambli.

one places an inverted equilateral triangle over the first in order to locate the secondary colors of orange, green, and violet—briefly forming a recognizable Star of David before altering the contours to create a hexagon. Finally, this six-pointed figure is again shifted and superimposed over the whole, thus locating the six tertiary colors (blue-green, yellow-orange, etc.) and forming a twelve-sided figure. The advantage of the twelve points is that they also allow for the oppositions built into models based on four primary colors. Specifically, it allows the secondary color of green—which is a primary color in some competing systems—to take up its position opposite red. As any clock face does, Itten’s star and color wheel cleanly divide into halves, thirds, and quarters. It was this property of the number twelve, as opposed to the less easily divisible number ten, that led the ancient Sumerians to adopt a base sixty number system. It is that tradition that gives us our manner of telling time, marking the months of the year, and measuring angles or feet and inches. This twelve-part color wheel is taught to young and old art students today in much the same manner as the periodic table of the elements—an arrangement of the colors according to their physical properties, guiding our exploration of complementary effects such as simultaneous contrast, warm and cool colors, desirable color palettes of dyads, triads, split complements, and so on. As such, the model makes it very easy to remember and apply all those rules. But the placement of the colors, and the hues selected to go in those places, is based entirely on an effort to hardwire cultural values into the form of the color model. It is likely this very cultural hardwiring that accounts for the incredible success of this model in the face of its inaccuracies regarding such matters as which colors are true complements. In general, Itten’s approach to the formal elements in the Basic Course began with the contrasts that can be identified by manipulating a given medium. The search for contrasts itself was a means of locating the

255

Color Theory

elements. So, by guided observation a student can be led to identify texture as an element by first noticing the contrast between smooth and rough. In color he identified seven contrasts using the three-dimensional model that is an extension of his color circle towards white at one pole and black at the other—essentially the same model developed by Runge. Itten’s color model then serves as a means of more readily visualizing the various color contrasts and harmonies in much the same way that Munsell and others envisioned their own models functioning. At the Bauhaus we also see Itten and Kandinsky both identifying the primary colors with the three basic shapes—yellow with the triangle, red with the square, and blue with the circle. These associations, derived from basic forms of the kindergarten philosophy of early childhood education, were given with confidence in their objective validity. But they begin to call upon what Goethe called the “ethico-aesthetic” expressive values of shapes and colors. Heaven, earth, matter, spirit, and so on were associated with certain colors and shapes. Though Kandinsky and others at the Bauhaus would argue these are objectively observable in the forms themselves or else in our innate response to those forms—arising from inner necessity—we can only describe them as cultural signifiers. These elements, furthermore, can be mixed in consistent ways, according to Itten. As blue is associated with the circle and yellow with the triangle, their mixture creates green and also a sort of bulging three-sided form he describes as a spherical triangle. Likewise red squares and yellow triangles give rise to orange trapezoids while blue circles and red squares combine to create violet ovals. Not one to shy away from consistency at the expense of credibility, Itten continues further, discussing each color’s essential psychological character and showing how those effects also contrast and combine in accordance with the color relationships. So red as power and yellow as knowledge combine to create orange, whose nature is proud self-respect. And that orange self-respect is contrasted with the submissive faith of blue, which is orange’s complementary color in Itten’s system. In this way the twelvepoint color wheel becomes inscribed with cultural narratives having theological and gendered overtones. As mandalas serve in Eastern thought as a means of inner contemplation of cosmic order, the color wheel mirrors both subjective or psychological states as well as forces conceived of on a biblical scale. In the postscript to his book Art of Color, Itten describes the study of color in the rhapsodic terms common to many color theorists: These laws shine forth in the rainbow, and are discernible in the artificially constructed color sphere, extending and enlarging the pure hues and their mixtures into the polar regions of black and white . . . The serious study of colors is an excellent means to the cultivation of human beings, for it leads to a perception of inner necessities. To grasp these is to experience the eternal law of all natural generation; to recognize necessity is to surrender self-will and serve the Creator—to become Man. Itten 1962

Ostwald Wilhelm Ostwald helps us see the contrast between the earlier Weimar incarnation of the Bauhaus in which Johannes Itten was prominent and the later, more industrially focused entity it came to be in Dessau. Ostwald also traces a path in reverse of Albert Munsell but therefore covering much the same territory. Where Munsell was an artist drawn to scientific and industrial methodologies in color research, Ostwald was a Nobel Prizewinning scientist—one of the founders of physical chemistry with many contributions to modern industry to his credit—who was drawn to develop a color order system in service to the color harmonies perceived by artists. Ostwald visited the United States in the first years of the century and there met Munsell, the two of them finding a basic affinity at that time. Years later, Wilhelm Ostwald’s position had perhaps moved on, and when he visited the Bauhaus he found himself profoundly influenced by that most poetic of artists, Paul Klee. 256

High Modern

Ostwald, unlike Munsell, would hew to the principle of balance and harmony in his model, creating a symmetrical double cone based on color measurement by machine (see Figure 7.6). Rather than relying on perceived differences between color samples, as Munsell did, Ostwald used spectrographic color measurement—or colorimetry—to establish stages between colors. Although he used the logarithmic scale dictated by the Weber-Fechner law to create those steps more in accordance with perception, his model was seen as more objective and was embraced by Joost Schmidt and László MoholyNagy, two later period Bauhaus instructors, in their art and instruction at the school. Moholy-Nagy referenced the objective and quantitatively measurable nature of Ostwald’s system in describing his so-called “telephone paintings”—a series of artworks produced in enamel on metal by a sign manufacturer—allegedly by specifying Ostwald codes and spatial coordinates on a graph paper over the phone to the factory foreman. This is of course the fulfillment of a dream of color standardization held dear by such nineteenth-century theorists as Pillsbury. Despite this fabled objectivity and utilitarian aspect, Ostwald’s model is a veritable spinning top of balance, much more harmonious than Munsell’s irregular color solid (Bergdoll and Dickerman 2009). By what mechanism, then, did Ostwald achieve this balance? Ostwald’s model begins with a hue circle, as nearly all color solids had thus far, but with 100 steps around its circumference. These hues, which Ostwald called “Full Colors,” were positioned in much the same manner as Munsell’s—that is by optically blending two colors and giving them opposing positions when their blend is a perfect grey. But rather than working in perceived stages outwards from that center grey, as Munsell did, Ostwald began with a fixed and perfectly circular circumference and worked inward. And he did so by colorimetric measurement rather than relying on an average viewer to judge the steps. Inevitably the interior steps appear unequal, because he has forced saturation scales that Munsell showed have varying perceptible

Figure 7.6: Ostwald’s color solid, a double cone, forces the empirically irregular geometry of color into a perfectly balanced whole, in conformity with his monist beliefs. colorsystem.com.

257

Color Theory

lengths into a symmetrical form, but that overall form is more amenable to the plotting of color harmonies. Arguably, if the machine is considered more objective than the human perceiver, these internal steps that appear unequal are truly equal. And this argument is perfectly aligned with Ostwald’s avowed monism—the belief that the apparent heterogeneity of the world we perceive is an illusion and that the true reality is in keeping with ancient Greek notions of perfection (Ostwald and Birren 1969). When viewed in cross-section, each segment of this solid is made up of a triangle pointing sideways. Thus a cross-section running through the entire model—across one color section as well as the section of its complementary color—will appear as a diamond. The outermost tip of each triangular section is the full color with no black or white, while the other two tips are black and white themselves. A monochrome grey scale thus makes up the interior edge of the triangle, while the other two edges are filled by sequential steps from white or black to that color. Again here, Ostwald has leveled off irregularities in the lightness and darkness of various hues when seen at full strength, choosing to depict the hue circle at a stable horizontal to the vertical of the grey scale. In this matter, Munsell’s more ungainly structure is closer to our perception that, for instance, purple is noticeably darker than yellow. Wilhelm Ostwald’s color system may owe its simplicity of form to his faith in monism. Though an atheist, Ostwald’s belief in color harmony relates to his general conviction that divisions in the perceived universe are possibly illusory, and certainly secondary to a greater unity. Indeed, monism, recognizable to us from the Greek Parmenides in Chapter 2, has a lot in common with the unifying philosophy of the Bauhaus. The unity of all human endeavor is a frequent touchstone of the writings of Walter Gropius. In his 1923 essay, The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus, he wrote, “This dawning recognition of the essential oneness of all things and their appearances endows creative effort with a fundamental inner meaning. No longer can anything exist in isolation” (Gropius 1975). As such, Ostwald was the perfect color theorist for the late Bauhaus—combining all the necessary functionality and rhetoric of science with the beautiful symmetry of an intuitively recognizable unity.

Klee Paul Klee’s theorizing and instruction was amongst the least dogmatic of those propounded at the Bauhaus. His was a humble creed, but a well-worn quote of his shows great spiritual ambition: “Art does not reproduce the visible; it makes visible.” Where Kandinsky implied laws that might be tested in a laboratory, Klee used metaphors and suggestion in a body of work that resisted grand statements and the hubristic sense of ego typical of modernist artists. Where Moholy-Nagy adopted a confident and apolitical embrace of the means of industrial production, Klee poked at our faith in machines with a gentle humor (see Figure 7.7). And where Itten drew upon the certainty of the religious convert, Klee spoke up for a humanism imbued with doubt. In his lecture On Modern Art he began by making an analogy of the artist as the trunk of a tree. The tree takes in impressions of the world through its roots—we might notice that this is an invisible, below-ground, world— and from those nutrients produces foliage above, “As, in full view of the world, the crown of the tree unfolds and spreads in time and in space, so with his work” (Klee 1966). Thus Klee gives us a notion of the artist as conduit from the invisible spiritual world to the visible and material realm of appearances. Klee’s analysis of the formal elements, given in that lecture and in his book of lecture notes, Pedagogical Sketchbook (published by the Bauhaus and designed by Moholy-Nagy), persistently describes them as active forces—better denoted by arrows than numbers or contours. His line, famously, is a point “going for a walk.” Lines then slide sideways or rotate in space to create shape. Shapes extrude into the third dimension to create spaces. And color rules over them all. Color rules, because Klee recognizes that it is inseparable from form— that the coloring-in model in which we contrast disegno with colore is misleading. Color inevitably partakes 258

High Modern

Figure 7.7: Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine encapsulates his whimsical approach to art, and suggests a willingness to call into question the faith in the machine age common at the Bauhaus and elsewhere at the time. Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images. of the point, the line, and the shape—of measure and weight—and in some ways of space as well. But color adds the immeasurable aspect of quality. Throughout his analysis, an Aristotilean attention to the hidden forces of the natural world dominates. Klee discusses the action of water and air, the tension between bones and muscles, the processes of plants, and the will to fly contrasted with the inevitability of gravity. In approaching the topic of color he begins with the extraordinary increase in energy which a black mark brings to a white page. This he calls the black arrow. To this he adds the red arrow, the hot arrow, the cold arrow, and so on. Soon the unleashed and combating energies of the full spectrum are discussed. For a moment he gives us a color model that, like Steiner’s and Kandinsky’s, is not laid out in the order of the spectrum. The red–green dynamic is laid across the top of a central grey space, blue-orange below that, and violet-yellow at the bottom. But, pointing out that it is “not logical” to bring the steps in contrast in this manner, he shifts to the diagonal opposition Itten has acquainted us with, and the color wheel takes on its red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet spectral sequence (see Figure 7.8). 259

Color Theory

Figure 7.8: Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook first proposes an arrangement of colors in which they are not in the usual order of the spectrum, but he then shifts to what he calls the “spectral color circle” before finally asserting the simultaneity of color everywhere at once. Paul Klee’s 1953 Pedgogical Sketchbook, page 16 © Faber and Faber Limited. Klee concludes his Pedagogical Sketchbook with these lines: We have arrived at the spectral color circle where all the arrows are superfluous. Because the question is no longer: “to move there” but to be “everywhere” and consequently also “There!”(1968) With those words he seems to adopt a monist attitude towards time and motion—that they are illusions attributable to our limited human perspective. Regardless of the philosophical grounding, Paul Klee gives us color as the ultimate means of rendering the invisible visible. It is the materialized form of a reality that lies outside of sequence and beyond dimension. Meanwhile, his writings avoid the application of specific psychological and cultural associations with particular colors as earlier German theorists, from Goethe to Itten, were wont to do. In the English language translation of the Pedagogical Sketchbook, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (art historian and wife of László) gives us a concluding note in which she invokes the metaphor of art not as a window nor as a mirror, but as a lantern making visible that which ordinary eyes cannot see: “There are endless phenomena all around us on which to aim Klee’s ideas like a searchlight” (Klee and Moholy-Nagy 1968). 260

High Modern

The dadaist counter-narrative The narrative that links the Bauhaus to the New York school, which dominates this chapter, is one that reflects its participants’ faith in the myth of modernist progress. This is not to say such progress doesn’t occur but that the story of that progress is essentially mythologized. However, in the midst of optimistic, constructive, futureoriented movements ranging from futurism to suprematism, there were those who saw the march of history along dramatically different lines. Though expressionism as a movement was somewhat out of favor in Germany by the time the Bauhaus was founded, dada and surrealism continued to critique the dominant historical narrative. The alarming social, economic, political, and intellectual changes of the early modern period, and the catastrophe of World War I, served to confirm a more negative appraisal of the state of humanity in the minds of many. That war led immediately to the formation of dadaism, a radical embrace of the irrational and unpredictable in life and in art. The related movement of surrealism drew upon the overthrow of reason—that is to say of the transparency of the mind to itself—represented by the new science of psychology. A key trait of early modern “isms” is the manifesto—a self consciously polemical, inevitably political, broadside against other stylistic movements and in favor of a new creative program. These manifestos often included a series of slogans—short, succinct statements suitable for shouting in the public square and meant to vividly capture the essence of the movement. Dadaist manifestos occasionally indulged in the standard practices of the genre but also took the opportunity to mock them. Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto 1918 begins with an entertaining satire of the form including the lines: To put out a manifesto you must want: ABC To fulminate against 1, 2, 3. Harrison and Wood 1993 He goes on to paradoxically assert, “I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles.” His tongue-in-cheek approach to the manifesto makes clear the dadaist commitment to absurdity. Given that fact, and its consequent negation of any clear system of art making, we can hardly expect to find a coherent dadaist color theory. There are, however, some clues in dadaist attitudes and practices which we might extrapolate from. In Hulsenbeck’s “First German Dadaist Manifesto” he tells us “Life appears as a simultaneous muddle of noises, colors, and spiritual rhythms” (Harrison and Wood 1993). And we might expect some effort to retain that muddle in the works created by the artists involved in the movement. Indeed, in some ways we do find that, but the dadaists soon found muddle was hard to maintain, and that “higher structures” lurked in the most absurd places. And an intuitive or random approach to color use would be perfectly natural for a dada artist, but will often lead to clean, bold design well suited to the needs of artists more interested in building a new utopia. The general attitude of dada towards color would follow the lines of its overall premise. Those lines include the use of structures whose own destruction is part and parcel of their design; a harnessing of paradox and internal incoherence that has great creative potential. The color wheels and solids of so many color theorists, and the great Bauhausian effort at synthesizing color lore, would be nothing more than fodder for a satirical comedy in the hands of the committed dadaist. The surrealist counter-narrative Unsurprisingly, dada was not a movement built to last. Even without the pressure to commit oneself to one or another political party, the ideology of the group could only undermine efforts to maintain unity within its 261

Color Theory

ranks. One can just imagine one dadaist accusing another of not being consistent enough in their inconsistency. Surrealism, however, had rather more potential as an organized movement, although the partitioning of the two movements is partly a matter of our retrospective view. Conceptually we can see that the dadaist tapping into irrational forces works well within a surrealist framework, whereas a dadaist embrace of surrealist (or any other) principles would not endure. Inspired by the writings and clinical practice of Freud and Jung, the surrealists were critical of the use of reason and logic in understanding reality—and were even in doubt about reality itself. They agreed with the Bauhauslers that the world as we see it with our eyes is not fundamental, but they rejected both what they saw as spiritual mysticism as well as faith in science and reason—both of which were important aspects of Bauhaus ideology. So what kind of color theory does the surrealist commitment to the world of the unconscious imply? Freud’s own writings tell us relatively little about color per se, but his writings on dreams are strongly imagistic in nature. André Breton took advantage of this in arguing for the relevance of painting in his 1928 essay, Surrealism and Painting. He begins the text with the statement, “The eye exists in its primitive state”—and goes on with a lengthy contemplation of sight as it relates to the eye but also to memory, dreams, and other activities of what we might call the mind’s eye. His pivot from physical sight, his turn away from the colors of the rainbow, is made with the question, “But who is to draw up the scale of vision?” The remainder of the paragraph contemplates the things remembered, those forgotten, those intentionally forgotten and those accidentally recalled. He ponders the sight of the things he loves—“in their presence I no longer see anything else”—and the things he has no courage to see. Breton’s “scale of vision,” it would seem, explores the psychological and cognitive limits of what we can picture in our minds and potentially on canvas. Refusing to order color as it happens to be in the rainbow, he orders sight according to its psychological properties (Harrison and Wood, 1993). In fact there is not the same kind of bar for the surrealist, as there is for the dadaist, to serious contemplation of some color model or another. Carl Jung’s statements on color, and the resulting color orders that emerge in that tradition, include an embrace of two existing models. One is the red, yellow, green, blue model that does follow the spectral order but went somewhat against the grain of color science at the time—or at least allies itself with Hering and against Helmholtz. The kind of oppositional thinking (as between red and green or blue and yellow) that Jungian color models subscribe to was linked to an adherence to Goethian, and through him Aristotilian, color theories. This allegiance along Germanic intellectual traditions is also apparent in Ostwald’s model. The second Jungian model to crop up is along Rosicrucian and alchemical lines. Much of Jung’s final work was on alchemy—a kind of resuscitation of those concepts in terms of their psychological relevance and as signposts of the unseen world of the collective unconscious. Therefore Jung spoke of the ancient Hypocratic humors and Greek basic colors in terms of processes of blackening, yellowing, whitening, and reddening (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood). We present the above information more as fodder for speculation than as evidence of surrealist practice. Indeed the evidence leans towards there being a certain sympathy between surrealist and Bauhaus color notions—since both believe in a reality that is superior to the one we see with our eyes. Surrealist painter Giorgio De Chirico sought to escape the limits of logic and common sense and stated that “when I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful.” What remained, then, was a means for depicting dreams and other images of that unseen higher reality in a manner that made clear that they were not depicting a more mundane vision. A whole cabinet of tricks of the trade emerged, generally requiring enough verisimilitude to present the viewer with a scene about which one could say “That angle is not logical” (see Figure 7.9). As such, the color effects called upon might simulate naturalism or deny it, as the case demanded. Uncanny hue choices, impossible shadows, tooperfect paint handling, and the like are easily seen in numerous examples of surrealist art (see Figure 7.10). The surrealist sought to convey enough light logic that his or her subversions of it would be unnerving. 262

High Modern

Figures 7.9 and 7.10: De Chirico’s Mystery and Melancholy of a Street and Magritte’s The Assault use the uncanny hue choices, impossible shadows, and too-perfect paint handling, typical of surrealist art. Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo / © DACS 2020. Stefano Ravera / Alamy Stock Photo. 263

Color Theory

In 1924, André Breton concluded his “First Manifesto of Surrealism” with the following passage, which echoes Paul Klee’s somewhat contradictory faith both in the visible and the invisible, and goes on to list a few of the sights that are, and aren’t, part of that superior reality: Surrealism is the invisible ray which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. “You are no longer trembling, carcass.” This summer the roses are blue; the wood is glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression on me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere. Harrison and Wood, 1993

Color Use Activity 7.2 Johannes Itten adopted certain breathing and callisthenic exercises from his Mazdaznan faith as a part of his instruction techniques in the Basic Course at the Bauhaus. Those disciplines were seen as a means of focusing the students’ attention before engaging with color, texture, materials, and so on in various class activities. In the wake of World War I, dada artists, rejecting the claims of Western culture to be based upon rationality and civilized conduct, embraced irrationality and paradox. They sought out methods of creating art that were random and absurd. And the working methods of abstract expressionist artists were often discussed in terms of Eastern spirituality, with the artist tapping into states of consciousness that transcend ordinary thought. The following activities are meant to provide a suggestive sampling of extra-rational activities considered by many to be conducive to creative breakthroughs. As such, and in the context of an exercise from a text, the experience is unlikely to replicate the effects of a fully committed immersion in a particular given method. Those who find an affinity with one of these disciplines are encouraged to pursue that with greater consistency. Breathing and stretching exercises Engage in breathing and exercise regimes as an aid to color use. At its most accessible, this may involve simple mindfulness exercises (breathing, meditation, yoga) available in numerous print, online, and instructional settings. Minimal efforts bring immediate gains in focus and potential sensitivity to visual phenomena. Devotees to more rigorous traditions make stronger claims for what can be achieved with a more profound submission to the process. The twenty-first-century artist Ian Whittlesea presents the exercises which were so influential to Johannes Itten and many of Itten’s students at the Bauhaus in Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture. The book includes illustrations and original texts authored by Mazdaznan founder Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’Nish, as well as some disturbing information about Ha’Nish’s own conduct and about the racist and eugenicist elements of Mazdaznan thought, from which Itten was not immune. Whittlesea also produced Becoming Invisible (London: Everyday Press, 2014), which purports to provide guidance in a method for breathing out clouds of color in each of the seven colors of Newton’s spectrum. The book culminates with these instructions: The next step is to begin to bring the clouds together. Closer and closer. Finally they will merge, and as they do so they will form the white cloud. Step into the cloud and you will become invisible. 44–6

264

High Modern

Color application by dadaist and surrealist principles The notion of dadaist principles is itself an oxymoron, and therefore a concept very appropriate to dadaism. Participants in this exercise might therefore deviate impulsively and without conscious deliberation from the prescribed activity. 1. Using an eight-by-eight chessboard as a painting surface, paint each square according to a random procedure. Place tubes of paint—the three primaries, three secondaries, black, and white—in a bag. Pull a tube out without looking, and apply that paint to square A-1. Repeat the procedure for A-2, and so on, until all sixty-four squares have been painted. Hang the chess board on the wall and refer to it as art. 2. Invite several people over for a formal dinner party. Gather any spreadable condiments that happen to be in your kitchen and place these in the center of the table. Rather than plates, complete each table setting with a mirror set between fork, knife, and spoon. Indicate to the guests that they should use the palette of colors available in the form of condiments to feed their reflection/paint on the reflection of themselves in the mirror. 3. Purchase an old framed print from a flea market such as of a landscape or religious motif. Remove any glass that may be covering the surface of the print and alter the image with contact paper in various patterns, faux wood and marble, and so on. Replace faces with patterned circles. Replace the sky with faux wood grain. Change shadows to a marble texture, and so on. Abstract expressionist mark-making Place a large sheet of canvas or paper on the floor and remove your shoes. You are trying not to make a mark in the ego driven manner of most creative effort. You are trying to let the mark happen according to its own inner necessity. If necessary, repeat the breathing and stretching exercises of Ian Whittlesea. Prepare a brush or bowl loaded with paint and stand directly on the center of the work surface. Consider a snowfall gradually loading down the branch of a tree with tiny flakes. As the flakes pile up, the branch bends down. You are aware of a similar process occurring inside you, building up creative energy gradually but decisively. When the bunch of snow is suddenly released both snow and bough are set in movement. Your arm moves spontaneously and a mark appears. Relax, step back, and regard this work. You have made a mark on a blank surface. Paul Klee commented on the astonishing energy of a black mark on a white page. He called it the black arrow. Whatever the colors you chose for paint and surface, and whatever form your mark took, there is a certain energy you have created that is unique in the universe. Most likely this mark is far more novel than any thing you might have consciously designed. The first mark is the hardest to make. Now that there is a definite energy in your painting, the next mark is constrained to a certain degree. What color is called for now? What sort of mark? When a given color and motion come to mind unaided, then obtain the color and make the mark.

Early modern color use We have already seen important aspects of early modernist color use in Chapter 6, and the color palettes noted of the expressionists were very much contemporaneous with the Bauhaus. Those would be the moody greys 265

Color Theory

or starkly contrasted works in black and white, as well as the efforts at rhapsodic or discordant paintings filled with a wild riotous array of colors. Such patterns are frequent enough among those studied in this chapter, and for similar reasons. Perhaps the color work of the Bauhaus may be characterized as more rhapsodic, like Klee’s Fire in the Evening and Kandinsky’s Yellow–Red–Blue, and that of the surrealist movement more alarming and discordant, as in de Chirico’s Italian Square (see Figures 7.11–7.13). The work of the Russian constructivists and suprematists, and that of the de Stijl movement in Holland hewed more closely to predictable color palettes. In Russia, white and red retained their political connotations. White has a traditional vexillological association with monarchy or Tsarism. And red of course connotes the working class and peasants as well as revolution. The white in the French Tricolour, as a corroborating example, represents the king—joined symbolically with blue for Paris and potentially the bourgeoisie, and red for “the people.” Although white could also simply be the neutral white of the page, when used as a color in itself it often had this negative (from a Marxist perspective) connotation (see Figure 7.14). The very place name “Red Square” suggests both a public square and a dynamically revolutionary version of Kandinsky’s square expressed in red by inner necessity. Similarly the de Stijl artists relied upon their faith in the objective purity and perfection of the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue, plus black and white) as the best means of coaxing a new utopian age into existence. Although Mondrian’s early work involved abstraction from nature, it eventually grew non-objective enough to pass as a sort of modern update of Gothic stained glass (see Figure 7.15). It was pure color set within ideal shapes, in perfect harmony—and overall an effort to bring the material in line with the spiritual. A final color option that received plenty of attention in that period was that made available by industrial production. In photography, cinema, and print media these color options were largely simply achromatic tones of black, white, and grey. And industrial color applications were often limited to flat areas of color—as in Moholy-Nagy’s telephone paintings seen earlier. New media that avoided the pitfalls of representational painting, such as photography, photo-montage, and other images made for reproduction, were often limited in palette by default (see Figure 7.16). But the weight of those images on our subsequent reception of artwork has the effect of setting that palette down as implying at times factuality and/or intellectualism and avant-garde radicalism. Later conceptual artists, whom we will encounter in Chapter 8, would find their practice assisted and limited by these associations. László Moholy-Nagy had few equals in his ability to make seamless use of new technologies. His photographs, films, and graphic design (see Figure 7.17) seem to overcome much of the formulaic awkwardness and striving of similar efforts by constructivists, for example. But the dadaist Marcel Duchamp combined much of that effortless quality with a playful wit as well. In Apropos of Readymades he explains the proper method for creating one of his so-called readymades, such as his famous Fountain—a urinal he purchased and signed with the pen name “R. Mutt.” He suggests such efforts should be limited, notes that they may be reproduced in facsimile by simply purchasing another of the raw ingredients, and recommends selection of objects that are neither aesthetically pleasing or displeasing. As color, then, he prefers nothing we might find noticeable at all. Just as he wants found art that seems found, he wants colors that appear accidental. Finally, noting the industrial method of producing and packaging modern paint sets, he concludes that such sets are themselves potential readymades, and defines any painting made with them as a “readymade assisted.” Duchamp’s fun but potentially cynical take on the use of ready-made color had echoes elsewhere—as in the works by Moholy-Nagy already noted and also in the efforts of constructivist artists like Vladimir Tatlin to conduct systematic studies of structures and material coatings (as opposed to canvas and paint) (Duchamp 1996). But in truth, Duchamp was ahead of his time. In Chapter 8 we will find that the pivot to ready-made color in the work of the pop artists is crucial to developments that would make a study of Bauhaus color theory largely anachronistic. 266

High Modern

Figures 7.11, 7.12, and 7.13: Klee’s Fire in the Evening and Kandinsky’s Yellow–Red– Blue show a more harmonious tendency in Bauhaus color palettes, as opposed to the color discord evident in de Chirico’s Italian Square. Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images. Heritage Images / Contributor / Getty Images. Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo.

267

Figure 7.14: Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, by El Lissitzky, uses a clear vexillological (relating to flags) symbolism to evoke the people overcoming the monarchy. incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 7.15: Mondrian’s Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow regards primary colors as basic spiritual tools, whose harmonious balance may shift society towards a more perfect state. Universal History Archive / Getty Images. 268

High Modern

Figure 7.16: Hanna Hoch is among the foremost of the dadaists who created collages from photographic media which were by their nature limited in palette but would thereby create a limited palette aesthetic for work aspiring to a similar serious bent. © AKG Images / © DACS 2020.

Figure 7.17: László Moholy-Nagy handled new media with a rare seamlessness. Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo.

269

Color Theory

Migration to the US Once the Nazi Party came to power, the Bauhaus in Dessau soon lost funding and the use of its buildings. Mies van der Rohe, the school’s third and final director, briefly carried on by re-establishing the Bauhaus in Berlin as a private institution, funded substantially by contracts with industry for wallpaper and furniture designs created at the school. But enrollment in Berlin was low and the political pressure was intense. With their doors summarily locked by the Gestapo on April 11, 1933, they were eventually told they could reopen but subject to various compromising conditions, including that Kandinsky and the architect Ludwig Hilberseimer no longer be allowed to teach there. Citing financial reasons, and thus avoiding any comment on the political conditions they were faced with, van der Rohe informed the students that the faculty had shut down the Bauhaus on August 10, 1933 (Wingler and Stein 1969). Of the nine instructors remaining at the Berlin Bauhaus, five fled the country: Kandinsky to France, where he died in retirement; and the other four—including Mies van der Rohe—to the United States. Of those who stayed, Friedrich Engemann joined the Nazi Party and was therefore able to continue to teach. The others found ways to get by outside of teaching. This one example of migration to the US is typical of the whole— with great numbers of artists, scientists, scholars, teachers, and so on fleeing fascism and, in many cases, ending up in the States. Despite these tragic events, the Bauhaus remains the single most influential art school in the history of modernism, and the names associated with it dominated both their own time and subsequent narratives of modern art. We can only imagine, then, what would have happened if that concentration of cultural capital had not been suppressed. Color theory makes the case that such an alternate art universe would indeed have been quite a different creature. The legacy of German intellectual history would have been preserved as central to that overall narrative. Thus Goethe’s place as a contributor to international color theory, rather than as an important German literary figure, would have been maintained. And the uncritical acceptance of color science in the place of color theory would not have been so complete. As it turned out, Goethe would become a footnote, at best, to standard accounts of color theory, and the culture of the United States would forever affect the way we experience, and think about, color. And what did happen to Germany’s color theorists? Wilhelm Ostwald passed away just as the Nazis were coming to power. Itten had left the Bauhaus to pursue other educational projects, including running his own art and architecture school, well before its ending. Although Mazdaznan was officially banned, his spirituality may have been apolitical enough to allow him to work unmolested throughout the turmoil of the coming decades. Indeed, such Eastern philosophies were certainly not liable to be described as Marxist, and were even fashionable among Nazi Party members who celebrated the supposed connection of Aryan civilization with pre-Christian and occult traditions. And both anthroposophy and Mazdaznan indulged in race and eugenic theories central to Nazi ideology (Ha’nish 2012). Kandinsky, a Russian, was evidently unable to escape associations with Bolshevism even though his own avant-garde artistic credo was out of favor in Russia as well as Germany. Klee was forced by the Nazis to stop teaching and retreated to his native Switzerland where he grew ill and died in 1940. It is left to Josef Albers, a prize student of the early Bauhaus and a key instructor there in its later years, to be the most direct conduit of Bauhaus color theory to the New World.

Black Mountain College It is a coincidence of rather dramatic significance that in 1933, the very year that Nazi Germany was shutting down its most innovative schools, Black Mountain College—a small experimental school focused on the 270

High Modern

arts—was opened in North Carolina. The added fact that Josef Albers was recruited to teach at this innovative and influential school is also quite useful for our story—which involves the transition in color theory from one dominated by German intellectuals to one best suited to American industrial design. Founded as an unusually interdisciplinary and forward-thinking college, Black Mountain placed the arts at the center of its liberal arts philosophy. Among its instructors were such well-known names as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem DeKooning, Buckminster Fuller, and Robert Motherwell in addition to Josef and his wife Anni Albers (a fellow Bauhausler). Influential students included Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly. Many of these individuals would be central both to the initial manifestations of the New York school of artists who promoted the high modern status of abstract expressionism, as well as subsequent movements that would destabilize that triumphalist narrative. Like the Bauhaus, Black Mountain had a brief but astoundingly influential lifespan, and it brought Albers, and his comprehensive understanding of color theory, to a US audience. What he learned in Germany and what he chose to disseminate were, however, distinct things. While van der Rohe and Moholy-Nagy seem to have established a straightforward translation of Bauhaus design principles in Chicago, Albers used his time amongst a new group of independent thinkers to synthesize and, in some ways, transcend the debates of German color theory (Horowitz and Danilowitz 2006).

Albers In Joseph Albers we have a perfect conduit for the entire narrative of this chapter. He was both a student and a teacher at the Bauhaus, and moved with the Bauhaus to participate in all three of its incarnations in Weimar, Desau, and Berlin. Thus his grounding in all that we have discussed before was complete. Then, moving to the United States, he participates in a diverse intellectual community at yet another innovative and influential new school. After Black Mountain, his next move was to Yale University, a school that will have close ties to the New York art world in the decades to come, where he established the first graphic design degree program in the States. Albers’ own creative work is to be closely tied to his acquaintance with the formal elements in general and with color theory in particular. But he will bring to this work a systematic rigor that is nearly mechanical in its rigidity. This systematic approach is not out of keeping with his Bauhaus legacy, but is certainly also well attuned to his new highly industrialized context. Arguably this aspect of his work reflects his new life in a country whose major contributions to culture, according to Marcel Duchamp, are plumbing and bridges. It may also borrow from the conceptual approach of John Cage, whose use of sound is likewise unaesthetic, or post-humanist, as it assembles compositions out of units of audio sensations and, famously, their absence. Josef ’s wife Anni was similarly well connected through these decades. As a woman at the Bauhaus she found she was not allowed to take glass painting or architecture and so ended up in the textiles studio. As a person of mixed Jewish descent, she, and by extension her husband, fell under suspicion as the Nazis rose to power. In the field of textile design she was especially well known for advances in more functional materials as well as pictorial weaving. She was also recruited to teach alongside her husband at Black Mountain and went on to have great success in the US as a designer and writer on design. In a sense their marriage would reflect the connection the Bauhaus forged between academia and industry—with her husband showing a lifelong aptitude both for teaching and administration and with Anni participating more actively in industrial design applications. Josef Albers’ signature body of work is the nearly limitless Homage to the Square series (see Figure 7.18). These paintings—consisting of paint often straight from the tube and unmixed, and applied thinly with a palette knife directly to a white ground placed horizontally on a worktable—repeat a nested composition of 271

Color Theory

Figure 7.18: Josef Albers created more than a thousand of these Homage to the Square paintings, a systematic exploration of the interaction of color. QUANTUM PICTURES / Alamy Stock Photo.

squares placed within each other. He created more than a thousand of these well-known and instantly recognizable works that minimize the decisions the artist needs to make, eliminate brushwork, and adopt a format considered highly neutral from a formalist perspective. That is to say, the square is often described as having the least impact on how we read the colors, liberating them from the task of denoting something in the world. That said, the actual images strongly suggest receding architectural spaces in one point perspective. The nested squares even progress downwards in a manner typical of the perspective arrangement in a large public space. A principle dynamic of each individual painting is the way in which those colors optically advance and recede, and the way in which they affect our perception of each other color in the composition. This focus, on the interaction of color, will give Albers’ color theory its principle preoccupation, as well as its title. Homage to the Square has an interesting relationship to the past and present of non-objective art. It was an immediate predecessor of minimalist and hard-edged abstraction of various types, as well as being evocative of the light and space installations of James Turrell. Looking at earlier works, Malevich’s Black Square and Mondrian’s spare compositions are cited as visually similar but distinct in terms of their aims. The mysticism of those earlier works is nearly expunged from this series, replaced by a methodology that seems to celebrate the alliance of man with machine. Those earlier artists were seeking a perfect, harmonious solution. They sought to find the needle in the haystack—the one placement for a given form within another given form that was most necessary. Homage plays out color combinations of all kinds, harmonious or not. It is an attempt to present color in a compositionally neutral, or at least unvaried, framework. This series of artworks appears to be more a demonstration or experiment in color theory than, for instance, an expression of the artist’s inner 272

High Modern

self. Still, there is the loaded presence of that basic square form dating back to the Froebel blocks for kindergartners and there is the word “homage” giving this unaesthetic series a slight personal tilt. One gets the feeling there is a pragmatism taking over here. We can imagine it as an “American pragmatism,” but we can also suppose that someone as successful in academia as Albers had plenty of that quality innately— the kind of pragmatism that does not deny the spiritual, but prefers to leave the nature of the spiritual largely unsaid. It is an approach that says “What we can control—the medium at our disposal—is the physical world around us. Let us manipulate those things, and attend to them, in as sensitive a manner as we are able. And let us leave the immaterial world at that.” Regardless of whether this was an adaptation to his new home, or something he had always pursued, we can say definitively that it suited the world he found himself in.

Color Use Activity 7.3 A staple of color theory courses is the creation of a color wheel and various color scales modeling the three dimensions of color space. These activities reinforce color mixing skills, careful brushwork, and the use of a ruler and compass while familiarizing the student with the measurable properties of color. They also present an opportunity to confront or ignore the gaps between theory and practice—as when complementary colors do not mix to create grey, yellow shades into putrid browns and greens, and attempts to mix the secondary colors turn out less than adequate. The handy scapegoats of cheap student grade paints and poor execution obscure the fact that many of the theories simply do not work in practice under any circumstances. Color wheel part 1 First, construct a simple line illustration of a color wheel consisting of three concentric rings. The outer two rings will be divided into six equal parts. The center ring will be divided into three equal parts. Using a set of colors that includes the three primaries and three secondaries advocated by Johannes Itten fill in the outer ring of the color wheel. The red, yellow, and blue should be pre-packaged and selected according to the principle that each must not show any hint to the viewer of another color. Thus—a red with no trace yellowness or blueness, and so on. For the secondaries, choose pre-packaged colors (paints, colored pencils, etc.) that seem equally distinct from their parent primaries. Thus—an orange that seems no more red than yellow, and so on. Color wheel part 2 Now, fill in the middle ring of the color wheel provided by mixing the colors used in the outer ring. The secondaries are thus mixed by using the primaries from the outer ring, as is conventional. Strive to create a mixed secondary that matches the corresponding pre-packaged secondary as closely as possible. Now, “back-mix” the primary colors—using the pre-packaged secondaries from the outer ring in an effort to create a mixed primary that matches the corresponding pre-packaged primary as closely as possible. Color wheel part 3 Finally, fill in the three-part inner ring of the color wheel provided by mixing complementary colors in an effort to create grey. As subtractive color mixing (mixing with pigments rather than light) tends

273

Color Theory

towards black, white may be added at this stage. Use the pre-packaged colors from the outer ring to combine each primary with the secondary that is placed opposite to it on the wheel. Strive to create three identical greys. Note any deviations from conventional color theory, potentially including the following: ●

You cannot mix all colors with the set of primaries—as demonstrated by your failure to match the pre-packaged secondaries.

●

You can mix red, yellow, and blue. Those back-mixed primaries are not as satisfactory as the pre-packaged primaries, but the results range from somewhat to absolutely comparable to the disappointing results of mixing secondaries.

●

The effort to mix grey by combining complementary colors has variable, and often disappointing, results.

A further side note is for those who find mixing paint to be intimidating, or wish to do something more playful. Mixing the brightly colored, pleasingly scented, and tactile material of Play-Doh leads to surprisingly good results both in creating secondary colors and in back-mixing primary colors. Color scale 1 Create a value scale of the primary and secondary colors. Create a grid of squares with six columns and nine rows. Fill in the first column of the grid provided with shades of red. Place the pre-packaged red in the center square of that column, white in the bottom square, and black in the top square. Strive to fill in the intervening squares with visually equal steps moving upwards from red, through progressively darker shades to reach black, and moving downwards, through progressively lighter tints, to reach white. Note that adding equal measures of white or black to a color in steps does not result in an even visual progression of that color towards white or black. For instance, if adding measured portions of 5mm of black paint to red, the first such quantity of black added to red will result in a much more dramatic shift in value than the third addition of black. Fill in the next five columns, each with a similar scale of shades of a given color in the spectrum order of orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Strive to achieve unity and evenness of steps across the whole grid. Color scale 2 After constructing another 9 x 6 grid, create a saturation scale by combining complementary colors with black, white, and grey. Fill in the first column of the grid by placing red at the top, green at the bottom, and grey in the center square. Fill in the squares between red and grey with mixtures of red and grey, striving to make visually equal steps. Fill in the squares between green and grey with mixtures of green and grey, striving to make visually equal steps. Fill in the second column again with red and green stepped towards a center grey, but this time generate the steps and strive to reach a middle grey by combining red and green directly, added to some white to counter the trend towards black in subtractive mixing. Repeat this two-part process in the remaining four columns for yellow above and violet below, followed by blue above and orange below. Note the degree to which complimentary colors do or do not combine to make the grey they are often theorized to make. Note also different effects of value and saturation shifts of the hues themselves.

274

High Modern

Some colors are altered more profoundly by small changes of value or saturation. Certain colors may appear to shift—as when yellows appear greenish or oranges appear reddish. *

*

*

There are many color theory books which are dominated by the creation, contemplation, and use of color wheels and scales such as these. For such an extended course in color wheel mechanics, we refer the reader elsewhere. Johannes Itten used his Farbenkugel to guide his students through a tour of his seven color contrasts. And many use these color models much as Munsell used his color solid, to map out and then apply harmonized combinations of colors in various compositions. Locating complementary, split complementary, dyad, triad, and other sets of colors and then applying them to the same simple geometric compositions is a common exercise which Josef Albers described as “worn out.”

Interaction of color Albers first published his color theory text Interaction of Color in 1963 as two large-format volumes—one with text and diagrams and the other with page after page of richly colored, exactingly produced images of two or more colors placed against each other. Albers remarked that its two outstanding features were weight (22 English pounds) and cost ($200). Despite these figures, the first edition quickly sold out, leading to subsequent runs, pocket-sized versions, and a posthumous digital version. But in fact the truly remarkable feature of his color theory text—the one that separates it most sharply from its immediate past—is its lack of a color model. (He also eschews any discussion of optics, retinal physiology, and the physics of light—all of which he points out are irrelevant to the production or reception of art.) Gone is the numerology of primary colors. Gone is the mysticism of color triangles, circles, and stars. And gone is the notion that color can be meaningfully understood outside of specific encounters with colors in context. This commitment to color as it interacts with color is Albers’ chief contribution to color theory, and the reason his book may be the only color theory text to achieve some proximity to color as it truly is (Albers 1971). Another reading of Interaction of Color, however, suggests that the book itself, or rather volume two of the set, is the color model—with volume one as commentary. In this sense the pages themselves, each with its own carefully selected juxtaposition of colors, are like color chips in Munsell’s or Ostwald’s systems. Paging through the book provides a carefully conducted journey through the properties of color in its interactions—reduced to their most basic equations. The whole, then, is an outline of a universe of color experiences, of which the possible variations are infinite. And no particular set of colors is offered as preferred—in the manner of Munsell’s, and many other theorists’, suggested color palettes. Albers notes, in a line reminiscent of Cage, “By giving up preference for harmony, we accept dissonance to be as desirable as consonance.” Albers’ focus on the relativity and instability of color moves him to reverse, as he puts it, the usual order of theory and practice, starting with a rejection of overarching theories or models. Early in his introduction he states, “In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually,” adding, “To this end, the beginning is not a study of color systems.” Indeed Albers makes fairly direct attacks on color theory as it had been practiced for decades if not centuries. He states that “knowledge of acoustics does not make one musical” and argues against “mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of color harmony.” He persists: 275

Color Theory

Equally, a factual identification of colors within a given painting has nothing to do with a sensitive seeing nor with an understanding of the color action within the painting . . . Our concern is the interaction of color; that is, seeing what happens between colors. Discussing color harmonies based upon one or another color system, he notes the myriad ways that color as it is actually applied in a given situation renders such pre-packaged solutions totally unsuitable. He lists the color deceptions brought about by variable sizes of objects, differences between interior and exterior, varied and multiple light sources, and so on—and says we can forget about split complementary colors, color triads or tetrads, and so forth, concluding that “They are worn out.” These lines are clear attacks on most previous color theory, especially those like the aesthetic calculations of Munsell and the abstracted mysticism of Itten. He spares a favorable word for Kandinsky, however, noting his observation that in consequence of the continuous flux in which colors present themselves “what counts is not the what, but the how”—not the identification of color but one’s approach to it (Albers 1971). For all his systematic approach, Albers does hint that the end and the method for reaching it call for a degree of human feeling. He advocates a trial-and-error education about color involving seeing color action and feeling color relatedness. And he broadens what seeing might mean by leaning on the German “Schauen (as in Weltanschauung).” The latter is roughly “world view,” so “Schauen” seems to mean here the way we see things—our relationship to the world we see. Noting that a study of color perception has an inward nature, Albers comments, “As we begin principally with the material, color itself, and its action and interaction as registered in our minds, we practice first and mainly a study of ourselves.” Finally, his emphasis on color as a “deceiver” lends an evocative aura to his discourse. And, though he in some sense is thereby empowering color as color as having a profound and mysterious agency of its own, he is also echoing a well-worn chromophobic theme in Western thought. Josef Albers’ preferred means of color instruction was to have students collect samples of colored paper and, arranging and rearranging them, discover their various properties of interaction. He suggests we search for ways of making a single color appear like two very different colors by placing them on different grounds and, conversely, make two very different colors appear alike in a similar manner. Giving us a window into his classroom, he intones, “On the blackboard and in our notebooks we write: Color is the most relative medium in art” (Albers 1971). At the end of his text commentary, Albers does introduce some color models as a means, now that practice has taken place, to instill some color theory. True to his German roots he uses Goethe’s “color pyramid” to show how we might group colors according to various properties. But the illustrations act very much like a method for organizing the results of so many experiments and not, as in previous treatises, as an object to be studied in itself for what it might reveal about color. For Albers, color simply cannot be modeled in a static form. He wrote that we can conclude that “no mechanical system is flexible enough to precalculate the manifold changing factors [of color in an applied context] . . . in a single prescribed recipe.”

Hofmann Our enquiry into how and in what form the art world center shifted from Europe to the United States is reinforced by the work and statements of two of the most significant members of what would become the New York school—Hans Hofmann and Jackson Pollock. In Hofmann we see a long creative run, spanning both Europe and America, similar to Josef Albers. It was also a career initially driven by teaching and by the frequent accompaniments of teaching—lecturing and writing about art. In contrast, Jackson Pollock was among the first members of the new avant-garde in New York to be born and bred in the States and avowedly unconcerned 276

High Modern

with any need to go on a pilgrimage to Europe or otherwise conceive of his enterprise in terms of European history or culture. Hans Hofmann was an influential teacher, operating a school of his own in Munich and educating several significant artists, among them a number of American artists, before closing the school in 1932. He was nomadic for a few years, teaching at influential schools in California before settling in New York. There he taught at the Art Students League and then opened his own schools in New York and Provincetown—again producing several distinguished alumni (Seitz 1972). His lectures led to several writings on art theory, including a book on his philosophy of art titled Search for the Real, in which he identified abstract art as the means of seeking out reality. The crucial critic and advocate of abstract expressionism, Clement Greenberg, heard him lecture as well and drew inspiration from his concepts, especially as they pertain to the reduction of the focus of painting to the most essential facts of that medium. Among these elements, color is a primary focus in his vibrantly chromatic paintings, contributing much of the energy described in his “push/pull” theory of making art from dynamic tensions (see Figure 7.19). Within this concept, Hofmann indicated that the simultaneous operation of flatness and depth is essential to great painting. He warns against empty canvasses— which may or may not have paint applied to them. For Hofmann, if color is present in an empty canvas it is merely a tasteful application of ornamental design (Seitz 1972).

Figure 7.19: Hans Hofmann’s The Lark is a clear example of the abstract expressionist approach to color that resulted from the migration of European artists to the United States. Here color and paint itself set up dynamic tensions that are considered as timeless truths. Artepics / Alamy Stock Photo.

277

Color Theory

Hofmann’s teaching philosophy is articulated in a very open-minded manner reminiscent of Itten’s and of the kindergarten legacy, in which the individuality of each human being is allowed to emerge according to an inner nature. In On the Aims of Art he says, “Art teaching is not soap manufacture. The value of the artist is apt to be that of differences rather than that of likeness,” posing the question, “Should the lark sing like the nightingale?” (Harrison and Wood 1993). In contrast, that same essay is occasionally dogmatic in its dictates about art itself. The inner necessity of abstraction in art is not in doubt here. Hofmann cites the medium as the primary criteria for its application—asserting that the two-dimensionality of the canvas must be dominant, even as the lines, colors, and shapes on that surface create a push/pull of spatial perception in tension with that flatness. Consider the contrast in these two statements: The highest law of painting is: The entity of the picture plane must be preserved. The picture swings, oscillates, vibrates with form-rhythms integrated to the purpose of spatial (and volumnar) and it resonates with color rhythms balanced, focused and so ordered as to produce the richest intensity of light contrast. Harrison and Wood 1993 In this concept of the painting as a sort of maximally compressed coil, color along with form appears to be in a battle with the painting surface, but resolves itself on that plane by virtue of balance and opposition among the elements of the composition. The end in mind is, as with Klee, the revelation or incarnation of an invisible spiritual reality. Hofmann advocates for a color of “the greatest possible richness and light-emanation-effect,” but this does not necessarily limit him to saturated or full colors. His idea of a pure color acknowledges that any color, whether distilled from the rainbow or the most muted grey brown, is the unique embodiment of itself. And among combinations of color, each emanates a light like no other—and cannot be substituted by anything else. Hofmann also describes color and form (by which we may assume shape, texture—the actual dimensions of the applied patches of paint) as being interdependent. A form must have a color and vice-versa: “By, with and from color, form is intensified in subordination to special and spiritual unity, in large presentation-areas of light and form . . . by means of rhythmic animation” (Harrison and Wood 1993). He describes color in terms of intervals or tensions—the spaces between one color and the next—and discusses color scales at length. These scales may proceed from a given color in any direction, up and down the relative degrees of lightness, ranging across levels of saturation, and shifting amongst the various hues of the rainbow. Thus, a single patch of color has multiple overlapping relationships, by means of these intervals and scales, with every other patch of color in a given painting. As Seitz noted in his exhibition catalog for the Museum of Modern Art, Hans Hofmann’s work was never morbid or filled with anxiety. Hofmann is among the most noted colorists of the abstract expressionists, and that combined with some of his stylistic roamings and pleasurable creations, may have contributed to the sense many had about his work—that it lacked a certain degree of seriousness (Goodman 1990).

Pollock Jackson Pollock’s disinclination to make the pilgrimage to Europe was part of a general anti-nationalist posture, as he also refused to think in terms of an “American Painting.” Such an idea was as illogical to him as American math or physics. We can see that he does not have a “colonial complex” in regards to Europe, and in fact we might see his ascendance as part of America’s growing culturally colonizing presence in the world. The idea that art might be as objective and universal as the sciences is a distinctive mark of this high modern 278

High Modern

era—a facile assumption of universality and a rejection of the notion that their art was shaped by their own cultural context. In some ways this came from a high-minded aspiration to make timeless art and to avoid the propagandistic pitfalls of more subjective and politically engaged art. Pollock was also one of many of this new breed of artist to eschew a comprehensive intellectual or political defense of his art, seeking to establish visual art as a phenomenon beyond language, about which little could meaningfully be said. Aside from his tendency to avoid connecting his theory of art with political agendas, Hans Hofmann had distilled European avant-garde aesthetics and played a large role in disseminating those theories within the US art world. His commitment to a greater spiritual reality allowed him to distance himself from the political at a time and in a place when such attachments were problematic or simply passé. The American emphasis on an art outside of mundane politics can be seen as a turning away from such entanglements in European art, but it is equally a rejection of the overt social and political relevance of America’s regionalist school of previous decades, as well as the officially sanctioned social realism of communist and fascist regimes. Meanwhile the forms of spirituality that had been in vogue amongst many intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic, including theosophy, anthroposophy, monism, and Zoroastrianism (Mazdaznan), which now began to fade from the popular imagination, were rooted in Western disaffection with the materialism and mechanistic determinism of its own scientific and industrial world view. These movements had turned to the ancient wisdom, or fantasies of that wisdom, to be found in Egypt, the Middle East, and India—all parts of the world under European colonial influence. If it is a dynamic of colonialism for the colonizing culture to absorb and mythologize the traditions of the colonized then we can expect Americans in the wake of World War II to turn to the far East, especially Japan, for spiritual inspiration. Indeed we do see this process occur, as a vogue for Zen Buddhism becomes closely associated with the mysticism of abstract expressionism. Hofmann is described by art historian William Seitz as teaching like a “zen guru.” And, in the case of Jackson Pollock, a further layer of colonizing obsession occurs with regard to Native American culture. Jackson Pollock, suggested by Clement Greenberg as well as Life magazine in 1949 to be the greatest living American painter, checks off the box of being authentically American rather than a European import (Hertz and Klein 1990). His origins in the American West are emphasized in the stories told about him, being instrumental to a rugged, independent, rule-breaking mythology of the great modernist artist. When discussing his career we are nearly as likely to talk about him pissing in the fireplace at one of Peggy Guggenheim’s Manhattan cocktail parties as about his serendipitous discovery of drip painting (a discovery which some, including Greenberg, actually credit to Hans Hoffman). The notion that an artist should be free from conventional moral codes had negative outcomes in the personal lives and health of Pollock and many of his compatriots, but may have been conducive to the discovery of new ways of approaching the work of art. One debate that seems to be all but erased in the New York school is whether painting canvases is the sort of thing an artist ought to be doing. At the Bauhaus there were efforts to get away from the bourgeois tradition of painting canvases for the wealthy, which we can see in the courses of instruction designated “wall painting” and “glass painting.” These alternative modes of painting were more suited to the collaborative and public enterprise of architecture so prized at the “house of building” and were not so often productive of portable commodities as are traditional works on canvas. After the politically engaged mural art of the regionalist school in America, whose heyday corresponded with the Great Depression and an intensification of populist sentiment, these debates now hardly registered in American art discourse. The painting did, however, undergo a significant transformation in the New York school’s development of abstract expressionism. Painting became “heroic” and process oriented. The heroic was signaled both by the scale of the painting—a means of transcending the conventional sense of a mere canvas—and by the struggle of the artist with the painting. In this way the act of painting becomes the point of emphasis, rather than the object produced. So a less conventional (or bourgeois) mode of painting canvases leads to an emphasis on the process over the product that, in turn, directs our attention away from the artwork as commodity and towards the spiritual—even shamanistic—work of the 279

Color Theory

artist. In fact Hans Hofmann explicitly described his own work in these terms, as someone for whom the act of painting was a physical struggle with the medium. But it was Jackson Pollock who would most closely be associated with the term “action painting.” He said “Painting is a way of being” and thus once again moved the goalpost of art making, this time from the creation of objects with spiritual resonance to the simple creative act itself, as a spiritual endeavor, regardless of material outcome (Pollock and Tomassoni 1969). Another aspect of Pollock’s career that is always highlighted is the stylistic break he makes with the work of his teacher, the renowned regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Benton’s large-scale populist mural work, rendered in a distinctive variant of the social realist style, shared perhaps two things in common with the all-over drip paintings that would make Pollock famous. Firstly, they are both enormous, or heroic in scale. Secondly, they are both elaborate, even baroque, in their visual complexity. In terms of color use, we can mark a distinction. Much regionalist painting, and related work by members of the ashcan school among others, was dominated by muddy palettes—grimy or moody uses of browns and greys reflecting the hardscrabble reality they sought to reflect. Benton prefers to valorize his working-class subject matter—endowing them with mythological prowess as they tame the American wilderness or erect bridges and skyscrapers. Harmony doesn’t fit as a term for his color schemes, but they are richly colored and take advantage of both high saturation and pronounced chiaroscuro. In the recently restored mural America Today, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, we can see a portrait by Benton of his student Pollock. Pollock is used as model for a man working a forge and appears to us as a modern Vulcan, stoking the fires to create the armor of the gods. Benton’s use of color is part and parcel of this mood—it is muscular and brash. Pollock follows an un-aesthetic path in color. Pursuing an ethic of “truth to materials,” he works with the paints that most naturally come to hand and suggest themselves for his large-scale labors. These turn out not to be carefully balanced palettes of paint packaged up for the artist and sold in art supply stores, but rather industrially-scaled buckets of house paint obtained at the hardware store or found in the back of a barn—the leftovers from a more commonplace notion of the word “paint.” Pollock availed himself of the wide range of industrial paints, aluminum gloss, and products such as Duco and Dev-o-lac available in postwar America (Pollock and Tomassoni 1969). There is an element of the Duchampian attitude towards art materials in this choice—a recognition of the creative potential of selecting and reframing the objects all around us. There is also the Cageian and Albersian attitude towards any given color or color palette as being no more preferable than another—a rejection of the notion of color harmonies. Color in Jackson Pollock’s work, for instance in his famous Autumn Rhythm (see Figure 7.20), is simply another kinetic element in the chaotic cloud of action and reaction that covers the surface of the canvas. Color is a looping clumpy string of paint whipping across the surface in dance with a thousand other lines and dots reminiscent of the subatomic particles of quantum physics. By unleashing these protean forces, the artist is embracing the higher order the dadaists discovered in chance, in an effort to break through to his inner nature or, which may be regarded as the same thing, transcendent reality. As the Italian critic Italo Tomassoni put it, “The act of painting was like a religious ritual which held him in a continual state of lucid delirium” (Pollock and Tomassoni 1969). Although both the spiritual and dadaist/Duchampian aspects of Jackson Pollock’s work are clearly European cultural sources, there is something new under the Western sun in the work of Pollock and his contemporaries. A non-objective painting by Mondrian, for example, has within it the notion of representation. It represents a demonstration of laws, as the de Stijl artists saw it, of color and form. It also represents an ideal harmony and a superior reality that may be described as both present in the work and elsewhere. In contrast, the greatest work of the abstract expressionists is a record of the act of creation by the artists, and a literal manifestation of creative forces in the world. Harold Rosenberg described the action painting as “the idea that a painting ought to be considered as a record of the artist’s creative processes rather than as a physical object” (Rosenberg 1972, 59). 280

High Modern

Figure 7.20: Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm delivers color as an event, not a harmonious arrangement of pre-packaged sets of artist’s colors. Alan Wylie / Alamy Stock Photo.

With painting described in this way we come to see color as an event as well; it is the very stuff of a moment made visual. Likened by Pollock himself to the healing sand paintings of Navajo shamans, which were carefully crafted but then swept away on the winds, his drip paintings nonetheless have their commercial reality to contend with. As extremely large-scale paintings they take the notion of the bourgeois canvas to a whole new level—being inaccessible to the middle class and thus affordable only to large institutions and the very wealthiest collectors, whose homes, museums, and bank lobbies are the only spaces large enough to accommodate them. Even so, the status of the artist, and of the activity of art-making, is raised to such a level that the paintings are almost secondary to them. The essence of art, once reduced to the forms (shapes, colors, lines, etc.) out of which the artwork is constructed, is now transferred outside of the object and into an ephemeral event that cannot be possessed. To a certain degree, Jackson Pollock’s paintings are achromatic. Even when they have color—and despite his use of color marks for their ability to contrast, or stand out, from one another—that color is never conspicuously belabored. It is certainly not the topic of the work, as may be argued of many paintings by Hans Hofmann or Mark Rothko (see Figure 7.21). In some ways there is a rejection of the kind of European formalism that seeks to discuss color in isolation from line and shape. Color is treated by Pollock as indissoluble from paint. At a certain late point in his career called the “black period,” Pollock does eliminate color entirely, making a series of works in black paint on a white ground, revealing a greater focus on the marks themselves. But even without that evident acceptance of the disegno and colore opposition, we would note the overall trend. On the one hand, Pollock’s colors come from a process that is meant to be transparent to the viewer: this is color as the artists found it; this is the color as found material. And if a painting is an event, rather than a

281

Color Theory

Figure 7.21: Mark Rothko’s No. 9 (Dark over Light Earth, Violet and Yellow in Rose) takes the profound and overwhelming experience of color to be the purpose of the painting. Ken Howard / Alamy Stock Photo.

picture, then color does not express some profound truth, it is that truth. But on the other hand there is a rhetoric of seriousness that, even if absent in the artist’s intent, emerges as reinforcing a certain spartan attitude towards color. A relative abstinence from color comes to be associated with the serious work of art. And, when color is used, a decorative association is studiously avoided. Greenberg Clement Greenberg is the pre-eminent theorist of modernist American art, and as such is the favorite target of those committed to a more postmodern agenda. Though his pronouncements on modern art seemed to codify the hubris of the movement—its own sense of historical exceptionalism—his writing was lucid and often dazzling. Born to Jewish immigrant parents, his early writings on art engage with European avant-garde theory within the context of the political positions with which that theory was intertwined, particularly Marxism. By the later part of his career he would refer to something he called the “infra-logic of modernist art.” This is not a term he defines, but we can take it to be the manifest sense of destiny in the steady progress of modern art towards a more stripped-down, essential form of painting. Along the way, from his appropriation 282

High Modern

of the German word “kitsch” to describe and denigrate low-brow art (and his complementary praise for avant-garde art) to his advocacy of hard-edged abstraction, he made the definitive case for American art as the latest torch bearer in that march of progress (Harrison and Wood 1993). Kitsch is described by Greenberg as pre-digested art; culture that asks nothing of the viewer. Whereas avantgarde or high art challenges the viewer even as it critiques itself. Though he did not then delineate how this plays out for the use of various formal elements such as color, we can conclude that a kitschy use of color agrees with the viewer’s preconceptions. It is a color that tells the viewer what it is and what it denotes. This is color that reads itself aloud and permits itself to be pigeon-holed. Finally, kitsch relies upon the availability of a tradition of high art from which to pull its preconceived tropes. Thus if one has come to expect certain colors or marks to be present in a certain kind of art, kitsch stands ready to provide that debased form of culture. Indeed, by 1960 Clement Greenberg had become concerned that abstract expressionism had become reduced to a set of standard practices that artists were beginning to act out in a mere pantomime of creativity. Kitsch is the culture of the masses and we can conclude that there is a color of the masses, even if such a color will always be changing. One fact was widely noted, however, and that is that the masses like color. For the avant-garde, therefore, color is suspect. Greenberg refers often to the age-old notion of disegno and colore as it relates to the ongoing tension in painting between the flatness of the picture plane and the illusionistic modeling of depth. He points out that color has an odd relation to that tension. A richer more liberated use of color is seen as flattening because a profusion of hues reduces the robustness of light and dark structure (value structure) and thus the threedimensional modeling such structures allow. In Modernist Painting he notes that this celebration of color by Venetian painters in contrast to the strong modeling of Florentine painters was such an effort that led to flatter pictures. But Greenberg notes that an emphasis on flatness almost cancels or represses color—restricting color to tightly controlled shapes on a surface (Greenberg 2018). That same essay asserts that “the essence of Modernism . . . [is] the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself.” He argues that as the flat surface of the canvas is the one feature of painting unique to the medium, an emphasis of that two-dimensionality, and an elimination of all distractions from this flatness, is the only path forward for avant-garde painting. This is a refinement of the emphasis on the medium’s properties advocated by Hoffman—a carrying out of early modernist principles to their logical end in a hard-edged minimalist surface. As a child may say when looking at such paintings, “That’s not painting, that’s just paint.” And indeed, painting as paint is not even as extreme as Greenberg’s conclusion would seem to be—as his interest in flatness would not seem to require the use of paint at all. In After Abstract Expressionism Greenberg writes that “Abstract expressionism has worked in the end to reduce the role of colour.” And, in a paradox mirroring the Venetian flattening of pictorial space in the name of color, he says that the artists Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko “turn away from painterliness to save the objects of painterliness—colour and openness” (Harrison and Wood, 1993). Greenberg even supplies us with a set of color rules for painting that is sufficiently “pure” (the use of scare quotes is his, and is a signal he would point to later as an indicator of his objective distance from this paradigm). Colors in a painting must be uniform—with a minimum of variation, flat or untextured, warm or else cool infused with warmth, few in number (two or three is best), and spread over a large area (as he puts it, “more blue simply being bluer than less blue”). The goal of all these rules is not simply chromatic intensity but a sense of almost literal openness. And the question being asked by those pursuing this path is no longer “What is art?” but “What makes art good?” Greenberg concludes that quality in art comes not from superior craft or training—not from anything that can be learned, but from conception, invention, or inspiration. For all the inevitable logic that the narrative of progress in modernist art relies upon, in the end we are left with those three words whose nature cannot be specified or measured, and which can only be conferred upon an artist by those elevated to a position to render judgment. 283

Color Theory

Color Use Activity 7.4 Josef Albers’ pedagogy on color theory at Yale was grounded in collage work, with paper color samples collected by the class as a collaborative effort. However, he was also taken by the colors of autumn leaves in the American Northeast, where evolution has given trees an extra burst of color as compared to European trees. He suggests, then, an “American art form”—the leaf collage. The following exercises combine that inspiration with some salient Albers color activities. Leaf collage basics If you are in a time and place that has leaves in bright fall colors then gather those, in as wide an array as possible, not neglecting leaves that are green and brown as well as the fiery colors that draw the eye. If you are not in such a place, gather leaves, blossoms, strips of bark, and other natural materials. Purchasing a bouquet from the store is an expedient that can be taken in extremis, but alters the conceptual context of the project a great deal. Albers notes that a leaf collage is going to be limited in hue range and saturation. This limitation can actually enhance color sensitivity in the color user—a constraint that strengthens color perception. Dry your leaves, and then do not shy from using blade or scissors to cut them into small regular squares. Adhering the resulting color chips to a stiff board, such as Bristol board, using matte acrylic medium, is an effective process. Color relativity Albers points out that color is the most relative of visual forms, and offers a simple haptic illusion to reinforce the point. Place three bowls of water in front of you, of three distinct temperatures. On one side, place cold water, and place hot(ish) water on the other side, with lukewarm in the center. Place one hand simultaneously in each of the extremes—the hands will deliver the corresponding perception of cold and hot. Then shift your hands into the center bowl—each hand will perceive that same bowl of water differently and in contrast to its previous experience. In color this is called successive contrast—in which perception of a color is altered by virtue of its contrast with what preceded it. Consequently you may see blue when another person sees green. Leaf collage #1 Demonstrate the phenomenon of successive contrast, in which the color you perceive is altered by what you saw previously. For this you will need to find a particularly saturated color sample and place it on a white ground. Stare at the color sample for a full minute, blinking as little as possible. Remove the color sample and stare at the bare white ground. You should see a ghostly after-image of a color that is complementary to the one that was just removed. Experiment with several different colors. Leaf collage #2 Demonstrate the phenomenon of simultaneous contrast, in which the color you perceive is altered by the other colors that are present. For this exercise you will try to make a single color sample appear quite different in different contexts. You will need to find a color sample that can be divided into two small but

284

High Modern

identical pieces. Place these small samples on two differently colored backgrounds so that they no longer appear to be the same color. Experiment with altering the color’s apparent value, by placing it next to very light and very dark backgrounds; its saturation, by placing it next to highly saturated and highly unsaturated backgrounds; and its hue, by placing it next to backgrounds whose hues are distant from each other around a standard color wheel. Leaf collage #3 Again demonstrate the phenomenon of simultaneous contrast, in which the color you perceive is altered by the other colors that are present. For this exercise you will try to make two differently colored samples appear identical or nearly identical. You may wish to start with color samples that are similar in hue but different in value and/or saturation. Place these small samples on two differently colored backgrounds so that they appear to be the same color. This may simply require a shift in the values of the backgrounds or may involve altering value, saturation, and hue. Leaf collage #4 Many color theory courses from the Bauhaus to this day conclude a section of study with an “open” assignment in which students experiment more fluidly with the properties under study—creating original compositions that demonstrate the possibilities those properties hold for the use of color. In this case we suggest this slight modifying constraint: create open-ended compositions, playing with the properties of successive and simultaneous contrast, but also bearing in mind Hans Hofmann’s concept of push/pull. That is, bearing in mind that the two-dimensional surface is paramount, explore the ways various colors—depending on their relative hues, values, and saturation levels—appear to advance and recede in space. Seek out a composition that is dynamically balanced in respect to all three dimensions.

Photography and color At odds with the standards of high art from its invention, photography has an important role to play in the history of modernist color. Although initially seen as the death of painting, and seized upon from the outset as “the pencil of nature,” early photography was easily sidelined as merely imitative of true art. As Alfred Stieglitz and other early proponents of photography as an art form sought to demonstrate the merit of their medium, they pointed to the earliest experiments in color photography as an indication that it would soon have available to it all the means that painting had. But the limitations of those early works in color were too evident, and to the degree that photography was accepted as an art form at all, it won that acceptance on the basis of its exploration of a world in black in white. Indeed the world of photography, seen in black and white, came to assume significant cultural authority. To begin with, it confirmed the disegno prejudice regarding color—that color was unnecessary to a visual description of the world in terms of the shape and sculptural modeling of forms in space. Photography also had the aura of a scientific instrument—an eye that is better than the eye—and we can see black-and-white photography as being a superior form of sight. As the x-ray allows us to see through the flesh and discern the structure beneath, photography—by stripping away color—allowed us to see subtle shifts in light and dark and

285

Color Theory

the recession of space with greater clarity. By the time Ansel Adams made his great images of the American West, a lore and technique had risen up around the creation of perfect black-and-white prints (see Figure 7.22). Adams, and many other photographers and critics, openly dismissed subsequent efforts to create art with new, more widely available color photography technologies. Though they were careful to limit their statements as applying to color technology as it stood at the time and/or to the work of photographers as it had thus far manifested itself, the chromophobic prejudice was clear. The Indian photographer Raghubir Singh recounts how his hero Henri Cartier Bresson rebuffed him and his work because of his pioneering work in color photography. Singh defended the Indian love of all things colorful and decried Western chromophobia, wondering how one could contemplate photographing the subcontinent in black and white (Singh 2006). But photographic work in color was widely considered less refined and unintellectual well into the 1970s. There was a particular horror of the seductive nature of color—and the difficulty on the part of the artist as well as the viewer to see beyond the bright allure of whatever rainbow-colored object was depicted. As color reproduction in magazines, cinema, and television began to proliferate, the notion that color is a vapid distraction appeared self-evident. “Color Sells”—the sort of line a printer would use to encourage ad buys— also confirmed the avant-garde artist’s worst fears about the issue.

Figure 7.22: Ansel Adams’s photographs of the American West are cases in which the best of fine art photography had become linked to mastery of the black-and-white print. Color in modernist photography was frequently denigrated as making the image less serious, and of being suspiciously commercial. Gado Images / Alamy Stock Photo. 286

High Modern

Architecture and color The most famous architectural essay railing against ornament and the superficial application of color associated with ornament was Adolf Loos’ 1908 polemic, Ornament and Crime. This text adopted a rhetoric of sickness, infection, and moral depravity to describe the proliferation of decoration on building surfaces. Loos used analogies we can only describe as straightforwardly racist, colonialist, and celebratory of a Spartan masculinity. He describes the Papuan and the negro as amoral children who impulsively decorate everything around them with ornament, including the tattooing of their bodies. He continues to note that in his own time such tattooing is the mark of a criminal or a degenerate. He declares, “The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use” (Harrison-Moore and Price 2006). This same rhetoric was to become a key element of fascist diatribes against avant-garde art in general, with Adolf Hitler memorably announcing the purification of German culture by destroying the degenerate pestilential disease of all progressive art. Decrying the sort of person who “runs around in a velvet suit,” Loos concludes his essay with a brief discussion of the kind of aesthetic reserve appropriate to the modern man: “[M]odern man needs his clothes as a mask. His individuality is so strong that it can no longer be expressed in terms of items of clothing. The lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power.” The architects of the Bauhaus, as well as those of the de Stijl group, futurists, and constructivists, were very much in this anti-ornamental tradition. Indeed it was Mies van der Rohe who adopted the motto “Less is more” to define an overall architectural aesthetic that eschewed any kind of superfluous decoration. These architects were, however, very interested in color schemes or programs for their buildings. These programs were intended to add clarity to their designs, emphasizing their depth, cubic structure, or layout. Rather than covering the surface with decoration, ornament, and splashes of color, they sought to reveal the form through flat panels of a limited palette of solid color. Alternatively, primary colors were arranged harmoniously to activate the space and bring about an ideal life for the building’s occupants (see Figure7.23). In this way the color schemes they explored were subservient to an overall vision of transparency and sublime functionality, but were far from the barren whiteness many associate with Bauhaus architecture today. In truth the adoption of bland and ostensibly neutral colors for building over much of the second half of the century was as much a matter of marketing and institutional indifference as anything else. Neutral colors were seen as a safe option—allowing the prospective buyer to decorate in a color scheme of their own choosing. And designers of government buildings, schools, hospitals, and so on avoided making controversial choices. The association of black steel beams, white concrete, and grey linoleum with authority may have cropped up regardless, but was no doubt fed by the proliferation of those color choices in structures meant to convey authority. Throughout all this, one architectural feature was notable for its almost religious adherence to a blank white space—the white cube of the modern and contemporary art gallery (see Figure 7.24). The white cube is presented as the ideal backdrop for all avant-garde art. It is ostensibly perfectly neutral, offering no unusual angles, interfering colors, or distracting decorations to compete with the experience of the artwork it contains. The white cube is also otherworldly, associated with a Zen aesthetics of minimalism, and maximally removed from the cluttered world of daily life—contributing to the sense many potential museum goers have of not belonging in that space. The white cube is the perfect example of Western color theory and the prejudice that supposes that Western color theory is not culturally specific. For while the cube claims it is neutral and universal—a space that imposes no particular reading on its contents—it is in fact as culturally indicative as a space can be. The cultural values embedded in that space include the assumption of Western universality, and are built upon an explicitly racist, colonialist legacy. If we were to step into a time and space travel machine and find ourselves in such a white cube after the voyage ended, we would know instantly that we were in a late twentieth- or early twenty-first-century art gallery somewhere in the Western world or in a part of the world (say China after 287

Figure 7.23: The Rietveld Schröder House demonstrates the interest modernist architects had in color schemes or programs for their buildings, which were intended to add clarity to their designs. Here, primary colors were arranged harmoniously to activate the space and bring about an ideal life for the building’s occupants. frans lemmens / Alamy Stock Photo.

Figure 7.24: The white cube of many modern and contemporary gallery spaces is argued to be a neutral or universal backdrop, but it is just as arguably the most culturally specific architectural space one could imagine. Truman State University Art Department.

High Modern

the turn of the millennium) that aspires to project a similar cultural hegemony. The white cube is modernism’s monument to the fear of color, its repression, and the uncritical acceptance of Western values.

High modern color theory The use of color in so called high modern art is not easily summarized, and the broad conclusions we can draw are contradictory, reflecting the tensions within the movement and in the culture of that period. Beginning in the 1960s, sculptors began applying color to their structures in ways that went beyond the natural color of the materials used (bronze, steel, stone, etc.) and which took color seriously as a subject in itself. Some were part of, or related to, the pop art movement discussed in the final chapter. But, as we will discuss in that chapter, there were those like Donald Judd who were pursuing a logic quite similar (in nature, if not in details) to that outlined by Clement Greenberg. As late as the 1990s, Judd was creating three-dimensional forms inspired by painting and with increasingly assertive applications of color. He took color to be real, in contradiction to color science since Newton. He makes this point explicitly in a an Art Forum interview: “Color is like material. It is one way or another, but it obdurately exists. Its existence as it is is the main fact and not what it might mean, which may be nothing” (Judd 1994).

Conclusion Nearly all color use is filtered through the widespread availability of industrially standardized paints and other color reproduction materials and technologies. A few artists adopt a self-conscious acknowledgment of that reality in their color applications, either celebratory or critical of its possibilities and limits. In general, color’s presence in our lives in easily dispensed packages is simply a given. The artist then chooses either to work directly from those pots and tubes or pursues a more ineffable solution in the sensuous mixture of paints—a process of color discovery by an analogue process—adding a bit of this and a bit of that until some criteria for color selection is satisfied. In the near future, artists will as often select color by digital method from a drop-down menu on their computer screen, but for now we see that a more organic relationship to seeking out color still dominates. A great deal of spiritual feeling around color is preserved in the color philosophizing that migrated from Europe to the United States, but a pragmatic apolitical stance typifies the artist’s relationship with society at large. Josef Albers may be the last of the great tradition of color theorists who combined science and art—but eschewing color models in favor of a direct encounter with color in context. Color modeling continues apace in the realm of science and industry, but the world of artists and art educators falls back upon Itten’s wheel as the easiest to relate in a brief lesson not overly concerned with exact color measurement. If more time is granted to the student of color theory, they are generally introduced to three-dimensional color models like Munsell’s and to some more Germanic gestalt concepts relating to simultaneous contrast, the perception of transparency, and warm vs. cool colors. This hodgepodge of ideas, separated from the various milieu which generated them, are presented to the student with little acknowledgment of the fierce debates among their proponents within the ongoing narrative of intellectual history. As the dominant style within the dominant school in the new center of the art world, abstract expressionism both celebrated and marginalized color. As a means of direct, visceral, non-verbal expression, color was repeatedly called upon to heighten the intensity of the artist’s work. But as a potentially unsophisticated, unserious, and femininely decorative element, color was repressed and contained in various media, architectural contexts, and art historical moments. The rapidly spreading use of color in mass media would both confirm 289

Color Theory

these prejudices and, as we will see in the final chapter, provide material for powerful counter-narratives about color and culture.

References Albers, J., 1971. Interaction of Color. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bergdoll, B. and L. Dickerman (eds.), 2009. Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Duchamp, M., 1996. “Apropos of ‘Readymades.’ ” Art and Artists 1: 47. Goodman, C., H. Hofmann, I. Sandler, and C. Greenberg, 1990. Hans Hofmann. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; Munich: Prestel-Verlag. Greenberg, C., 1982. “After abstract expressionism.” In Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison (eds.), Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology. New York: Routledge. Greenberg, C., 1982. “Modernist Painting.” In Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison (eds.), Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, 5–10. New York: Harper & Row. Gropius, W., 1975. The Theory and Organisation of the Bauhaus. n.p.p.: n.p. Harrison, C. and P. Wood (eds.), 1993. Art in Theory, 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford and Cambridge, MA : Blackwell. Hertz, R. and N. M. Klein (eds.), 1990. “Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” Life Magazine. In R. Hertz and N. M. Klein (eds.), Twentieth Century Art Theory: Urbanism, Politics, and Mass Culture, 354–6. Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall. Hofmann, H., S. T. Weeks, and B. H. Hayes, 1967. “Search for the real” and Other Essays. A Monograph based on an Exhibition, Covering a Half Century of the Art of Hans Hofmann, held at the Addison Gallery, January 2–February 22, 1948, Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press. Horowitz, F. A. and B. Danilowitz, 2006. Josef Albers: To Open Eyes: The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Yale. London and New York: Phaidon. Itten, J., 1962. The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color. New York: Reinhold Pub. Corp. Itten, J., 1975. Design and Form: The Basic Course at the Bauhaus and Later. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Kandinsky, W., M. Sadleir, and F. Golffing, 1964. Concerning the Spiritual in Art: And Painting in Particular, 1912, The Documents of Modern Art. New York: G. Wittenborn. Kaufmann, R. C., 1974. “A Biographical Note on Faber Birren.” Yale University Library Gazette 49: 73–5. Kinchin, J, A. O’Connor, T. Harrod, and M. Hoch, 2012. Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000. New York: Museum of Modern Art. Klee, P., 1966. On Modern Art. London: Faber and Faber. Klee, P. and S. Moholy-Nagy, 1968. Pedagogical Sketchbook. London: Faber and Faber. Kuehni, R. G., 2003. Color Space and its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley-Interscience. Macdonald, F., 2016. The Only Surviving Recording of Virginia Woolf. BBC, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160324the-only-surviving-recording-of-virginia-woolf. Neumann, Eckhard, 1993. Bauhaus and Bauhaus People: Personal Opinions and Recollections of Former Bauhaus Members and Their Contemporaries. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Ostwald, W. and F. Birren, 1969. The Color Primer: A Basic Treatise on the Color System of Wilhelm Ostwald. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. Pollock, J. and I. Tomassoni, 1969. Pollock, 1st American ed. The New Grosset Art Library, vol. 24. New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Rosenberg, H., 1972. The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks. New York: Horizon Press. Seitz, W. C., 1972. Hans Hofmann, Reprint ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art/Arno Press. Singer, J., 2016. “Donald Judd: On His Use of Color and Defining ‘Modernism’ ” WWW Document, Sight Unseen, https:// www.sightunseen.com/2016/08/rare-donald-judd-interview-color-and-modernism/. Singh, R., 2006. River of Colour: The India of Raghubir Singh. London: Phaidon. Wingler, H. M. and J. Stein, 1969. The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, Woolf, V., 1928. Orlando: A Biography. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.

290

291

CHAPTER 8 POSTMODERN: CONTEMPORARY DIRECTIONS IN COLOR USE

Barris still goes off Balboa and places like that. He likes that scene. Last year he noticed all these bouffant babies and got the idea of spraying all those great puffed-up dandelion heads with fluorescent water colors, the same Kandy Kolors he uses on the cars. Barris took out an air gun, the girls all lined up and gave him fifty cents per, and he sprayed them with these weird, brilliant color combinations all afternoon until he ran out of colors. Each girl would go skipping and screaming away out onto the sidewalks and the beaches. Barris told me, “It was great that night to take one of the rides, like the Bubble Ride, and look down and see all those fluorescent colors. The kids were bopping (dancing) and running around.” Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby Color use in contemporary industrialized cultures presents a vision of the future available in the here and now, in which seemingly any wish is immediately fulfilled. The relationship of artists to their environment, so paramount in the color palettes of traditional cultures, is obscured by packaged sets of rainbow colors that promise the oxymoronic fantasy of individual expression and instant availability in any paint store, crayon box, make-up aisle, or computer monitor. Though the reality of color production does not match this fantasy— even with modern chemistry, pigments are uneven in their saturation and cost—the rhetoric of infinite choice is firmly in place. As Drucker and McVarish put it in their critical guide to graphic design,“Ease of consumption is expensive to produce. An inverse relationship exists between production values and effortlessness of consumption, such that many social, environmental, or human costs are hidden in the seamless look of a final product” (Drucker and McVarish 2013, xxix). And digital technology creates a simulacra of the act of selecting any color one wishes, while denying the reality of the infinite richness of sensory stimulus. Increasingly, color is pulled from a drop-down menu that relies on percentile specifications of pigment (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) or light (red, green, and blue) to land on a color within a space mapped out according to the logic of Cartesian (or similar) coordinates. Thus within just the past few decades, millennia of creative experience—of the sensuous search for a color by mixing a limited range of available pigments into an unlimited spectrum of intermediates—has been replaced by a precise point of entry. And the digital grid does have the potential to exceed our ability to discern color in the fineness of its resolution, but the reality of color existing in the spaces between the lines is, one might argue, never captured. The epigraph above, from Tom Wolfe’s account of Los Angeles car culture in the years of industrial growth after World War II, encapsulates contemporary color use. And as our chapter title implies, the contemporary is a cornucopia of color-use options almost entirely divorced from meaningful color theory. The Helmholtz– Hering debate, the manifestos of early modernism, the spiritualism of artists and industrialists alike, the Goethian resistance to Newton’s mechanical world view—these and more are largely forgotten in daily practice and even, with certain exceptions, in college undergraduate color education. As Zena O’Connor discusses in “Black-listed: Why color theory has a bad name in twenty-first century design education,” color theory education, wedded to a certain dispirited notion of Bauhaus theory and a formalism devoid of faith, is in danger of being completely outdated and is increasingly marginalized as a part of the curriculum (O’Connor 2010).

293

Color Theory

But even as color theory may be described as a dinosaur of art theory, popular interest in color topics appears to be resurgent, and exciting scholarly breakthroughs in color are often widely distributed in the mainstream press and on social network platforms. Though these accounts are often confused or oversimplified in their breathless eagerness for “clicks”, they demonstrate a desire to connect with color, to understand it, and also to stand in awe of its mysteries. These two trends call, urgently, for a revival and update of color theory as a serious interdisciplinary endeavor. Such a color theory will be contextual, including the formal properties of color but accounting also for the ways that color meaning is shaped by its means of production and dissemination, its authorship, its audiences, and its moment of reception. It will be the color theory we are already using intuitively in our encounters with colored creations that requires more than formalist consideration. It will provide that match between theory and practice without which the former is merely an exercise in complex thought. There are two European thinkers active primarily before the middle of the twentieth century whose work may be particularly useful for framing such a contemporary color theory. These are Walter Benjamin (pronounced Ben-ya-meen), a German-Jewish philosopher whose death combined suicide with Holocaust martyrdom, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian-Jewish philosopher who attended school with Adolf Hitler and whose family was plagued by suicide—yet whose wealth may have protected them from the Nazis. These two thinkers, not exactly household names in the United States but quite current in graduate art and design education, ask questions that tease out the poor fit between color theory and color practice as we currently find them, and they set some boundaries that we may find reasonably durable.

Benjamin and color in the age of mechanical reproduction In 1935, Walter Benjamin published the first version of his essay “The Art Object in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” This essay has since become a fixture of graduate-level art and design theory courses, and is one of the foundational texts in the study of visual culture—visual culture being an area of study which considers all manner of visual artifacts, not merely what we call art. And it is more than the study of those visual artifacts, but also of the ways we see, and perceive ourselves as being seen, in contemporary societies. Dynamics such as voyeurism, the male gaze, and that of the surveillance society are all key topics in visual culture. Benjamin’s prose is both incisive and poetic. He speaks of “the globe-encircling Mickey Mouse” and he thinks deeply about the affective power of images (Benjamin 2003, 118). At the heart of his thinking are two key points. The first is an understanding that images are distinct from the visual artifacts whose surfaces bear images. There is the Mona Lisa (a painting) and then there is the image of the Mona Lisa (in our mind’s eye, on t-shirts, in textbooks, on the internet, etc.). The second is that no matter how perfect a reproduction may be, the fact that it is a reproduction can never be separated from its meaning. A singular work, or an original from which reproductions are modeled, is ontologically different from something of which there are multiples. He considers the distinction to be on the level of a spiritual difference, a change in aura: [W]hat withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. Benjamin 2003, 104; emphasis added 294

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

For our purposes, any impulse to place that which is unique above that which is broadly available appears to be a matter of faith about which we can’t dictate. But the matter of discernment between the case of the original and of the reproduction is key. It is important because in practice we find it to be true that we think differently, feel differently, and experience differently under these varying conditions. Returning to the example in the Introduction, of the pink Cadillac being alternatively described as red, is instructive. If there were only one pink Cadillac our experience of a pink Cadillac driving down the street might be dominated by surprise and an appreciation of a certain originality. As it is, our experience is one of recognition, and perhaps no less appreciation, of the way the car participates in a phenomena that goes well beyond the object itself. Context is key here as a whole system of associations from songs, movies, visual culture, and physical culture impact our experience of the car before us. We can distinguish societies by the ways they express power. In traditional societies, power is expressed by the singular achievement which, in physical culture, is the creation of a never to be repeated masterpiece such as the Taj Mahal or the Mona Lisa. These objects are simply one of a kind, and express the power of the persons who commission them. In industrial societies, power is expressed in physical culture by causing innumerable identical objects, often of great complexity, to be created. The production of tens or hundreds of thousands of white Honda Civics is mundane only in our overfamiliarity with the product. In fact they are an expression of incredible industrial might. Whether power is to be expressed in that same way or differently in the altered context of the digital revolution is a matter to be taken up later. In color the distinction between unique or original color and mass-produced or reproduced color is equally important, but this is complicated by the fact that color is arguably not an object, but rather a sensation. It is difficult to distinguish between the color of an original and a reproduction when, we might say, the color is only occurring in our eyes and mind. The distinction has more traction when we think in terms of a color’s dissemination via mass media, and its cultural impact—a decidedly contextual affair. This is why it was so important for pop art, such as Lichtenstein with his use of Ben-Day dots or Warhol’s simulated Brillo boxes, to clearly reference the visual vocabulary distinctive to mass production (see Figure 8.1). And the distinction has relevance owing to how that dissemination (or lack thereof) impacts our own reading of the color application. In other words, we make the argument from our experiences in practice of recognizing a color, such as on a can of Coca-Cola or a similarly omnipresent artifact, as reproduced. Though we may not start from Walter Benjamin’s position of faith that reproductions have an innately different aura than originals, we do expand our argument from the cases that are most distinct (Coca-Cola cans) to all cases in which color is reproduced or even simply offered to the public as potentially available in multiple times and places—as Benjamin argued that reproductions are unlike originals, even when indistinguishable from those originals, simply because of the fact that they are reproductions. Likewise, we say that color presented as reproduced or promised as reproducible is unlike color offered as a unique event, even if we cannot detect the visible difference, simply because it is so presented. The current reach and even apparent omnipresence of that promise of reproduction which contemporary industrial techniques offer make it hard to imagine any color that is truly unique and distinct from such processes. For a painter, for instance, such an argument may require a commitment to the unscientific (if very common) view that color is a real power of the object itself; that the colored pigment embedded in the paint imbues some potency in that object that is distinct from any potential photograph or print of that painting, no matter how accurate. Perhaps we do believe, or pretend to believe, precisely some such thing when we insist on going to see a famous painting in person, though we may readily find reproductions of it both on and off the internet. But there are also cases that may not require such a willing suspension of disbelief. Installation and performance artists, and certain light and space artists in particular, often create art with the context in which we find it. One might say that context itself is their medium. In such cases the experience cannot be reproduced, at least until virtual reality becomes as perfect a deception as any deceiving demon could hope for. 295

Color Theory

Figure 8.1 Lichtenstein’s inclusion of Ben-Day dots in his paintings makes it clear that the subject of his work is mass media, and that the colors he is using are not to be regarded as unique but as endlessly reproducible. Luke MacGregor / Alamy Stock Photo. Ludwig Wittgenstein In his Remarks on Colour, the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “We do not want to establish a theory of colour (neither a physiological one nor a psychological one), but rather the logic of colour concepts. And this accomplishes what people have often unjustly expected of a theory” (Wittgenstein 1977, 5). This quote is illustrative of not only his approach to color and color theory, but also to philosophy in general. An approach that sought to step back from the traditions of Western philosophical thought and drastically reassign the boundaries between the meaningful and logical on the one hand, and all that could not be described or known, on the other. The boundaries themselves, however, detectable as limits but not in themselves susceptible to study or comprehension, were therefore a crucial preoccupation for Wittgenstein. Arguably, and Wittgenstein seems to make this argument, color is a part of this liminal category, something whose existence is clear but whose explanation is inaccessible. Primarily working on the philosophy of math and the philosophy of mind, Wittgenstein sought to plumb the ultimate foundation on which all logic, and thus all reasoned argument, rests. His Tractatus LogicoPhilisophicus seems to provide an answer, if admittedly and inevitably circular. This work, the only text on philosophy Wittgenstein published in his lifetime, was enormously influential, particularly on the Vienna Circle, a group of logical positivists for whom his refusal to engage in the traditional metaphysical pondering of philosophy made him a great hero (Heaton and Groves 1996). For Wittgenstein, questions such as “What 296

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

is the meaning of life?” only look like questions and are in actuality nonsensical. But he was dismissive of the Vienna Circle’s interpretation of this work as well as the interpretations of just about anyone else, and in fact he ultimately came to reject the conclusions of the Tractatus himself. His later work was collected and published posthumously, largely by G. E. M. Anscombe, a colleague and friend whom Wittgenstein called his “old man” despite being a woman and younger than him. It is to her that we owe the final form and very existence of Remarks on Colour. Wittgenstein’s later work is hard to summarize both because of its non-canonical publication schedule and because of its form. Rather than engaging in the kind of declarative statements that the Tractatus provided, it instead consists of thought experiments; koan-like questions, games, and gnomic pronouncements which teased apart the ways we think about the world. Given to visual thinking, Wittgenstein described the geometry of logic and used visual metaphors. And he appealed to our field of vision as a kind of stand-in for the world we can speak of logically. The boundary of that visual field, he asserted, is something of whose existence we are aware but is nonetheless not visible. For to see it would require us to see beyond it. Likewise, we are encouraged to think, the boundaries of logical expression—the foundation of logic and perhaps even the illogical inexpressible world that evades discussion—are certainly there but inaccessible to the philosopher. This field-of-vision metaphor may also be applied to his discussion of life and death. Teetering on the edge of solipsism, at least so far as logical thought is concerned, Wittgenstein held that we don’t experience death; that life indeed has a boundary but we will never be able to speak of what is beyond it nor even of the boundary itself. And the world past that boundary is equally unknowable to us. The world ends, so far as our knowledge is concerned, when we die. Of accessing eternity—an atemporal existence beyond life—Wittgenstein only points to the possibility of accessing it when living fully in the moment, within the boundary of our life. But he was not in fact a solipsist, nor apparently skeptical about the existence of matters that escape our efforts to philosophize. His was a world of fact—not of mere seeming—about which we can say very little. And he expressed hope that some insight into the nature of the boundary of knowledge could be attained not by explanation with logically constructed sentences, but simply by “showing”—potentially the reason for his use of visual examples and curious language games that do not explain their meaning, but pry apart our preconceptions. The Tractatus ends with what may be Wittgenstein’s most famous quote: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (Wittgenstein 1961, 151). Much of the reality of color appears to be in the realm of silence, matters about which language fails us. It is tempting to suppose that the extremely unusual nature of Wittgenstein’s childhood and education contributed to his ability to see things as no one else had seen them. Of his four brothers, three committed suicide, and he often demonstrated his own indifference to death. They grew up in the second wealthiest family in Austria, in a home with seven grand pianos, and being educated partly at home under the direction of a domineering father, many anecdotes of his life reveal his astonishing unfamiliarity with commonplace experiences and information. (It is said that when he and a colleague missed their train, Wittgenstein suggested that they simply rent one.) With the biggest names in music and art visiting his childhood home, and a piano prodigy brother, his own work occasionally seems to reveal an openness to poetic ways of knowing, while dismissing much that has passed for philosophy (Heaton and Groves 1996).

Wittgenstein on color Ludwig Wittgenstein is perhaps the last great philosopher to take color theory seriously as a subject of inquiry. While other philosophers often make use of color when posing puzzles that test one’s positions on ontology and epistemology (see Hume’s “problem of the missing blue” in Chapter 4), the names Aristotle, Grosseteste, 297

Color Theory

Newton, Goethe, and Wittgenstein nearly exhaust the list of those philosophers who devoted whole texts to the subject. Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour, with its focus on language games, is very well suited to the habits of thought that are current in contemporary art criticism, but for the most part the project his work suggests—a theory of color that thinks critically about the project of color theory—was never taken up. His theories about color did not catch on in European art circles before World War II, and with the shift of artistic activity to the United States, where an arguably more prosaic approach prevailed, his work never became foundational to art education (though popular at the postgraduate level). One amazing exception to Wittgenstein’s apparent lack of familiarity with much of the color theory of his time is that his Tractatus was published by none other than Wilhelm Ostwald, whose color theory was noted in Chapter 7 for its influence on the members of the Bauhaus. The relationship does not seem to have been close, as Wittgenstein described Ostwald as a charlatan. Of Newton’s refusal to theorize about the color processes of our perceptual apparatus, Wittgenstein might have at least approved of the decision to limit one’s subject to that of which one could speak logically. And Goethe, he asserted, should not have described his work on color as a theory, for theory must be susceptible to invalidation and he argued that Goethe’s pronouncements cannot be disproven—they may only be accepted or denied (Wittgenstein 1977). For Wittgenstein, color is an intractable subject, before which, “like an ox” (as quoted in the epigraph to the Introduction), we stand mute. It is real, but there is something about it which makes it hard for us to bring our thoughts into order. This seems to be connected with his understanding that logic fails us in seeking to lay a foundation for logic. Similarly, color may be a phenomenon outside of which we cannot step—it simply is part of the geometry of our world. In the Tractatus he makes the startling assertion that color sits alongside time and space as the stuff of which the world is made (Wittgenstein 1961, 13). Where many see a mere illusion, Wittgenstein sees a fundamental reality. But there is a curious quality to this status, which may not be as solid as it seems. For he argues that these things are simply the way the world happens to be—they are not logically necessary and therefore, while inescapable in our world, one can describe a world that is otherwise without any logical problems. In three-dimensional space our two hands have opposite chirality. This means that no matter how we arrange them, even if we cut them off to make them more mobile, they cannot perfectly overlap. Either the thumbs are on opposite sides or the backs and fronts are reversed. But mathematicians can describe flipping our left hand through a fourth dimension and achieving this perfect overlap. And in the case of time, we can logically describe a backwards flow of events. There is no reason our universe must move through time in the direction that it does—that’s just how it happens to be. But on color Wittgenstein says nothing so direct. The total effect of his Remarks on Colour, however, is to convince us that there is in fact something very odd about the way color happens to be. That white is not transparent, and some hair is blonde, there seems to be no doubt—but he leads us to believe that things might logically have turned out some other way. Discarding Western philosophy, and discarding color theory, seem to be casual matters for this perplexing philosopher. Since we can’t speak logically about color, according to Wittgenstein, he chooses to speak about the ways we speak about color—trying to learn the rules of the language games we play when we claim to discuss it. He begins the Remarks with a string of thought experiments about a hypothetical transparent white. He considers the example of transparent green glass and notes that the world viewed through it appears only in shades of green, so he concludes that transparent white glass would transform the world into a range of grey tones—like the black-and-white movies of his day—only the screen would be a window through which we are seeing a world transformed by this milky glass. There are good reasons, from the perspective of the physicist, that we can’t see through white glass the same way we can through green. And this is only one of many places where Wittgenstein seems unaware of, or careless of, known facts. To read him is to want to interrupt him with such facts. But with each new remark (the book is really a collection of fragments) he turns the screw until we are not sure if we can be so sure about our facts. We begin to see the way our own language and 298

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

perhaps logic itself seem to be keeping us from understanding why color is as it is. His goal, it seems, is to show us what he cannot tell us—the intractable and logically indefensible way that color happens to be. Remarks on Colour sets its sights on several targets which seem to be the very things to which a contemporary book on color theory ought to pay critical attention. These include the indeterminacy of color—that is, the difficulty in being able to tell on what basis a given color is “the same” as another. There is also the way that statements on white and black range from empirical to normative to ideal—and how little notice we seem to take of our passing in and out of these paradigms. And he pokes at the many color concepts which we have noted in earlier chapters seem to pass as color theory and even color science but are clearly cultural constructs. These being color primaries, color harmony, and the distinction between color and visual effects—like transparency or sparkle—from which color sensations cannot be divorced. These aspects of color which Wittgenstein critiques make an excellent list for us in constructing a critical color theory. And we may go beyond him aided by these insights. Discussions of race, class, and gender were not his bread and butter; if anything, he was aloof from those concerns (although his identity as Jewish or not seems to have been some source of self-, and familial, recrimination). But we would argue that it is worth exploring how other cultural constructions may operate in similar ways, and indeed may be mutually reinforcing with the aspects of color theory which are similarly constructed. On a broader level, Wittgenstein was more comfortable, as he was happy to inquire into the possibility of other logics, other geometries of color. He asked in what sense extra-terrestrial species might be said to “see other colors” than we do; what is the universal definition of color? He noted that we have good reason to speak of “infrared light” but that this might be an abuse of the term “light” (Wittgenstein 1977). If color as an experience is inaccessible to logical explanation, Wittgenstein did not clarify the other ways we might come to understand it. If some of those things we must pass over in silence can still be shown to us, what are the ways we might show them? His family’s wealth came with a remarkable degree of cultural sophistication, providing him with personal encounters with many of the period’s leading artists, poets, and musicians. And he is said to have read and been influenced by Tolstoy’s The Gospels in Brief during his service in World War I (Heaton and Groves 1996). It may be that Wittgenstein in some way was taking back the contemplation of color from the field of philosophy, where he thought only very little could be said, and giving it to the poets and the artists, where one can imagine that more about the nature of color might be “shown.” In this light even his own opaque writing may be reimagined as functioning like biblical parables, as a means of providing the reader with otherwise inaccessible insights into higher knowledge.

Language and color Much of the intellectual history of the twentieth century was preoccupied by the powerful role of language in determining the nature of reality as we experience it, framing not only our perception of what is, but even delimiting the ways we can conceive of worlds other than our own. Additionally, the use of language as a metaphor for the structure of the world, or the reduction of the world to a language-like structure, became widespread in philosophy such as in Wittgenstein, the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, structuralism, and semiotics. These approaches debated the correspondences among words, word-like signifiers, or logical concepts understood as corresponding to words in an ideal language. Also debated was the relationship or lack thereof between these words/signifiers/concepts and the world they potentially describe. These approaches had their critics and of course nuances which this summary cannot capture, but the salient point for color theory was the influence they had on art theory, placing word before image in a hierarchy of thought which reinforces other dualisms. Those include logic above emotion, masculine above feminine—and they therefore reinforce historical biases in which the ontological status of color and its relationship to reason is suspect. 299

Color Theory

We have seen how Wittgenstein’s statements radically inscribe color as an essential aspect of the reality of the universe as it happens to be. So although language enjoys some status as an area we may have some hope of speaking meaningfully about, color’s reality is not actually being dismissed, but rather the possibility of explaining it is cast into doubt. Logical positivism proposed that all real knowledge should be codifiable in a single standard language of science. Though this does not amount to a rejection of the reality of color, it leads to conclusions in which language has sufficient capacity to tell us all we need to know about the world, without need for actual immersion in the experiences so described, such as color. And structuralism makes sense of the world through a structure that is modeled on language. This structure, a set of word-like elements and their complex relationships, is what gives meaning to those elements. And then semiotics is itself the study of signs and symbols including elements of language as well as visual signifiers, and how they interact. This study, then, of the world around us interpreted in terms of how we might decode it, makes of a color such as blue as we may encounter it in nature or in culture a sign which signifies something else and that signification is dependent on the relationship of the color blue to other things such as the word “blue,” the color red, or a sphere. Common to many of these approaches is the understanding that a signifier is arbitrary in its relationship to that which it signifies—it is the way that signifiers relate to one another, and the context in which they are used, that tells us they have a certain connection with the world. This understanding, which accounts for the differences among vocabularies in various languages, parallels the insight born of Galileo and Newton that the colors we see are simply how our mind represents information to us—information which is itself not colored. According to these insights, a rose is no more connected to the letters r, o, s, and e than an apple is red. Perhaps the poster child for this trend of thought is the controversial Sapir–Whorf hypothesis in linguistics, which holds that language determines how we experience reality, and that different languages structure that perception of the world in different ways. Again, it is a simplification of the life’s work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, as well as of twentieth-century linguistics and philosophy, to say that they reduce the world to language alone and reject entirely the independent reality of the world we inhabit. But also again, it is the impact on intellectual habits and biases, and the consequences for color theory that we are interested in. On reflection, we may realize this bias goes back at least to 1858, when William Ewart Gladstone wrote about the lack of blue descriptors in Greek vocabulary, and so we continue to be told that the ancient Greeks did not see the color blue (Gladstone 2016). It makes a certain kind of sense, in the same way that a hammer would see every problem as a nail, that linguists would see the world as we can know it as largely determined by language. It even makes some sense for philosophers to become convinced of the primacy of words. More surprising is how much influence these theories have had on art theory, at least in the way it trickles down to education, especially at the postgraduate level. It seems to take some effort for anyone to frame an alternative to the hierarchy which places language before experience. One who seems to have done so is the American artist Georgia O’Keefe, whose earliest memory—she asserts that she recalls this memory from infancy—is powerfully visual. In her recollection, after the long dark winter months of Wisconsin had finally given way to spring, she was brought out into brilliant sunlight and laid on a quilt, whose flowers on a black background, and tiny red stars, created an indelible memory (Lisle 1997, 2). And John Berger makes it quite explicit in the opening line of Chapter 1 of his influential book (which had a related BBC series), Ways of Seeing: “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak” (Berger 1977, 7). This is not to say artists, designers, or art theorists (not to mention latter day color theorists) ought to reject such theories out of hand. Not only do they have their merits as theories about the world, but they also can be productive sources of ideas about color. And recent research on the color perceptions of peoples with varying color vocabularies supports the argument that our language has a role in determining how we perceive color. One example is a study of Russian speaking subjects, whose language includes two basic words for blue— 300

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

words which seem to mean light blue and dark blue but which native speakers do not like to substitute for those word combinations (much as English speakers do not like to substitute “light red” for “pink”). Russian speakers are shown to have a greater degree of sensitivity to nuanced differences among blue colors (Winawer et al. 2007). Similarly the vocabulary of the Himba tribe makes no clear distinction between green and blue, and they will often fail to pick the blue sample out of a selection of otherwise green colors. On the other hand, this culture has many more words distinguishing among greens and they correspondingly can easily pick out one specific green from among a set of greens between which English speakers frequently cannot discriminate (Roberson et al. 2006). As Francine Fox and Atticus Bailey pointed out at a 2017 conference on art foundations education, this new research, reviving interest in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, can point to more effective ways of discussing color and teaching color use (Bailey and Fox 2017). They recommend keeping a wide range of color samples present when discussing and teaching color, and using a wide and nuanced range of color terms in comparing those colors to each other, or to some problem or case in color use. The color theorist Stuart Pentak made a similar point in discussions at that same conference when he emphasized the difference between rote memorization of color names, which seems likely to constrain our perception of color, from use of color terms to describe subtle differences and draw otherwise unnoticed similarities between colors. Pentak’s preferred terms were “description” as opposed to “naming” of colors. Rather than calling one color red and another blue, he seems to be saying we should strive to use modifier terms to note that one red is more or less muted, cooler or hotter, than another—and then that this red has a value or saturation similar to a given blue. These exercises, it is theorized, develop a more nuanced perception of color and support an awareness of all the ways color properties interact in our efforts to use them. We should also note that thinking about each color as a signifier, one that takes its meaning from its relationship to many other signifiers, is a contextual color theory—which is what this book advocates must be added to more formal color approaches. In thinking about how we interpret the colors of a company logo, or of how insects respond to colored flowers, we find we do have means of understanding color’s role and use in other cases. This approach goes beyond the formal analysis of color, which is often pursued without reference to context, and gives us a way to both “read” color as well as “write” with color as one means of conveying meaning among many. The conception of an ideal language of science in logical positivism is not something that philosophers today generally aspire to achieve. But hypothetical perfect information scenarios are used to test cases that get to the heart of the enduring question of whether color as such has any reality beyond what can be said about it. Much as Descartes postulated the extreme case of an all powerful evil deceiver as a way of engaging with skepticism of any degree, one can now find the philosophical literature populated by numerous hypothetical aliens, ideally logical archangels, or similar agents who are given imagined sets of complete and perfect information about the world. We will satisfy ourselves with just one example here—the “Mary Problem” or the “Knowledge Argument” proposed by Frank Jackson (“Qualia: The Knowledge Argument” 2009). In this scenario, Mary, a brilliant scientist, has spent her life in a black-and-white room with only black-and-white, but otherwise perfect, information about the outside world. Furthermore, she has every possible understanding of how wavelengths of light excite nerve cells in the retina and how those sensations are interpreted in the brain. She simply won’t have any experience herself of those different sensations. Jackson asks whether, when she is released from this room and allowed to look upon our colorful world beneath a blue sky, she will then know something new? He proposes that she does indeed learn something new that goes beyond the mere physical and mechanical description of all that exists—this kind of knowledge is called qualia and can only be had by experience. We will leave alone the quaint simplification of how color vision works—that since color arises in the eye and mind, sitting in a black-and-white room is no barrier to color experience. The point that these currents in twentieth-century thought actually get us to a place where we want to be as color theorists; 301

Color Theory

pushing ourselves to the limits of what language can accomplish relative to color, and pondering the potential realm that color points to beyond those limits.

Color science in the age of color standardization Occurring roughly simultaneously with the exodus of those of Germany’s intellectuals who found themselves out of favor with the Nazi Party, a profound change swept color theory from 1930 onward. The discipline of the color theorist as it had been understood in the nineteenth century—as someone who seeks both to measure color and explain its aesthetic mysteries—ceased to exist. From this point forward the vast majority of work on color would be done by participants of a given discipline for members of that discipline. Those disciplines may be broadly divided between the arts and sciences, with color scientists seeking to precisely account for color as a quantifiable property on the one hand, and all manner of more subjectively motivated thinkers pursuing the philosophy of color and its more intangible meanings on the other hand. The one group of professionals who came closest to synthesizing the divergent strands of color theory in the coming decades were marketing professionals such as Faber Birren, who we discussed in Chapter 1. Birren’s work as an appreciator and disseminator of every variety of historical color theory, as well as his own contribution of a color model and then his legendary activities as a color consultant, made him a giant in his field. His own color model, the Birren color equation, sought to combine the virtues of careful measurement with the practicality of a system one might reasonably hold in one’s head. He considered harmonious balance around middle grey, as found by mixing colors optically as Munsell had, to be an important starting-point for creating color palettes. To this end he produced a delightful set of Maxwell discs which could be mounted on a springloaded hand-held spinning contraption. Precise measurements around the device’s perimeter allowed one to exactly specify how much of one color would balance another. Fabled as the industry consultant responsible for the selection of purple velvet for a brand of pool tables, Birren absorbed the standardization and reproducibility of color science, the psychology of color at least as regards the consumer, and the principles of design proposed by artists and designers (Kaufmann 1974). The color scientists divided into their various specialties—finding that a better understanding of color is relevant no matter where their own focus may fall—in physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, cognitive science, and so on. The technical specialization of this work put it out of reach of even relatively well read artists and most philosophers. In general, the use of older color models, at least those readily held in the mind’s eye, became a habit of artists and designers—and their educators—that no longer had the link to color science it may have enjoyed in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, those color models are often presented as though they spring directly from scientific fact. Munsell’s more rigorous methods, and the fact that the Munsell Color Company continued to update and adapt his model to at least align it with the latest colorimetry, make this connection more valid. But it is the twelve-segmented wheel, with three primaries, three secondaries, and six tertiaries, and more or less in keeping with Itten’s color star, that is most often used to discuss color mixture, color harmony, and color schemes. Despite the fact that this wheel does not, as claimed, place true complements opposite each other and does not allow one to accurately predict the result of color mixtures, it is simply easier for most color users to refer to this intuitively appealing color wheel than to Munsell’s or any other more empirical model. The color system in use at Gobelins, where Eugene Chevreul once presided over all things relating to color, provides a fascinating example of one instance where exacting color standardization is enlisted for the creation of artworks—in this case elaborate woven carpets and tapestries. Established during the reign of Louis XIV and with many examples of their work hanging in the Louvre, today the facility produces rich hand-woven 302

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

carpets and tapestries. These tapestries are made by the state and strictly for the state of France alone. Not only do they no longer sell these weavings, they do not even give them as state gifts. Working at looms sometimes as large as train cars, with wooden rollers like massive tree trunks, as many as four highly trained weavers will work at a single piece for as much as eight years. Chevreul’s legacy lives on at Gobelins as both a name often mentioned and in the form of a general seriousness and exactitude regarding color. But his legacy also endures in their proprietary color system called N.I.M.E.S. (Nuancier Informatique des Manufactures). The N.I.M.E.S. model has evolved from Chevreul’s system to one that very closely resembles Albert Munsell’s (see Chapter 6). Overseen by former weaver Sylvie Heurtaux, N.I.M.E.S. consists of a repository of about 15,000 color samples of dyed wool in the form of pompoms and an equal number of flat cardboard bobbins with the fiber wrapped around it. The pom-poms present a mass of cut-off ends, absorbing and reflecting color in a manner useful to carpet weavers. The bobbins show the fibers laying side by side, for the reference of tapestry weavers. Each pom-pom and each bobbin is labeled with four numbers identifying it in terms of the three measurable properties of tonality (hue), clarity (value), and chroma—with a fourth number (one through eight) giving a more precise adjustment to the location of that color sample within the color space. For though N.I.M.E.S. is based on Chevreul’s system using seventytwo tonalities (one positioned every 5 degrees around the Chroma Circle), and creates a 20 x 20 grid of the other two color dimensions (locating color every five steps on a scale of 1 to 100), colors will frequently fall between the intersections of these coordinates—especially in the case of dyed samples as opposed to computer models. Each bobbin has a hole that allows it to be hung from a peg in its proper location within the system in a massive bank of panels that pull out from a wall and then fold on hinges to display colors on either side. Likewise, each pom-pom is inserted into its particular square niche in an adjacent extensive bank of gridded drawers (see Figures 8.2–8.3). As Heurtaux explains it, the aspect of Chevreul’s system that inevitably required some adjustment was its very completeness. Chevreul provided a space for every color at his disposal, and a color for every space. Thus, as advances in chemistry allowed new dyes to be developed there was nowhere in his system in which to place these new colors. Thus, a more adaptive system such as Munsell would later develop had to be adopted for this fully up-to-date Gobelins workshop. Chevreul also attended to human perception, not some more mechanical objective measurement, in balancing his system. Like Maxwell and Munsell, he observed colors mixed optically on spinning discs, and he also attended to their apparent mixture when interwoven in small quantities. Today the N.I.M.E.S. system is still “psychometric” in the sense that each visual step appears equal to a standard observer, and that same observer will also see opposites on the color wheel blending to grey when mixed. Still, the struggle to make every color sample fit smoothly within this system is real. And Heurtaux readily points to two adjacent colors whose difference appears a bit too large and makes a mild grunt of disapproval. The entire archive is housed in a spacious room which, like the other studios at Gobelins, has north-facing windows, protecting the contents from excess ultraviolet damage. Any time a new weaving project calls for a new color to be produced by the manufactory’s dye shops, samples are carefully assimilated within the N.I.M.E.S. archive. The colors are measured by colorimetry equipment and entered into computer databases which calibrate N.I.M.E.S. with several other well-known color systems including the Munsell color system and the C.I.E. color space (see below). Heurtaux hosts visitors on occasion; especially apprentice weavers whose ability to discriminate between colors must be tested and developed. These apprentices are as young as sixteen when they begin their work, eighteen being considered a bit late to begin the four-year training required for such a career. At the west end of the room in which they work, near the entrance, is another bank of drawers filled with color samples. These hold a more historical archive of color samples, whose colors are perhaps a bit faded in comparison with the long banks of bobbins and pom-poms that comprise N.I.M.E.S. 303

Color Theory

Figures 8.2 and 8.3 Sylvie Heurtaux oversees the N.I.M.E.S. color system at Gobelins Manufactory, which has its origins in Chevreul’s color system with seventy-two hues around the color wheel. These pull-out cabinets hold bobbins of wool thread (up to eight variations hang on each peg). There is a parallel system of drawers with dyed wool pom-poms. Courtesy Gobelins Manufactory, photo by Isabelle Bideau. 304

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

These are the older disused collections, dating back indeed to Chevreul’s tenure, and gathered from what were once multiple collections scattered throughout the Gobelins facilities and jealously guarded by each studio. It took many years of pleading and arguing to wrestle the collection into the single system they use now. When asked who did all this persuading, Sylvie Heurtaux at first demurs but finally admits, pointing dramatically at her heart with both hands, “It was me!” Perhaps the biggest area of progress in the middle decades of the twentieth century was the creation of international standards for color measurement, especially those based on the C.I.E. color space introduced in 1931 (see Figure 8.4). That model, whose lopsided form, like Munsell’s color solid, privileges the empirical above our desire for balance, would replace Ostwald’s as the preferred tool for industrial standardization in Germany. The image seen here shows a two-dimensional slice of what is conceptualized as a three-dimensional color space whose parameters are the arc of color at each wavelength in the visible spectrum containing an organic form which is contrasted by the hard edge of the line connecting red to violet—the range of colors we perceive synthetically when those extreme ends of the spectrum are mixed. This form shrinks as it is extended into the third dimension through degrees of relative brightness, the center dot of white proceeding through

Figure 8.4 The CIE color space, a breakthrough in colorimetry created by committees of scientists seeking to standardize color measurement, represents color space as determined by measurement of light emitted, not by a viewer’s perception. The organic horseshoe arch depicts the colors of the spectrum, while the straight line below shows the non-spectral colors created by mixing the extreme ends of the spectrum together. In this regard, Helmholtz’s model was quite prescient. Wikimedia / Public Domain.

305

Color Theory

darker and darker shades of grey until the whole form collapses at black. Based on the measurement of the light stimulus rather than viewer perception (as Munsell’s system is), the resulting form is not only ungainly in overall appearance, but also depicts uneven perceptual steps, from the standard human perceiver’s point of view, between adjacent spaces within the form. In other words, we do not make discriminations among colors in an even manner across a gamut of colors laid out in this way. This is not a chart for mixing pigments, it is a map of light as it is measured by machines. Such models were not created by a single color theorist seeking to round out a particular world view, but by teams of relatively anonymous scientists, often working within industrial laboratories, and from a set of assumed premises. This was not color theory that harbored questions about the reality of the world in flux, as with the ancient Greeks. Nor was it a color theory that proposed to resolve the relationship between ourselves as conscious perceivers and the world we inhabit, as with Goethe. This was color theory that assumed the efficacy of the scientific method and the superiority of instrumental readings in relation to subjective impressions. In the United States, the Optical Society of America formed a Committee on Colorimetry whose nearly two decades of debate on the question of what color is are recorded in a report published in the midst of World War II. Even in their narrowly focused task of color measurement, this group of scientists needed to determine what it was they were trying to measure. This report on their proceedings reads like a variant on the play Twelve Angry Men as they struggled to reconcile that while color is linked to the physical phenomena of electro-magnetic energy, it is hardly identical with that property. They were aware they were not seeking to measure radio waves, for instance, and they understood that color could be said to belong wholly within the realm of the perceiver. On the other hand, they found that the literature from psychology did not support the imposition of boundaries on a perception or a sensation. Thus they spent years debating what sort of property—physical, psychological, or otherwise—color might be. As they explored color perception they generated a list of modes of perception interacting with color that extend well beyond the three we find in most models (the portion of the spectrum involved, the degree of light or dark, and the degree of purity or admixture). Among these modes of perception they listed some that have the attribute of location and some that do not, as well as perceived illumination, illuminants, transparency, volume, glossiness, shape, and size. While these could be conceptually separated out from the kind of color one can measure in a controlled setting, they are often intertwined with color perception in practice. Dr. Lloyd A. Jones, Chairman of the Committee, wrote, “This discussion continued for more years than [the] chairman likes to remember” (Report of the Colorimetry Committee 1943, 539). The committee’s eventual conclusion arose from what at first was a minority view, and was only given serious consideration out of desperation at ever coming to agreement on any other position. And their decision was made on pragmatic grounds: several members of the committee seemingly unconvinced as to the ultimate truth of their conclusion but content to adopt the one theory that solved the problems they were facing. Simply put, this conclusion was that color is not physical and color is not psychological (as they termed color understood as arising in the mind), but is “psycho-physical.” What they were seeking to measure, it seemed, were certain physical properties of the electromagnetic spectrum as they appear to the standard human perceiver. This long and nuanced debate and its conclusion set the stage for advances in color standardization that would follow the conclusion of the war. Their work meant that colorimetry would seek to link each measurement of light with the corresponding perceived difference on the part of a viewer. Once linked, however, the practical outcome of colorimetry is to rely on a machine’s “perception” of any particular color and use precise measurements, rather than a refined eye, to mix a specified color. But there is admirable subtlety in their work, which may anticipate the neuroscience of recent decades, and the conclusions of Mazviita Chirimuuta whose work we will address in the next section. These lines in particular from the report deserve to be kept in mind: “The adoption of the psychophysical position not only admits but asserts that an 306

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Figure 8.5 This model of color vision, depicted variously in many texts on color theory and color science, purports to resolve the Helmholtz–Herring dispute, by showing that at the retinal level, the Helmholtz tristimulus theory is supported; while at the neuron level, Herring’s opponent process theory is supported. Illustration by Aaron Fine.

evaluation of color has a decisively medial nature; implying at once an appraiser, the human observer, and an object of appraisal, radiant energy” (“Report of the Colorimetry Committee” 1943, 545). Meanwhile, neurology and cellular biology were making progress determining the mechanisms of color perception. The dispute between Helmholtz and Hering appeared to clarify as new evidence arose to support both Helmholtz’s proposed trichromatic theory of color perception with red, blue, and green primaries, and Hering’s oppositional model in which colors are either reddish or greenish (for example) but not both. The evidence seemed to vindicate both sides, as the retina was shown to have three different sizes of cones, each most sensitive to the primaries Helmholtz proposed—while neurological pathways which processed the information from those receptors are structured in such a way that a signal of one type shuts off the signal of another, forcing an either/or perception of the sort that Hering proposed. Many have seen this as an indication that they were both right—one correctly realizing the apparatus of the reception system and the other sniffing out the ways that information is processed in the mind after it is detected by the retina. Unfortunately, a more thorough examination of subsequent studies shows this conclusion may be premature. It appears that the question of how our minds perceive color is not likely to be reduced to the diagram, such as we see here (see Figure 8.5), of pathways leading from retinal receptors directly to neurological on/off switches and then to “Ah ha—I see purple.” This notwithstanding the appearance of such diagrams in most color theory texts, including this one. One of those questioning the comfort that this diagram offers, and proposing something approaching a new theory of how the mind interacts with the world, is the specialist in the philosophy of science, with an emphasis on neuroscience, Mazviita Chirimuuta.

Chirimuuta One of the few contemporary scholars offering a fairly comprehensive overview of color across multiple disciplines is Mazviita Chirimuuta. Though she does not engage with color meaning, or spiritual dimensions 307

Color Theory

of color, her work encompasses the history of science and philosophy of science, with a significant amount of research into the latest neuroscience as it relates to perception. In her tightly argued Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy Chirimuuta asserts that perceptual science supports a “chromatic ontology” that is neither located in the physical world nor in the mind of the perceiver (Chirimuuta 2015, 213). Color is real, on her reading, but it is a real property of a relationship between perceiver and world. She calls this theory “Color Adverbialism,” and it seems to resolve many of the traditional challenges of color theory. The color adverbialist asserts that color perception is not properly understood as a way of perceiving the colors of things, but rather color is a part of how we perceive those things themselves—and is integrated into a larger perceptual gestalt. And that the traditional way we have approached the analysis of color—as a distinct property of objects in the world which may be abstracted from the perception of shape, motion, texture, and so on—is not supported by perceptual science. Chirimuuta describes several errors in our traditional approach to color. She begins with a thorough history of science as it relates to color, and traces the materialist and atomistic tradition from Democritus to Galileo and onwards, asserting that, “This picture of materialistic reality as atomistic and mathematically characterized remains basically unchanged to this day” (Chirimuuta 2015, 10). In such a world view, for colors to count as real they must be real properties of the world described by physics. Chirimuuta also critiques the assumption that science and perception are “in the same business”; the assumption that the task of perception is to reveal to us the properties of the world we see. On the contrary, she finds, perception is in the business of presenting the world in the manner most convenient to the perceiver. Perhaps the most intuitive way Chirimuuta conveys her theories is in her characterizations of the orthodox view of color as supporting the “coloring book hypothesis.” This hypothesis is nearly universally accepted and also almost never fully acknowledged. It characterizes color vision as “coloring in” an achromatic world, assigning color to each shape in the visual field. Chirimuuta’s proposed alternative is a “coloring for” model in which we perceive color “for shape, for motion, etc.” (Chirimuuta 2015, 76). She cites Whittle, who explains that the coloring book hypothesis is “so temptingly simple . . . and meshes with so many of our Cartesian assumptions, that it has great staying power” (Chirimuuta 2015, 76). The coloring-in model simply aligns well with the general characterization of the world as an accumulation of tiny bodies whose shape, motion, and location can all be described mathematically and which then give rise to the world we see. And it may be argued that technological approaches to the world, exemplified by black-and-white photography, reify this separation of color from form as though it were a layer added by our minds over the top of an achromatic reality. A black-and-white print does, after all, show us a world “without color” (begging the question of whether black and white are colors) in which we can typically interpret those very achromatic properties of size, shape, and so on. Leaving aside all the ways we know that the camera can and does lie, the assumption that our visual perception is analogous to a camera’s forgets numerous inconvenient facts. These include our binocular vision which is generally combined into the impression of a singular scene, haptic vision effects, the dual receptor system of rods and cones, the fact that the camera doesn’t do any perceptual interpretation at all and so potentially models for us only the aspects of our visual perception that lie “before” the real work of perception begins, and—we might argue—that we are not machines but rather biological organisms. The degree to which our culture concedes all kinds of authority to the evidence provided by cameras—the way in which we regard photographs as facts—has solidified our habit of regarding color as an optional ingredient in color perception—and as something our minds “color in” to the scene before us. It may be this coloring-in model, and the accompanying notion that perception is for the detection of localized color as abstracted from its surroundings, that leads to the contradictions we find in our study of color. In the nearly constant experience of simultaneous color contrast, as well as in more rare optical “illusions”, the color detection model finds there is a problem with the realness of our perception of color. And one of the 308

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

most charming features of color adverbialism, as Chirimuuta describes it, is the way it dispatches with such problems. In examples such as we see in Figure 8.6, we perceive the color (or shade) of the grey at point A and point B in a way that is false under the detectionist paradigm. But the color adverbialist finds that we are using color to accurately perceive the shape of the cylinder and the location of shadows on the three-dimensional forms. This so-called optical illusion is no more illusory than any other two-dimensional image, such as a black-and-white photograph, that appears to show a three-dimensional scene. It is simply a useful and evolutionarily appropriate way of seeing the world. Chirimuuta cites scientific literature as identifying about a dozen kinds of perceptual challenges— ambiguities which color perception assists us in overcoming. And she groups them into three larger, and overlapping, categories. Essentially, any given scene may be difficult to decipher in a variety of ways. We have evolved so that our neurological capacity for wavelength discrimination (color vision) is just one of the elements which combine into a whole perception of the scene in an effort to interpret it. “The Dress,” the famous meme which roused so much controversy in 2015, is arguably a testament to the way our perceptions of colors occur wholly within a gestalt in which the mind seems to interpret all of the data in terms of all the rest of the data. The image of the dress in this case is simply a combination of colors which, lacking motion and a context for the lighting source, may be interpreted equally well in two very different ways. As research by Pascal Wallisch seems to suggest, there are two major decisions our perceptual apparatus must make in

Figure 8.6 In this illusion created by Edward H. Adelson, square A is exactly the same shade of grey as square B. Such illusions, according to Mazviita Chirimuuta, are not errors—as our senses are not analogous to scientific equipment. Wikimedia / Edward H. Adelson, vectorized by Pbroks13 / CC BY-SA 4.0. 309

Color Theory

constructing an interpretation of the image of the dress (Wallisch 2017). One is whether the lighting is natural or incandescent and the other is whether the figure wearing the dress is backlit or not. We assume that we detect the colors (blue and black . . . or gold and white) and then use those colors to inform our understanding of those questions about lighting conditions. But at least in this case the process seems to be reversed; we take in all the details at once and our assumptions about the lighting tell us what colors are there. Chirimuuta’s proposed color adverbialism is not totally without precedent, of course. Gestalt theory is an obvious connection, as well as the tradition discussed in Chapter 5, of German philosophers who conceive of the subject–object relationship as one of mutual influence. It is also concordant with the artist’s experience of learning to draw what one sees, to think of taking in the scene all at once, attempting to perceive the parts and their relationship to one another as a gestalt whole. As Betty Edwards points out in her pioneering work on drawing pedagogy, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, most people do not draw best when they give in to their impulse to draw first a nose, then an eye, and so on. And learning to draw also teaches us to ignore what we think we see. Perhaps eyes are poor as color detection devices for the same reason that they are poor at understanding the way perspective distorts the shapes and sizes of things. The paintings of the impressionists also show some alignment with Chirimuuta, in their resistance to the coloring-in model of the world so native to previous academic art. The conservative art salons were bastions of the primacy of disegno over colore and a painting process that began with crisp draughtsmanship, then added a “grisaille” of light and dark variation, and only then placed colors within their carefully predetermined boundaries. The history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century painting is very much a story of casting off that approach to color. Josef Albers’ decision to do without color wheels or other color models—his assertion that all such methods of studying color fail by virtue of their effort to abstract color from visual experience—may have been a case of theory finally catching up with practice. And Interaction of Colors is certainly vindicated by Chirimuuta’s approach to color. In her concluding chapter, she explores how the question of color vision relates to other enduring questions about the mind and consciousness. She compares her understanding of color as something which exists between us and the world with similar propositions about consciousness as being something that happens, an activity of mind interacting with the world and not strictly mind dependent. And color adverbialism may be a means of dismissing the possibility raised by Frank Jackson’s Mary Problem, that a perfectly well informed scientist who had never been outside a black-and-white room might have nothing to learn upon exiting the room into a fully colored landscape. For the question is based on a detectionist model—assuming that Mary’s perception of the black-and-white room would be limited to the black and white around her. But while her eye might detect no prismatic colors (and even here we are extending the benefit of the doubt rather far), Mary’s perception is unlikely to simplistically interpret the scene in such a fashion. At any rate, Chirimuuta presents color as a microcosm for problems of the mind, consciousness, and ontology. And she suggests that this new understanding of color offers us the possibility of finding new ways of understanding broader philosophical issues.

Color and information We have seen throughout this book the recurrent theme of color as the embodiment of irrational and dangerous forces. From a messenger bearing madness in Euripides’ Herakles to a salient means of communicating the sublime in Romantic painting, color is regularly placed opposite to reason in the binary logic of many cultures. Certainly there is something to this. Arguably color does appeal directly to our emotions in a way that is both powerful and hard to control or understand. And color’s interactivity, as well as its dependency on a conscious perceiver, means that it is hard to locate and potentially impossible to quantify. Colorimetry gives us a precise measurement of the properties in a paint chip that give rise to our perception 310

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

of its color, but that perception is not thereby wholly determined. But color is also arguably a miracle of insight into both the universe around us and our place in it. As science writer George Johnson puts it, “Of all the particles in the universe, the only ones our senses can directly register are photons” (Johnson 2017). And the phenomena of red shift in astronomy provides us with incredible insight into the fate of the universe. Color is simply a rich source of information. Whether we take Chirimuuta’s insight into how color is key to our accurate perception of various visual puzzles, or simply the commonplace use of color coding to speed up our access to stored information, we can find many examples of this truth. Another tantalizing aspect of color as information is its use in fiber-optic media. Fiber-optic cables are able to bundle together and transmit multiple signals down the same line simultaneously because each signal travels at its own wavelength. Though the wavelengths best suited to the engineering requirements blur into the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, we might regard them as a sort of proof of the concept that the rainbow of color choices provides the option of vastly increasing the efficiency with which we transmit information, providing a key ingredient of the information revolution. The revelation, with the information Edward Snowden leaked, that the NSA was potentially surveilling virtually all email traffic came with two interesting nuggets for our investigation of color. The first of these is the likely use of beam splitters as the means of collecting the information for surveillance. The requirement which these devices meets is that they create a duplicate copy of the email for storage and potential surveillance without interfering with the smooth communications of the sender and recipient. While online bloggers have speculated about the use of actual prisms to split off the messages (hence the program name PRISM), this would of course mean some messages go to the NSA and not to their intended recipient, thus alerting the users of that communications system to a problem, and the other messages would be sent to their intended recipient without being caught in the database of the NSA. Unlike prisms, beam splitters create a duplicate file through the mind-bending phenomena of quantum tunneling. The photons traveling the length of a fiber-optic cable operate in ways that defy conventional physics. When a second cable is placed alongside the cable on which a message is being transmitted, the particles “tunnel” into the adjacent cable while remaining in their original location as well. Perhaps here we have returned to the dangerous irrationality of a more chromophobic perspective. But we also have a stunning proliferation of the stuff from which color arises, and a sense that light is not only a form of information but is an agent of its own dissemination, exhibiting a promiscuous tendency to spread. Then again, this conception of light as traveling and spreading relies just as much on our own perspective as does our perception of color in the face of wavelengths and particles. From the point of view of a photon, travel is an ambiguous term. For what is the rate at which a photon travels? At the speed of light, of course. And what happens at the speed of light? We learned as children that time stops at the speed of light. Fine, then in what sense do photons travel? Time has stopped for them. Perhaps Wittgenstein was right in his characterization of color as one of the boundaries of the universe as it happens to be: a phenomenon which is a real thing and a given, but whose logic lies outside of what we can know. The second nugget from Snowden’s historic leak is the choice, on the part of the NSA, to christen their top secret program “PRISM.” If Newton’s prism can be seen as a technological means of observing and controlling the troublesome element of light, then the NSA’s PRISM uses new light-manipulating technology to observe and control troublesome security threats, apparently including each and every user of the internet. The capital letters in PRISM imply an acronym, but if so the extended name has not been publicly revealed. Catchy operation code names would seem to have more to do with spy novels than, for instance, the need to develop a brand never meant to be revealed to the public. If nothing else, the NSA offers us confirmation that in the information age light and color may have flipped upside down the old binary of reason vs. emotion. They seem to have acquired new and exciting potential as powerful sources of information and even as a means of controlling a dynamic and threatening world. 311

Color Theory

Color use through the turn of the millennium Returning to a topic from the Introduction, if you walk into any Sherwin Williams (or Benjamin Moore, Pittsburgh Paints, etc.) paint store, you will be greeted by a dazzling display combining aspects of the pharmacy counter, the science museum, and the design showroom. The main attraction is an array of color choices arranged so as to appear encyclopedic and taxonomically ordered. The rhetoric of scientific accuracy is matched only by the delicious appeal of the rainbow’s hues, the nuanced tints and shades, the perfect lighting, and the evocation of sophisticated culture. In addition to the display of color chips, you will find pamphlets offering tastefully selected color palettes tied to various idealized and updated versions of architectural fashion. Thus Arts and Crafts earth tones and their happiest complements are offered to those who own, or wish they owned, a bungalow. Clean whites and greys with bold primary accents imply a mid-century modernist aesthetic. Victorian-style homes may combine staid greens and greys with flowery notes of luxury. And each and every color chip, with its carefully enumerated sequence and formula, also has a name which may evoke exactly the right identity for the individual who has chosen it. “Eastlake Gold,” “Ravishing Coral,” and “Utaupia” are not so much descriptions of a color as they are aspirational signposts. You may then go through a process, probably quite iterative, of bringing home chips and sample quarts, returning for more, and finally settling on the right colors for your home. It may be both discouraging and vindicating, then, to sit down in your newly painted home to open the latest Pottery Barn catalog and find images of furniture sitting in rooms painted the very colors you are surrounded by. Either you are incredibly on style, or somebody has you pegged. The scenario we’ve just described has all the elements with which industrial color specialists were wrestling a hundred years ago with the founding of the Textile Color Card Association. Indeed, the use of specially printed pamphlets to aid in the sale of house paints dates well back into the nineteenth century. In their 1897 brochure, Suggestions for House Painting with National Lead Company’s Brands of Pure-White Lead and Tinting Colors, that corporation uses the latest in chromolithography, with an innovative multi-flap fold-out format, to allow the customer to mix and match house paint with roofing material colors as they design their own American dream. The issues were and remain standardization with planned obsolescence, dependability with novelty, and the appearance of personalization within the constraints of mass production. Much of what we see in the paint store is indeed a manifestation of color science, but not all of it. And the line between what is science and what is culture is purposefully blurred. The displays of paint samples in these paint stores are not in fact complete, or even consistently distributed across all possible hues and their variations. Plenty of colors are omitted for simply being unfashionable. Color palettes based on fashion are suggested with an air of authority that is hard to distinguish from that of a doctor prescribing a certain medicine. In some ways, the color forecasters and designers who work for these paint companies illustrate a point it may otherwise be hard for us to establish. This is simply the very real existence of dimensions of color that can be seen as gendered, race conscious, dependent upon class, or any number of socio-cultural factors. That is because the realities of identity politics may be debatable in polite conversation but are inescapable to the people whose job it is to sell color and colored products. As Stuart Pentak puts it, “Sherwin Williams suggests to me that they know you might say ‘multicultural, traditional, feminine, masculine . . .” when discussing colors (2017). Another testimonial to the importance of such factors as changes in society and politics comes from one R. W. Britt, Color/Marketing Manager for Dupont’s Color Advising Service. In their 1973 advisory brochure, he states: The whole objective of color is to help identify and sell the automobile. This creates a need to have a fresh new look for each car line, each year, which will appeal to large segments of the car buying public. 312

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Today, more than ever, color choice is being affected by the mood of our society, caused by the great social and environmental changes that are occurring. Britt 1973 Cars give us another powerful illustration of color use in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. We may once more consider the pink Cadillac as a case in which the contextual associations of a color far outweigh its formal properties. Pink—especially a certain tint of pink, used on cars, in lipstick, as the color of a sweater, or lawn ornament—has more to do with chartreuse and aqua than it does with red. That is to say, a color theory must reckon with those connections and be able to recognize that the physics of that pink’s occurrence and the mechanics of mixing that pink have far less bearing than pink’s cultural power on whether one might wish to use that pink in art or design. When Aretha Franklin died, mourners lined whole city blocks with pink Cadillacs. And the Cadillac company put out a full page ad in the August 31, 2018 New York Times in her honor: a solid page of pink with a Cadillac logo in the bottom center. We do understand why they did this and that the reason isn’t that pink contrasts with green, or that red is popular and pink is a kind of red. And this is more than saying a certain color has certain associations. It is also saying that this color has been altered in our perceptions by its reproduction and dissemination. It forms a unity with the profusion of pink Cadillacs— in the physical world as well as in popular culture. If a given industry is keen to determine what kinds of colors might best confirm our own vision of ourselves, and thereby provide us with the sensation of selecting a color that suits our individual tastes, they are also keen to dictate those tastes in order to make it possible to cut costs while making that color available wherever we might be. When Benjamin Moore specifies a certain color by name and number, they are prepared to promise we may have that same color mixed up next year, and the same color mixed up in Los Angeles just as well as in Milwaukee. “We cover the world” is exactly the kind of motto that proliferated in the postwar industrial boom, a confident assertion of uniformity and reliability that speaks to a new kind of power. This is what Walter Benjamin meant when he asserted that a reproduction of an artwork is fundamentally different from the original even if the two are indistinguishable. And it is why we assert that color, pre-selected and packaged so as to be marketed to us wherever we may find ourselves, is fundamentally different from color encountered more organically, even if the two are indistinguishable. In Chapter 1 we described the experience and approach to color mixture inherent in using pigments mixed as some dyes or combined with various media for applying and binding those pigments to a painted surface. The sensuous and open-ended exploration of material admixture describes almost all art-making through all of history until the most recent period. We called this process analog in order to distinguish it from the digital experience afforded by computer programs today. That new digital approach is in keeping with the kind of Cartesian thinking which we saw Whittle suggest tends to reinforce the coloring-in approach to color perception. The shapes and forms of digital space are susceptible to exactly the kind of coloring-in which Chirimuuta refers to. And the color space which appears in a drop-down menu when one wishes to select a new color is often precisely conformable to a Cartesian coordinate system. The color can be found through an exploration (via mouse, touch screen, or track pad) of an abstracted color world and then selected—resulting in a numerically specified color. Alternatively this number, often a “hexidecimal” providing percentiles from 00 to 99 in each of three color dimensions, can be transmitted by the designer, derived from a formula purporting to harmonize a color palette, or as specified in a registered brand patent. The number may be used as an input in the software to generate the desired color and can further be specified for the printers producing packaging, advertising, point of purchase displays, and so on (see Figure 8.7). So we are living in a culture which has quite recently undergone a significant revolution in the everyday approach to, and experience of, color. At least a vague awareness of the terms CMYK and RGB has become 313

Color Theory

Figure 8.7 Drop-down color menus such as this one create the sensation of selecting any possible color, but contrast markedly with the analog process of mixing paints together to explore and find colors. Here we are limited to adhering to a grid in which one may only land on the intersections of predetermined lines. Screenshot by Priya Kambli.

widespread as more and more people work with color printers and computers in their homes and at work. These devices are truly astonishing in their potential to place the tools, if not the understanding, of art and design at the service of ever growing populations. CMYK is of course shorthand for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, the common set used when printing with inks. These four inks do maximize the range of colors one can produce with a set of four “primaries.” The cyan color is what many would call a light sky blue; magenta is that color partway between pink and purple; and yellow conforms to standard notions of that color. The reason that the “CMY” set is not the traditional blue, red, and yellow set is twofold. First, these three are shown to produce a wider color gamut than the older set and also because these are light valued transparent colors so that when printed on white surfaces they allow for a range of colors on the lighter end of the color space. When built up at greater degrees of saturation (or surface coverage as they are often combined with a Ben-Day dot pattern) they can produce increasingly dark, if somewhat muted, color mixtures. Black is added to provide definition and to offset the fact that the other three colors are fairly light in value, thus providing as broad a color gamut as can be hoped for under the limitations of any set of four ink colors. They do not, as often claimed, combine to produce all colors. And the “K” at the end of the sequence admits the fact that the three primaries do not combine to make black, as is also often claimed. In color branding situations, the colors of the corporate brand (Coca-Cola red, UPS brown, etc.) are printed using an ink providing that color at full saturation, not the muted simulation one would get with CMYK inks. Similarly, when a color is vital to the effect of an advertisement, such as the rich 314

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

orange and green desired for orange juice packaging, those colors are printed as additional colors alongside whichever CMYK colors may be necessary. One can gain insight into the intent of designers, and the significance of certain colors in marketing, by looking at the bottoms of packaging in stores, where the set of colors required to print that item are sequenced as a set of small dots; the printers “showing their work” for the designers. The other newly widespread color primaries are RGB, the additive colors used in televisions, and then computer monitors, smartphones, and so on. These colored lights, and additive mixture generally, are also used in lighting design for theater and concert productions. Again, additive color is the mixture of colored lights to make other colors of increasingly lighter values and ultimately combine to make white light. In the case of additive primaries, the assertion that these combine to make white is on a more solid footing than the assertion that the subtractive primaries using pigments combine to make black. However, there is still some mystification here as just blue and yellow light can also be combined to create white light; that is to say, a light which will make a snow bank appear white. Yellow light itself can be created by mixing red and green light, but it may also be found not as a mixture but as its own hue connected to a particular wavelength of electromagnetic energy. Artificial light has seen dramatic improvements in the ability to generate colors of a given hue and a “pure” white light. The final step in LED (light emitting diode) technology, a blue LED developed by Professors Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 and is already available in markedly improved mass market products (Akasaki et al. 2014). The RGB of additive light mixture are of course red, green, and blue. And as CMYK uses a set of three light valued primaries, the RGB primaries are dark values, presenting a deep red more orangey than purplish, an emerald green, and a purplish blue. Arguably the notion of primary colors has more merit with this additive process than in subtractive processes, as our retinas do have peak sensitivity to particular portions of the spectrum. However, it is still not the case that these three colors, when mixed as light, can create all colors. For this reason, advances in color broadcast and display technology are gradually leading to monitors that include yellow, creating richer viewing experiences with color gamuts covering more of the CIE color space. The two processes of subtractive and additive color mixing are complementary in several ways but do present challenges for our comprehension, at least those of us given repeated exposure to the color wheel with three primaries of red, yellow, and blue, three secondaries of purple, orange, and green more or less as those colors might be presented in a box of Crayola crayons. Though making the switch from blue, red, and yellow to cyan, magenta, and yellow is fairly simple, we may struggle to grasp the idea of blue and red light combining to make a purplish pink (magenta), and blue and green combining to make a light blue (cyan). The complementarity of these processes is well served by slotting those CMY color terms in as the results of RGB mixture, and vice versa. Though it involves using the theoretically ideal mixture which may not be found in practice, this model at least allows one to see all at once how the processes of adding light to move towards white and of subtracting light to move towards black form a complete color space. The commercially available Color Cube presents this model in sufficient clarity for our purposes. Sold as a three-dimensional puzzle which assembles into a four-by-four grid, each of the points on the grid is a cube whose color is represented as either 0, 33, 66, or 100 percent saturation of the subtractive pigments cyan, magenta, and yellow. One cube at one corner is a zero on all three measurements and is the color white. At the opposite corner is a black cube, claiming, a bit aspirationally, to be the combination of all three colors at 100 percent. The Color Cube has six other corners. Cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY—each giving a value of 100 for one color, and 0 for the other two) are at the corners closest to white. Red, green, and blue (RGB—each giving a value of 100 for two colors, and 0 for the third) are at the corners closest to black. The other fifty-six cubes in the Color Cube model provide all the other combinations of cyan, magenta, and yellow within the parameters given. Holding the finished model in one’s hands, rotating it about, and gazing through it along various axes allows one to see several features of this color space. The basic achromatic value scale is represented by a 315

Color Theory

diagonal sequence of four simple steps; white, light grey, dark grey, and black. Following the edges connecting the corners of the cube allows one to see the sequence of mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow to create red, green, and blue and then mixing those to create black. Likewise, by proceeding in the opposite order, the additive process of shining red, green, and blue lights into a dark room creates first those colors and then their increasingly bright admixture to form cyan, magenta, and yellow and so onwards to white. Each side of the cube shows the mixture of smaller subsets of color: such as cyan and magenta, with no yellow in various mixtures towards blue. The Color Cube also presents what our eyes perceive to be uneven progressions. While some transitions look smooth and consistent in the degree to which one color steps to the next, other adjacent cubes seem to be only slightly related. The Color Cube doesn’t correspond to the even perceptual steps which Munsell’s color system was founded upon, nor does it match up with the lighting standards for which the C.I.E. color space is designed. Pantone is a company name which has gained a position relative to color of near hegemonic status in the popular imagination. Formed in the mid-twentieth century by commercial printers and purchased in 2007 by X-Rite for $180 million, Pantone’s most important contribution to the field is the Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space which has been embraced by designers and printers as a means of color matching and color specification. Their primary products then are a series of fan decks which provide over 1,000 color samples. Reissued annually due to potential upgrades and enhancements, and also because of changes that occur to the physical colors over time (they tend to yellow with age), these fan decks have become an essential tool in design studios and print shops around the world. Regina Lee Blasczyk does an excellent job of tracing the lineage of the color industry in her book The Color Revolution. She explains how Pantone did for printing what the Textile Color Card Association had done for textiles, and then how their nimble creation of standards for computerized ink formulation and matching in the 1970s led to their dominance in design industries as personal computers began to revolutionize that field (Blaszczyk 2012, 297). At the turn of the millennium, however, Pantone began to achieve something near the status of a household name, at least among the ever expanding audience for the media celebration of art, design, and fashion. Mugs, notecards, and other products present the bold lush Pantone specified colors in single images of a simple square in a minimalist design. Probably the marketing strategy which has most aided this rise in popularity has been Pantone’s annual announcement of the “Color of the Year,” beginning in 2000. Chosen by a secretive meeting of color forecasters, very much on the model of the Textile Color Card Association’s forming of committees as early as 1915 to predict the fashionable colors of the coming season, the color of the year has attracted widespread attention to the Pantone brand. Each year’s announcement provokes seemingly automatic articles and stories throughout mainstream and non-specialized media. Pantone’s pronouncements on color have an air of scientific authority about them, yet are unmistakably mingled with an amalgam of notions borrowed from social science and psychology. “Greenery,” or Pantone 15-0343, was named the 2017 color of the year. The company website declares, “Greenery is a fresh and zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring when nature’s greens revive, restore and renew. Illustrative of flourishing foliage and the lushness of the great outdoors, the fortifying attributes of Greenery signals consumers to take a deep breath, oxygenate and reinvigorate” (Pantone 2017). Clickable social media posts relating to color have begun to make any connection possible to the authority which Pantone holds. So Robert Ridgeway’s Color Standards and Color Nomenclature is now hailed by a widely shared online article as “The Bird-Based Color System that Eventually Became Pantone.” A large leap is required to connect Ridgeway’s work in particular to the Pantone system. Such an assertion does not adequately consider the specific context and legacy of Ridgeway and is clearly an attempt to generate interest in the topic of the article by associating it with something which is known and popular. The uncritical acceptance of Pantone as an arbiter of taste and as the authority on color says much about the reflexive 316

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

celebration of industry and acceptance of the manufactured authority which brands claim for themselves. It also makes clear the broad cultural interest in color and suggests that contemporary Western culture has shed much of the philosophical objection to the dangers of color. The purchase of a Pantone branded product by those not directly involved in the design and printing industries reflects a chromophilic celebration of color as it is standardized and made globally available in contemporary design industries.

Color in the age of information While art and design practice may be adapting rapidly to the shift in color technology from analog to digital, there has been very little in the way of a theoretical response to this historic shift. This book’s partial step in that direction has been to propose that Benjamin’s essay may be taken to imply certain lessons relevant to the post-war industrial boom which we might title “Color in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” There is of course lots of work being done grappling with our new digital context writ large. What remains is to connect that more thoroughly to the context of color. Though guidance exists to learn the software or minimize printing errors, there is no “Color in the Age of Information” to act as a bookend to “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Benjamin’s essay and Warhol’s celebration of mass production, we can see a shift from the power that is expressed by a singular, irreproducible masterpiece in non-industrial contexts to the power of industrial production that is expressed by many hundreds of thousands of identical objects. Arguably the age of information allows for new kinds of expressions of power, such as the instant gratification of the desire for any object, in any color, at any place and any time. The power of our society may be played out in a scenario such as when our American friend has just purchased a Ford truck in the color of the year, but as our DNA has just revealed we are “28% Italian,” we may wish to purchase a Fiat in the colors of the Italian flag, which Wikipedia informs us are established by law as Pantone colors 17-6153 TC, 11-0601 TC, and 18-1662 TC (“Flag of Italy” 2019). On the one hand the potential to use real information in real time is certainly powerful. The Color Association’s Executive Director Leslie Harrington identifies “big data” as a key element of a profound shift in color use that is occurring as this book goes to press. As she points out, the Color Association has hard data on color use going back over a century to the founding of its predecessor organization, the Textile Color Card Association, during World War I (Harrington 2018). On the other hand it is hard not to be cynical about the kind of information market forces are likely to bring to bear on color trends in the future. As with algorithms that provide us with new music selections, binge-watching options, news feeds, and so on, much of the “information” served up to us has been stripped of its historical and cultural context. And information out of context is of course not information at all, and may well be disinformation. And the potential which the information age offers us as color users, to richly inform the meaningfulness of our color choices, may give way to the meaningless suggestions of an artificial intelligence whose criteria for what makes a good selection is clicks and purchases. So what might our hypothetical essay “Color in the Age of Information” say? It will need to make clear that despite protests to the contrary, despite claims of scientific accuracy and universal standards, this culture does have a set of color notions that reflect the time and place of their production. These notions do have some basis in science, for the faith in science as a means of controlling color and as having something relevant to say about color is one of the markers of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century approaches to color. Perhaps more salient than science is the degree to which the practical problems of global communication in, with, and of color dictate what we think color is all about. Contemporary color is lush, flexible, transmittable, and standardized. It provides much of what it promises in terms of the completeness and reliability of its color systems and slickly conceals what gaps remain in our ability to produce, on demand, any color anywhere. 317

Color Theory

Contemporary color hides the labor and expense of color use behind a seamless facade of simplicity and ease at the point of purchase. The simplified approach to color purchases and color design, in which a sweater or house or couch may be pre-visualized in a variety of colors and in which design software allows for color changes to be applied in convenient layers, does much to reify the coloring-in theory of color perception which neuroscience shows to be problematic. The commitment to color as an element which may be easily abstracted from its context and whose appearance and meaning are to be counted on as invariable is both fairly explicit and demonstrably incorrect. Color is broadly used as a useful and pleasurable means of color coding information from file folders to pie charts. A walk up and down the aisles of a grocery store provides a clear demonstration of the myriad ways color is used to indicate functionality, suggest associations with gender, class, and race, and imply value. Contemporary color is repeatedly allied with capitalist values and used to reinforce the power of global brands. Finally, there are plenty of ways in which chromophobia persists, coding color as a dangerous and irrational, associated with the Global South and with the effeminate and the sexually deviant—even as it is embraced and celebrated by increasingly vocal members of those communities and their allies. But contemporary color has in some ways overturned traditional fears about color—generally celebrating color as a fun and festive element in an otherwise difficult life, as well as color’s connection with information and with scientific advances which are regarded with wonder.

Color Use Activity 8.1 It is only oversimplifying a little to say that the color activities of the previous seven chapters belong to the contemporary artist as much as any activities that might seek to capture the present moment. For on the one hand it is the colonizing and appropriating trend of the past few decades to borrow from cultures diverse in time and in geographic locale. And on the other hand this book and the previous chapters of color exercises are themselves reflections of our own culture. So begin there, with a review of what has come before and of the countless no doubt more subtle and more suitable options which they may hint at. Just because the means of getting there may appear formulaic does not mean that the art of the past cannot speak to us today and generate fresh art and design of great significance and beauty. What follows, then, is a bit of a coda—a sampling of ways color may be encountered today that were not possible, or not considered relevant, until very recently. Contextual color 1 Assemble a new color nomenclature derived from the colors of popular and commercial culture. Examine the products in your home and in the nearest glossy magazine—the cereal boxes, bourbon bottles, blouses, shoes, and shower curtains with which our world is made. How will you organize this nomenclature? By hue—with Coca-Cola red appearing on the same page as Cadillac pink? Or by their use—in product packaging as opposed to in flags or men’s clothing? Then embark on a project of mis-coloring packaging. Trace the contours of a Cheerios box and fill it in with colors from a tampon package. Dress a soft drink can up in the colors of an expensive bottle of whisky. The satirical and deconstructive effect is easily achieved, though in some cases the work seems to have been anticipated by the original designer. “Dude Wipes” and “Women’s Ear Plugs” appear to have arrived on the shelves fully self-aware.

318

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Contextual color 2 Walk into a store selling house paints—such as Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore, or Pittsburgh Paints. Take in the general parameters of the options before you, and the indicators given in the brochures with palette suggestions. Then select a diverse array of color chips. Take them to a group of friends, fellow students, or co-workers and explore together the connotations of race, class, and gender suggested by the color chips—and by the creative names the marketers have given each chip. Create one or more color models in which the dimensions of color property are not hue, value, and saturation but are the cultural constructs we find the marketers appeal to. Gender will be easiest, perhaps, owing to the simplistic use of color in advertising and packaging to market toys and other products for boys or girls. As for class, most colors for homes are meant to connote sophistication, but there are exceptions where that restraint conflicts with a sense of fun. Find colors one might deem fun, silly, patriotic, or suitable to a chain restaurant and put them on the low end of the “class” scale. More subtle, muted tones are often pictured on the walls of elegant homes and given names that imply a distinguished heritage. Then, while marketers are less apt to make colors that straightforwardly appeal to race, one can find certain associations instructive on that front. Nations in the Global South are often described as “colorful” and Northern European countries are often described as sober, pragmatic, and generally grey. There are other cues based on ethnicity and a certain orientalizing perspective that may be more or less construed as hinting at the exotic and the non-Western. You might find it distasteful to carry this exercise out to its logical conclusion, so you may wish to stop once the uncomfortable point is made—that color is one of the ways we all signal our own identities, that sometimes destructive cultural constructs are a part of those patterns, and that marketers will use colors and color names to connect to those codes. Discuss with others the degree to which any of this is true. In a given crowd of people, would swapping the colors of their clothes cause you to read them in a different way? And would the man who wears mango pants be made welcome, or stick out, in various contexts—at work, on the golf course, or in a rural roadside bar? It would often be unsafe to test these theories out, and you or your acquaintances who have inadvertently worn the “wrong” color in the wrong place may at least recall slurs yelled by passers-by. Install clothing in the most polarizing colors on mannequins as part of a conceptual art display, and title the artworks using names from the corresponding paint chips. Create a map in which locations are color coded according to the acceptable dress code in that public or private space.

Postmodernism and post-formal color Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote the following formula in his 1979 book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge: “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives” (Lyotard 1984, xxiv). Since extreme simplification is what is required of us here, we will lean on this formula. This “metanarrative” is also often called the “grand narrative” or “master narrative.” These are the big overarching narratives, frequently left unspoken, which shape the stories we tell about history and culture. Clement Greenberg’s version of modernism, for instance, has a clear sense of an historical arc—an inner logic to the art historical sequence which takes the many incidental occurrences, the individual artworks and lives and 319

Color Theory

human relationships that make up art history, and provides them with an order. This order comes in the form of steady progress, as well as the rise and fall of styles and even civilizations. Modernism, it is argued, is faith in this metanarrative. Postmodernism is skepticism regarding all such storytelling—including, awkwardly but inevitably, the narrative of postmodernism itself, as defined in this paragraph. In general, the prefix “post” does not mean “anti”; postmodernists are not anti-modernists. Rather, “post” both acknowledges an historic dependence on the suffix term while implying a certain critique of it. The postmodern is very much shaped and determined by the modern but is also the articulation of a determined rejection of certain aspects of modernist thinking. And postmodernism offers many narratives, a diverse and sometimes fractious discussion including potentially incompatible perspectives. Among these perspectives there are those who, in the words of Donald Kuspit, “continue to mine particularly rich veins” of modernism (Kuspit 2000). Besides the master narrative itself, the formalism of modern art has been under sustained disruption since the advent of pop art beginning in the late 1950s. The modernist emphasis on form served well the attempt to make a universal art that transcends time and place. For if context doesn’t matter—if the race or gender of the artist is irrelevant, or if the political moment of its production or reception is not admissible as evidence of the artwork’s meaning—then the artwork succeeds or fails on the merits of its form. So any art object, from a nineteenth-century Yombe sculpture from the Democratic Republic of Congo to a Hellenistic sculpture from the first century bce , or a modernist abstraction (see Figures 8.8–8.9) can simply be analyzed by a receptive soul in terms of how those lines, shapes, textures, and various means of inter-penetrating space affect the viewer. Those trained in such methods of formal analysis enjoy an aestheticized encounter with all human artifacts, which can be personally transformative. But they do so by willfully ignoring the ritual practices surrounding each object, its function in society, the possible polychrome nature of its original production, and the ways in which race, class, and gender very much inform the meaning of each—all of which we argue really cannot be divorced from the artifact’s significance. So instead of formalism, the postmodernist offers what some call post-formalism. A post-formal analysis is again not anti-formal; it recognizes that there is (usually) a form in which the artwork is finally viewed, even if that form may vary. Installations and other artworks with variable dimensions will nonetheless be encountered in time and space, and if the artist sets the experience in motion in ways that they could not predict, that itself is a formal choice. All of these choices by the artist are meaningful. Also meaningful, however, is the way the artist’s and our own identities as viewers may inflect our perception of the artwork. Or the way images of airplanes and buildings strike us in the wake of 9/11. Or the way the artifact connects to our lives due to its functionality, role in religious ritual, the way it reinforces our identification with our nation or favorite brand. Images of victims of abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib, attributed to Forkscrew Graphics, which copy the design of advertisements for the then lifestyle-changing iPod Shuffle, play off our love for the goods of capitalism both for shock value and as a critique. A purely formal analysis is clearly insufficient for understanding such images. And arguably no cultural artifact is fully separable from these issues of context. While a formal analysis may always be performed where there is a form to consider, it becomes difficult to maintain that any art or design object doesn’t meaningfully interact with its context. So what about color? In fact, post-formal approaches to color abound. Most contemporary users of color already know much about how to approach it in terms of its contextual potency even if they have never framed the topic explicitly. The iRaq images created by Forkscrew Graphics, for example, rely on the simple method of a direct and explicit mimicry of a branded ad campaign which was a well known feature of visual culture at the time—so the color is fully contextual. The original iPod campaign’s use of those bold saturated rectangles of color was itself both a formal and contextual choice. Formally the colors add visual appeal while conforming to the minimalist program of Apple product design. And while the various solid black profiles 320

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Figures 8.8 and 8.9 A nineteenth-century sculpture from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a Hellinstic sculpture may equally be analyzed using the process of a formal analysis, which ignores the context from which an artwork arises. Mother and child statue, Democratic Republic of Congo, 1880, Science Museum, London, Wellcome CC BY 4.0. © William Perry / Dreamstime.com. 321

Color Theory

placed against those grounds are potentially readable in terms of race and gender, the flatness of this presentation implies a unifying and perhaps democratic effect—with the exception of a degree of age-related audience-targeting, we are invited to see ourselves depicted as diversely but equally able to use the product to participate in our own private parties. Besides the formal effect, however, the iPod campaign plays off the increasing chromophilic use of bright colors as a celebration of diversity and individuality. And it leans upon utopian threads in the ongoing project of modernist design. Through new digital technology we may be seen as entering into the fulfillment promised by the de Stijl movement in such works as the Rietveld Schröder House and related furnishings: a realm of flat colored rectangles where the spirit enters into an alliance with mass production.

Conceptualism in postmodern art: pop and feminist art Chronologically, the history of art locates the conceptual art movement as beginning well after pop art and feminist art. But a conceptual, rather than materials-based or formal, approach is implicit in those two movements which combined to disrupt the modernist narrative. Pop and feminist artists began making artworks whose commitments to concept trumped the standard approaches to form which would seek to manipulate space and color in ways that stimulate the viewer regardless of their understanding of content. Theme and variation, bold contrasts and subtle changes, and dynamic compositions using asymmetrical balance are typical of such efforts. In contrast, such textbook examples as Andy Warhol’s grids of Campbell’s soup cans and Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party installation are formally inert (see Figures 8.10–8.11). The soup cans are all theme, with a notable lack of variation. This lack is not because Warhol can’t make a good composition, but because the allusion to mass production and consumption is the essence of the artwork and would be destroyed by such playful impulses. And the Dinner Party is premised on bringing to mind a great sacra conversazione—Leonardo’s Last Supper multiplied by three, with table, linens, and place settings all prepared and waiting only for the guests to arrive. As an exploration of physical space, the huge table has little more than scale going for it—again, not because Chicago couldn’t have made a sculptural riff on the form of a table, but because its status as a real table pre-empts such strategies. In color the logic is parallel to these other aspects of design. Pop artists make their use of color as we find it in commercial media quite clear. From the red and green of Coca-Cola packaging in Warhol’s work to the Ben-Day dots of printed mass media seen appropriated in the work of Roy Lichtenstein, it is concept and not formal play which rules the artist’s color choices. In pop art the notion that art is or should be a mirror of society is generally affirmed and the colors we find in that work are meant to reflect those found in the broader culture. The emphasis is on how color appears in the materialist and capitalist context of Western industrialized democracies. A case in point is Jell-O, a product whose colors are as abstracted from context as it is possible to imagine a food product being. Jell-O comes in a range of colors meant to communicate “fun!” and to blur the line between color and flavor so that we often simply ask for the red or blue flavor of this or some similar products. And unlike real fruit grown on trees, the colors here are very noticeably standardized. They are “as seen on TV” and they will be the same in every hospital room in the country. Such color use is unique to this culture and no art or design wishing to engage with the phenomenon of products like these can take some other symbolic, or Romanticist, or formalist approach without missing this point rather dramatically. Many other kinds of color might be popular but these are not as salient as the overarching conditions of the postwar boom in industrial production. Such color, then, is not meant to be timeless, but timely. Whether or not you like it, these color palettes seem to say, this is what you are. “You are what you eat,” in a manner of speaking. 322

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Figures 8.10 and 8.11 Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans and Chicago’s Dinner Party are both formally inert, as formal play for its own sake would destroy the concept each artist is exploring. Rana Royalty free / Alamy Stock Photo. Brooklyn Museum; Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10. © Judy Chicago. (Photo: Donald Woodman) / © Judy Chicago. ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020. 323

Color Theory

The famous rejoinder to art being a mirror held up to society, as Bertolt Brecht is supposed to have said (this may be a misattribution, or mere legend), is “No,” art is not the mirror, it is a “hammer with which to shape” society. For the purposes of metaphor there are more subtle tools than hammers, so the alarming juxtaposition with the glass of a mirror is no doubt intended. And this would be the reigning metaphor of feminist art, which led the way in postwar activist art. Like pop art, feminist art is a critique of modernism and sees fit to ignore the 1950s (and continuing into the 1980s) art world mandate that all serious art be nonobjective. Pop art turns to figurative art for the same reason that advertisements do. Feminist art does so because the body is where the political meets the personal. It is the site for all the awkward realities of race, class, and gender which high modernism so artfully avoids. With a sort of “enemy of my enemy” logic, feminist art sometimes revives the pre-modern notion that art should uphold our highest ideals, with the significant caveat that it not uphold the ideals of the status quo, as most nineteenth-century academic art certainly did. And of course the similarities between pop and feminist art are likely outweighed by the antipathies. Pop art is most often associated with a wry and playful use of popular culture that declines to criticize those sources, pop art images of women being particularly obnoxious from the point of view of women’s empowerment. Where one movement appears to reinforce the shortcomings of popular media, the other aims to overthrow them. Some feminist art employs color in Romanticist ways—encouraging an embrace of the link between subject and object, between women’s bodies and the natural world, which color both symbolizes and facilitates. In much of the art of Judy Chicago and other second wave feminists, whose championing of women included what some would critique as biological essentialism, color is used in ways meant to express the generative and nurturing powers of women’s reproductive systems and breasts. A kind of color symbolism can be seen in works depicting women’s bodies or especially women’s vulvas, which may use earth tones or bright rainbow hues, or red as a symbol for menstrual blood—when not using actual blood as a kind of ritual material. Consider Faith Wilding’s 1970 installation Sacrifice with its blood soaked Kotex products. Or in Judy Chicago’s 1974 Peeling Back (The Rejection Quartet), one set of formal choices associated with a patriarchal minimalist art orthodoxy is peeled back to reveal a counter-aesthetic that Chicago confesses she at first found frightening. Trained to respect and master the creation of austere reductive abstract forms, she now seeks to break through the geometric forms, cool colors, and cool restraint of the outer imagery with a feminine sensibility associated with biomorphic forms, warm colors, and pulsing energy. Certainly some may find the association of women with vulvas, and with a blood soaked use of the color red, simplistic or even insulting. When critics argued that these early works degraded women by reducing them to their vulvas, Chicago remarked that it has been patriarchal culture throughout history that conspired to do exactly that, and hers was an effort to reappropriate and turn around that imagery. Talk about missing the point. The point of the vaginal reference in The Dinner Party was to say that these women are not known because they have vaginas; that is all they had in common, actually . . . Now how does that get turned into “Judy Chicago reduced women to vaginas?” Garrard and Broude 1994, 71 As feminist art has worked to embrace art forms and practices, such as the various fiber arts, traditionally described as women’s work, the methods of dyeing fibers or combining colors through weaving and sewing are given more or less overt political meanings. In these areas of the art world an aesthetics of labor, or knowing from whence one’s fibers and dyes are sourced—and even of obtaining and rendering useful all those things oneself from natural sources—remains a potent and popular aesthetic practice. This approach results in distinctive looks and textures in color use. 324

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

The Pattern and Decoration (P & D) movement, which centered on the Holly Solomon gallery in the 1970s and 1980s, was wrapped up in the milieu of pop art (Warhol painted a portrait of Ms. Solomon) but also overlapped with feminist critiques of modernist approaches to decorativeness and color. The embrace of beauty by P & D artists like Joyce Kozloff gives feminist art a sensual, even prurient, appeal that may previously have been more likely to appear in pop art. “Pretty” and “Beautiful” having often been negative comments when discussing contemporary art up through the mid 1990s, Kozloff ’s use of lush color and rich ornamentation, as well as her celebration of both traditional women’s work and Islamic art, were critiques of a master narrative in which high art had been stripped of color, ornateness, and beauty (see Figure 8.12). The fact that Clement Greenberg considered two-dimensionality and not color to be the essential attribute of painting, and the consistently monochrome nature of most modernist sculpture, are both indicative of the broader truth that something of a Puritan color aesthetic has often prevailed. An illustrative early 1990s interview with the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd has the interviewer delicately broaching the subject, suggesting that Judd’s work might be considered beautiful, and wondering if that would be alright with him (it was) (“Donald Judd” 2016). In his influential essay “Enter the Dragon,” the art critic David Hickey tells the story of the time he had the temerity to suggest that beauty would be the next big thing in art. “This sounded provocative to me, but the audience continued to sit there, unprovoked, and ‘beauty’ just hovered there as well, a word without a language, quiet, amazing and alien in that sleek, institutional space—like a Pre-Raphaelite dragon aloft on its leather wings” (Hickey 1993, 12–13). With a bit of swagger, Hickey asserts that the looks of incomprehension on the faces of those assembled were enough to tell him he was onto something important. Many years later, David Batchelor’s Chromophobia would make similar points about the historical and ongoing fear of color in Western culture, and its connections to other social ills: The notion that colour is bound up with the fate of Western culture sounds odd, and not very likely. But this is what I want to argue: that colour has been the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture . . . it is a prejudice that is so all-embracing and generalized that, at one time or another, it has enrolled just about every other prejudice in its service. Batchelor 2000, 22

Figure 8.12 Joyce Kozloff ’s use of bright color and elaborate ornamentation was an embrace of non-Western art traditions and an explicit pushback against the “less is more” ideology and chromophobic patriarchal attitudes of modern art. Courtesy of the artist and DC Moore Gallery, New York. 325

Color Theory

The artists of the P & D movement were in fact making work that is both inviting and dangerous—a pointed rebuke to those who, like Adolf Loos, considered ornament to be an indicator of criminality. If lush color and ornate decoration are on the dangerous side of all those enduring binaries—masculine/feminine, straight/gay, rational/emotional—then so be it. These artists would rather be disparaged as such, than deny half of their reality as humans. By the 1980s cross-pollination can be seen between feminist and pop art, despite their antithetical aspects. Some pop art had always engaged in a level of cultural critique—not simply a passive mirror to society but one whose selected framing and juxtapositions had clear activist motives. And this sort of activist art dressed up in the clothing of popular culture included that of the noted feminist artists Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman. Kruger’s commanding use of bold typography, large-scale imagery, and a black, white, and red color scheme all borrow from a dual-lineage of conceptual art and design history—which is text heavy and has effectively turned black, white, and red into the color scheme of conceptual art. These three colors, familiar from Chapter 1 as the most universally “primary” according to Berlin and Kay’s linguistic analysis of color vocabularies, have attained a kind of authoritative tone in the art world. Besides that historical presence in seemingly all cultures, black, white and red appear often in graphic design history including crass and attention-getting two-color advertisements, constructivist design, and the black text with red lettering for emphasis found in early printing. At any rate, Kruger’s work uses the rhetorical impact and persuasiveness of pop art in the service of a feminist critique (see Figure 8.13).

Figure 8.13 Barbara Kruger uses the mass media forms of pop art to offer a feminist critique of society. She also restricts herself to the black, white, and red palette that has become a recurring color scheme of conceptual and activist art. Barbara Kruger Belief + Doubt, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, 2012. Vinyl, Site-specific installation. Photo: Cathy Carver. Courtesy the artist, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington and Sprüth Magers. 326

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Contemporary exploration of color as racial signifier The fact that in the context of the postwar era the Civil Rights struggle preceded the feminist movement, yet artwork addressing racial injustice did not enter mainstream art world discourse for many years after feminist art, may say a lot about the kind of privileged white racial space the art world is. And the connection between race and color theory remains relatively unexplored. This is the point where we may look back across our historical survey and gather together the thread of race throughout color theory history. Beginning with the earliest tendencies across civilizations—to group together color, number, direction, cycles in nature, and people into categories which are then correlated—we have a foundational tendency that in our culture dovetails with concepts of race. Quasi-scientific theories of race were developed in Europe and America alongside taxonomies of natural history, the discipline of art history (and related fields of archaeology and anthropology), as well as color theory in ways that explicitly overlapped. And this overlap helps us to see the ways in which the era of colonization is the proper frame for understanding and critiquing all of these theoretical realms. Though Winkelman’s explicit connection between race, color, and beauty may have been set aside by most theorists of modernism, numerous examples continued of only slightly coded binaries such as civilized minimalistic restraint and savage decorative excess, or the grey sobriety of Northern industrial cultures and the “colorful” cultures of the Global South. This is not to mention that we use the same words— color, black, and white—to denote the most dominant features of the theoretical worlds of both color space and race. In all of these we constantly encounter notions of logic and irrationality, sexual conformity and perversion, and masculinity and femininity. In Toni Morrison’s book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination she discusses the racial imaginary in which our literature uses tropes about race as shortcuts for delivering a range of experiences to the reader including the threat of violence, the potential for sexual adventure, and the domination and subjugation present in power dynamics. Blackness or darkness, and whiteness, are used in ways she reveals to be both powerful tools for the writer and crutches allowing plots and scenarios, which might otherwise be thought implausible or sloppy, to go unchecked. Some of Morrison’s examples bring up the perplexing color category “blonde,” which is a color inextricable from racial and sexual notions. Wittgenstein puzzled over the image of blondes seen in black-and-white photography. And commentaries abound today about the abundant presence of blonde commentators on certain cable news networks. Perhaps Raymond Chandler’s novels are the most productive gold mine of material for those who wish to explore what the blonde is in our society. In The Long Goodbye he gives us, “There are blondes and blondes and it is almost a joke word nowadays. All blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk” (Chandler 1995b, 490–1). Chandler sets up a juxtaposition of race and sex before launching into a listing of the many varieties of blondes, all of whom are ultimately too dangerous, expensive, or disappointing for the hero Marlowe to be bothered with. Perhaps he says it better and certainly more succinctly in Farewell My Lovely: “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stainedglass window” (Chandler 1995a, 834). Our pleasure at reading such lines may owe something to the degree of guilt with which we mix it. Examining her own guilty conscience, the author Megan Abbot provides a potent analysis of a scene in The Long Goodbye which juxtaposes a woman whose hair is described as a “bleach job” with a man who has a “tan so evenly dark that he couldn’t have been anything but the hired man.” The scene shifts when Marlowe becomes disgusted by the woman’s laugh and what Abbot notes is a blatant vagina dentata image (Abbott 2018). In visual art, the artist Jennifer Yorke gives us a powerful and simple set piece on the subject of the blonde in her large-scale photographic installation, with a title that says it all, Bombshell (see Figure 8.14). We are not able, in the course of this book, to untangle much more than this, simply pointing to the way hair color 327

Color Theory

Figure 8.14 Bombshell by Jennifer Yorke surrounds the viewer with the larger-than-life significance of our culture’s concept of the blonde. © Jennifer Yorke.

provides a potent nexus for race, sex, and class. Others will have examined the meanings implicit in cultural constructions of the red head and other hair and coloring types. And artists examining race have found rich material to explore in qualities of hair that intersect with color as race, particularly texture and curl. For instance, a lithograph by the artist Kiki Smith, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, simply presenting its subject along with the straightforward title Hair. Other artists whose work examines color both as visual phenomena and as race include Amy Sherald, Kerry James Marshall, and Kara Walker. Sherald’s use of achromatic grey scale rendering for the faces and other exposed skin of her subjects foregrounds the way race acts as a sign in visual culture. While we are able to see the individual depicted with a certain degree of accuracy, our consciousness of race as a condition for how the subjects are seen, and in turn present themselves, is made explicit. The resulting reinforcement of those structural realities is nonetheless intended to challenge “the concept of color-as-race” (“Amy Sherald/ National Museum of Women in the Arts” 2019). Similarly, Marshall’s use of nearly flat black shapes for the skin tone of his subjects reads both as a potent statement of power and an inescapable mask. In his early work A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self we are confronted with uncomfortable reminders of the legacy of blackness in entertainment from minstrels up through the most contemporary cable television programming in which the black male is an object of both fear and comic relief (see Figure 8.15). In contrast, Marshall’s blockbuster work School of Beauty, School of Culture quotes from Velazquez’ Las Meninas, substituting black bodies, community, and culture for that of the Spanish aristocracy within the art historical cannon. And Kara Walker’s well-known paper cut-out tableaus take advantage of the ambiguity of the black profile whose color may be that of a shadow cast to catch one’s likeness on the wall or may convey skin color. In fact, the black is blank and is as arbitrarily connected to some reference in the world such as skin color as any sign is to its signified within the theoretical framework of semiotics. Often the viewer is implicated in a web of culturally constructed readings due to their instinctive assumption as to the racial identity of the characters depicted, as well as what activities they are engaged in. Mouths and buttocks often seem to be penetrated by various objects, but plausibly the objects are in front of, or behind, the depicted figure (see Figure 8.16). In all of these works by prominent African American artists we see black and white employed for the potency which exists in things which simultaneously are and are not other

328

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Figure 8.15 Kerry James Marshall plays with the way race interacts with color, so that his use of a color—particularly black—has multiple meanings. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery New York.

things. Much as Schrodinger’s cat both is and is not alive, black both is and is not a color. And black is both a merely formal element—a quantity of paint or paper—and is not that, or is rather more loaded than that. Cases such as these in contemporary art show that practice is well ahead of theory when it comes to color, and demonstrate the need for a color theory that goes beyond the narrow scope of most color theory texts for artists.

Contemporary exploration of color science and technology Recent decades of color use have also explored the potential to mine the meanings latent in, or the color applications made possible by, color science and technology. The op art movement is a notable example of this

329

Color Theory

Figure 8.16 Kara Walker uses the blank black or white profile to draw out the viewer’s complicity in the process of making meaning from ambiguous narrative scenes. Jeff Morgan 02 / Alamy Stock Photo.

area of inquiry as artists such as Carlos Cruz-Diez have taken advantage of the latest understanding of color perception to create artworks whose basic construction may be quite straightforward. One may be presented with a series of black-and-white bands in a wave formation or set of lime green discs foregrounded against a magenta background—but the perception of this simple construction is quite dynamic. The dynamism arises from the dynamics of our own retinal and neurological interaction with color stimulants so that we see movement, spatial relationships, or feel our eyes to be taxed in some other way that goes well beyond what is on the surface of the canvas. Artists working with light and space, such as Dan Flavin and David Turrell, offer us the chance to experience color that is not embedded in the material of the artwork but arises in our viewing field in a way that is dependent both on viewer and the world we are viewing. Thus we find ourselves to be a part of what we observe—our eyes seeing the outcome of their own effort to see. Flavin’s fluorescent tubes have a certain association with dadaist readymades as well as pop art, but their ethereal light and color effects also evoke some of the spiritual connection which we associate with Turrell (see Figure 8.17). David Turrell’s works, stagings of viewing fields which allow us to look at an empty patch of air and yet perceive that patch as a richly hued scrim of light, are often discussed in terms of contemplative states and the awareness of one’s connection to light and color itself. New pigment technologies are also offering artists a greatly expanded range of visual effects which they can create. There are numerous commercial lines of paints with various iridescent, glittery, metallic, or fluorescent aspects. Daylight fluorescent pigments (also known as neon or Day-Glo) reflect brighter than they would if simply absorbing wavelengths and reflecting those corresponding with their perceived color. They do so by reflecting ultraviolet frequencies but altered and reflected within the range of the visible spectrum. Thus a fluorescent green is bright in a way that defies the light logic of the ambient conditions and seems to pop off

330

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Figure 8.17 Dan Flavin’s fluorescent tubes create art from the participation of the viewer’s own eye and mind in the creation of color perception. Robert Alexander / Getty Images / © Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2020.

the surface and demand attention. In Luis Tomasello’s Atmosphere Chromoplastique, the fluorescent pink undersides of a series of wall-mounted polyhedrons cast an otherworldly glow on the white wall surface (see Figure 8.18). When the artist Yves Klein specified his “Klein blue” he was of course committing himself to the transcendent wonder of that rich blue when applied in a uniform and saturated manner across a canvas, but he was also teasing out something about how we think about color in the context of industrial standardization and color as a branding device. The artist Anish Kapoor has continued this conversation by obtaining the sole legal rights to the use of a sprayable version of Vantablack—a pigment devised using the latest technology that is much “blacker” (absorbing 99.5 percent of light) than the pigments we commonly call black (which reflect quite a bit of light). Kapoor touched off a fair amount of controversy with this monopolistic move and has provoked a response by the artist Stuart Semple, who banned Kapoor from using a strong shade of pink he had produced. Semple then introduced Black 2.0 to the world, a pigment said to be nearly indistinguishable from Vantablack and which he makes available for use by anyone in the world—other than Anish Kapoor. Availing oneself of what is ready-made by our industrial culture is a common artistic method—from Moholy-Nagy’s experiments with “Telephone Paintings” to the sculptor John Henry’s advice to young artists that they adopt the colors available in Rustoleum spray paints—so that their public artworks may be restored with ease by any handy man or woman (Folwarczny 2017). There are also difficult problems, and potential sources of meaningful color exploration, in the ways that race and color technology in film intersect. The Shirley cards used by the Eastman Kodak company to arrive

331

Color Theory

Figure 8.18 Luis Tomasello’s Atmosphere Chromoplastique uses Day-Glo pigments to create a hot pink halo behind his pristine white forms. Courtesy of Sicardi / Ayers / Bacino. at a standard for perfect color film are now understood to have been based on standard images and test conditions in which a very fair skinned model named Shirley appeared. Capturing the nuance in her skin and using that as a standard for how photographs ought to look may well have been a case of implicit bias rather than overt racism, but led to decades of unsatisfactory results for dark-skinned people struggling to find themselves represented in their own family photographs. Generally the results would lack nuance, become muddy, and basically were unable to capture a fully three-dimensional and nuanced visage. In effect this bias in technological standards reinforced white-centric standards of beauty and denied the full humanity of people of color (Murabayashi 2015; Roth 2009). This same phenomenon played out in the motion picture industry in the case of “China Girls”—fair skinned girls who appear in just a few frames of film at the beginning of a reel as a rubric for adjustments affecting lighting and coloring when producing and then projecting those films. As the photographer Syreeta McFadden put it in an interview with NPR, these facts overlap with other concerns about representation of African Americans in popular media: “I’d also say that darker skin people, we’re going to be vigilant and sensitive to whether or not there is a lightening that happens when certain celebrities, say a Beyonce or a Lupita, appear on fashion covers” (“Light And Dark” 2014). More overt examples of colorism, as we noted in Chapter 1, appear in places such as South Asia and Africa, where advertisements for skin lighteners make the association between light skin and beauty a straightforward reason for buying those products. The China Girls, a phenomenon that intersects with both race and sex, may be so-called for their fair complexion or even make-up pushing their appearance towards a “China white” appearance. These images were mostly unknown to the general public but

332

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

were famous among the mostly male studio technicians and film projectionists who would even trade and collect the images in the manner of pin-ups. In several instances it is artists, curators, and writers who have explored what this intersection of color film technology and social and cultural constructions might mean (Gewertz 2005). The author Rachel Kushner portrayed a character’s experience as a China Girl in her novel The Flamethrowers, and the curators Julie Buck and Karin Segal produced an exhibition of their restored images of China Girls. Also the artist Adam Bloomberg curated an exhibition examining racial bias in film technology.

Vexillogical color Color also plays a role in increasingly varied flags used in demonstrations of patriotism, sectarianism, political protest, and identity politics across the world. The colors, along with symbols, text, and flag shape, as well as scale and site, form a complex sign system. In India the national flag has three horizontal bands of color— saffron (orange), white, and green—and a dark indigo (nearly black) wheel in the center. These colors have their official idealistic meanings, derived from Western vexillogical traditions, but unofficially most consider the saffron and its position on top of the flag design, as nothing other than an acknowledgment of the majority Hindu population of the country. Likewise the green at the bottom acknowledges the Muslim population, and the indigo wheel in the center has both ancient resonance and an association with the Dalits, also known as Untouchables, many of whom have converted to Buddhism to escape their status at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. These colors, then, in a variety of manifestations and combinations on flags, banners, and bunting, are used to indicate the sectarian allegiances of a multitude of political parties, unions, and religious organizations. As it turns out, the origins of many Western flags lies in similar factionalism; the French tricolor being a literal stitching together of various factions into a nation state—blue for Paris, white for the king and aristocracy, and red for the people. Interestingly the national flag of India is not frequently flown, other than on the remote rooftops of government buildings and large corporate headquarters. Thus, one who knows how to read the signs of these variously colored sectarian markers is able to navigate the political landscape of cities like Mumbai, where such factors will tell you who is in power locally, who might be of assistance (often one is not advised to seek police assistance), and who might be a threat. Though the Congress Party uses a banner nearly identical to the national flag and thus aspiring to represent a diverse nation, most other parties explicitly represent the interests of constituencies closely related to religious and other communal identities. The flags of each group are placed in public spaces with an authority which often comes solely from the fact that no one dares to take them down. With mass protests, riots, protection rackets, and neighborhood thugs being common tools of political pressure, it is worth knowing what color means in the context of an Indian street corner (Fine 2013). This kind of visual marking of turf, reminiscent of the dynamics of gang graffiti tagging in Western urban centers, may strike us as surprising and disturbing. But US citizens are also increasingly accustomed to seeing and using flags reflecting causes that are less sweeping than national pride. Rather than, or in addition to, flying the US flag, many now fly partisan or ideological flags such as the Confederate battle flag, the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag with its rattlesnake, rainbow banners (sometimes combined with the US flag design) representing diversity especially in sexual and gender politics, and the black-and-white version of the US flag with a blue stripe supporting law enforcement. There are also instances of graphic design on clothes and hats, such as a black and grey or black and silver version of the US flag, which seem to reduce patriotism to a black ops aesthetic. And pink, of certain more or less strident shades, has the status of a brand which associates the 333

Color Theory

wearer and/or corporate sponsor with the fight against breast cancer, often in merely symbolic ways. That said, college and major league teams are just as likely to lend their colors and symbols to the flags Americans raise. In all these cases, as well as with the variously colored ribbons stemming from the yellow ribbon of hostage and armed forces remembrance, the designers and users of these visual devices wish to be understood immediately, with color being a key feature in this communication.

Color Use Activity 8.2 Contextual color 3 Purchase souvenir replicas of the structures on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Observe the blank whiteness of the marble buildings and monuments and their appropriation from ancient cultures whose architecture was anything but achromatic. Provide a chromophilic makeover for these replicas using colors that might stereotypically suggest femininity, flamboyance, irrationality, and sexual abandon. Contextual color 4 Wittgenstein describes a transparent white—a color that acts like a screen through which everything may be viewed in shades of black and white, without any of the rainbow’s hues remaining. Design an ad campaign for “White Jell-O,” an imaginary food product that does just this. The spokespersons for this product should be well known white supremacists, apologists for racist policies, and their enablers. Contextual color 5 Design a new flag, based on an older pattern but with new colors.

The modernist stance among diverse perspectives In all these diverse forms of color use in postmodern contexts, color is decidedly contextual in nature. But the diversity of options for the postmodern color user includes the option of taking a modernist approach in this new context. Among those doing so are the artists Sean Scully and (again) Anish Kapoor. Scully’s use of all formal elements including color seeks to maintain the commitment to genuine, affecting, and unironic expression which was the hallmark of high modernist abstract expressionism (see Figure 8.19). In effect, the color in a Scully painting seeks to signal to us that it is not a mere sign or marker to be read in terms of the particularities of the artist’s identity, the political moment, or other contextual factors. The subtle, layered, and earthy tones he uses may be read as a sign that seeks to be engaged with in a way that is deeper than mere signification. This is a proposition of faith on the part of the artist, calling for the same in the viewer, which is perhaps more bracing for its juxtaposition in many contemporary art spaces with the stridently pop or feminist works of artists such as Jeff Koons and Barbara Kruger. In that context, perhaps, the faith in the reality of color as a transforming power is all the more moving. Kapoor’s artwork reminds us that another aspect of postmodern color use is its inclusion of diverse and global perspectives, and decentering of the art world from its loadstar 334

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Figure 8.19 Sean Scully’s art maintains a faith in the potency of color and other basic formal elements in a context which would reduce color choices to mere stylistic selections. Malcolm Park editorial / Alamy Stock Photo.

in New York. Anish Kapoor is a British artist of Indian descent whose early artwork, brightly colored and simple sculptural forms, refer to the mounds of intensely colored pigment sold outside Hindu temples for use in ritual practices. These forms employ the minimalist aesthetics of late modernism, simultaneously presenting colored material as spiritually potent in itself, as well as being a sign which may be read in its cultural context.

Approaches to color use This book assumes that one role of color theory is practical—to help guide color use. Color use is quite broad, encompassing its use to the maker (artist or designer) as well as to the audience (viewer/occupant/ consumer/etc.). The diverse approaches to color use that follow act as a sort of bookend to the list of critical principles given in the Introduction; a practical response to a critical theory. If much of that initial discussion served to point out the inadequacies of received color theory in guiding the work of creative individuals, the following is meant as a list of possible pathways into the act of using color. This list is suggestive rather than definitive—a place to begin, not a prescription to follow. It also indicates color’s uncertain location in reality and its interdisciplinary nature. Naturally many will find they are using more than one of these approaches simultaneously, as all of these are more or less constant aspects of the color experience.

335

Color Theory

Using and contemplating color as natural material/economic resource Color use is first and foremost framed by our encounters with the natural world or our ability to obtain rare or remote resources. Most cultures’ primary considerations relating to color are tied up in pigments and dyes, and the lengths one must go to in order to render them suitable for manipulation and put them in the hands of creative individuals. The ease of consumption which our industrialized and capitalist society provides disguises the fact that colors do not naturally come to us as conveniently balanced sets of paints in consistent squeezable packaging. Color use is always engaged with our relationship to the natural world. Artists such as Betsy Damon and Andy Goldsworthy often use the materials, textures, and colors found at hand in their encounters with the landscape, and Ana Mendieta used the thick mud scraped up on site to paint her naked body a rich brown/black. Using and contemplating color as light/photons Modern physics reveals color to be a direct link to the universe. It is our body’s way of sorting out a portion of the electromagnetic radiation all around us into various frequencies so that we can avoid running into objects and determine whether fruit is ripe. It also tells us that the universe is expanding, how fast it is doing so, and what the stars are made of. By bundling wavelengths together (actually more in the infrared range than in the visible spectrum) we are able to transmit large numbers of messages simultaneously through fiber-optic cables. And quantum tunneling allows the NSA to secretly capture copies of those messages without interfering with their transmission. Furthermore, photons by definition travel at the speed of light, a speed at which traveling is itself nonsensical—being the rate at which time is believed to stop. All color use participates in this mysterious spectacle, though perhaps Michael Hayden’s light installation Sky’s the Limit at O’Hare International Airport is an effective representation of the suggestion that color, light, and travel are linked (see Figure 8.20).

Figure 8.20 Michael Hayden’s O’Hare installation plays on the connection of color to light and physics. © Swisshippo / Dreamstime.com.

336

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

Using and contemplating color as it is sequenced in the spectrum Before Newton, the rainbow was not perceived quite as we perceive it now. While all humans in some sense saw the same thing, they discerned it in different terms and depicted it in quite a varied manner. Today we routinely invoke the rainbow in one of two very specific forms: as the ROY–G–BIV sequence Newton formulated or as the more convenient six-color sequence omitting indigo. Generally, as in the gay pride flag, the colors are proportioned equally rather than in the uneven amounts of the spectrum. And the final color is often purple, which is not in the spectrum, rather than violet. The rainbow in these forms has become a celebrated motif in global culture, imbued with symbolic value and beloved for its cheery effect. The order of the colors as they appear in the spectrum is taken to be logical and useful, much as we find when alphabetizing files or sorting zip codes numerically. Yoga studios and meditation centers are prone to use Newton’s colors in depictions of the yogi with seven chakras illuminated. Artists as well as designers will frequently work within this bold and orderly framework, taking advantage of the universally recognized status of this particular array of colors. Ellsworth Kelly’s Spectrum II and Gabriel Dawe’s Plexus No. 27 are notable examples of this color strategy. Using and contemplating color as matter What physics tells us need not limit or negate what cultures have believed for millennia as fodder for color use. Though science may tell us that color is not a real thing inherent in the material world around us. Though we are told that matter and energy give rise to the experience of color in our perceptions but that apples are not red and even the rays of light that travel from those apples to our eye are not red. Nevertheless a great deal of historical art is engaged with the innately colored nature of various materials; the incorruptible brilliance of gold, the rich blue of lapis, and the sanguinary fire of rubies are all good examples. Regardless of the science, color for us is often experienced as part and parcel of rich, tactile, material encounters. Lynda Benglis’s solidified pools of acrylic paint can be read as indulging in the sensuous materiality of modern color products. And Wolfgang Laib’s installation Pollen from Hazelnut communicates a reverential attitude towards a substance connected with the sun, seasons, nourishment, and the color yellow.

Using and contemplating color as it affects the retina/perception If color does not exist in the world “out there,” perhaps it at least has some reality in our own perceptions. Much color use exploring the potential of that reality is simply a matter of visual delight—attempts by producers of culture to dazzle us with light and shadow or seduce us with lush palettes. The exploration of color as a formal element in modernism is at least partially an emphasis on how color affects us as a pure sensation. Those who focus on the eye’s activation by color, such as members of the op art movement, become deeply involved in the relative nature of color perception—the fact that a color’s appearance is profoundly dependent upon the colors around it. Optical effects such as apparent motion, spatial push and pull, shimmering, and vivid after-images are all part of the perceptual artist’s repertoire. Bridget Riley’s Movement in Squares and Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Physichromie DDC 1 are important examples of this area of investigation into color.

Using and contemplating color as a religious or spiritual phenomenon Many have located the significance of color in its connection to a reality other than that described by science. That connection leads either within ourselves as soul or spirit, or to divine power, or both. The formalist artist

337

Color Theory

may then be only pragmatically interested in how color affects perception, believing in that experience as a path to a spiritual insight beyond description. For some this makes the rainbow and all the wondrous colors of creation a manifest message from the gods, while others discount the colors we see, appealing to colors our waking eye cannot perceive. Dream states, psychedelic experiences, and supernatural phenomena are variously invoked by the large number of color users throughout history for whom color’s chief characteristics are anything but those properties that physicists can measure. The work of artists such as Mark Rothko or James Turrell are often discussed in precisely these terms. Using and contemplating color as a cultural signifier Colors provide an easy way to encode information in our environment, and are a natural match for symbolic systems at all levels of society. In most cultures certain colors or color combinations have patriotic overtones, religious significance, or indicate other forms of communal allegiance. Perhaps originally chosen for their significance as bright, rare, or costly pigments, these colors are frequently transmuted into signs in the manner of a flag or emblem. Thus a color user may choose a blue dress as an evocation of the Virgin Mary or paint a canvas in red, white, and blue as a means of indicating political relevance. Even the warm tones of an old master painting may now be a means of infusing dignity and authority into the design of a product package. David Hammons’ African American Flag in black, red, and green, and Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster demonstrate ways in which color may be thoughtfully used for its social or political association. Using and contemplating color as a race, class, or gender construct Almost all cultures have engaged in narratives of light and dark embodying principles of good and evil— knowledge and ignorance. Furthermore, statements like “white and black are not colors” or “there is only one true [pure] white,” along with use of the terms “white” and “colored” in racial contexts, are providing increasing numbers of contemporary color users with layers of double-edged meaning. The further association of brighter or more flamboyant colors with femininity, homosexuality, queerness, tackiness, and the Global South makes it clear that color is frequently used as a code for—or means of disrupting codes of—race, class, and gender. Jim Iserman’s playful installations can be read as upending chromophobic taste and related prejudices, and Kerry James Marshall’s solidly black depictions of skin tone play with the double meaning of a color that is not a color. Using and contemplating color as it intersects with language The puzzle of how language intersects with color is a tempting field of inquiry for philosophers, artists, and poets. The two are about as different as it is possible for two things to be and they bump up against the edges of what we can know about the world and how we know it. The question of how the ancient Greeks saw color, or of how we do for that matter, is vexed by the ways language may inflect experience. Though the idea that members of various cultures see the world as fundamentally different because of their differing vocabularies or even differing grammatical structures is debatable linguistics; we do struggle to unsee what we have once seen a certain way. In the twentieth century, surrealist and dadaist strategies played with nonsensical combinations of word and text. And structuralist and post-structuralist philosophies filtered into the discourse around art in academic contexts, producing an esoteric genre within conceptual art. Both of these traditions had their impact on the worlds of design and advertising, where a catchy or quirky juxtaposition can serve to deliver meaning with a twist. Jasper Johns’s Numbers in Color or Map are good examples of his playful 338

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use

scrambling of color and signifier. And Glen Ligon’s Untitled: Four Etchings layers increasingly indecipherable black text quoting authors on the experience of being black, suggesting the illogical puzzle of color and words as they relate to race. Using and contemplating color as an aspect of consumer culture The trademarking of certain colors in packaging and advertisement is a clear example of color use within the context of consumer culture. Drawing on all of the above mentioned approaches to color use, designers and pop-influenced artists choose colors in order to identify and distinguish products in crowded marketing environments. The reliability of color reproduction serves as a signifier for the consistent standards of production and consistent consumer experience that brand identity depends upon. Likewise, designers wishing to go against the grain, and other color users intent on changing the terms of the producer–consumer relationship depend upon these patterns of color use to make their divergence from that practice visible. Andy Warhol’s complete works serve useful examples of this aspect of color, though works such as Mel Ramos’s 100 Grand make the connections between package design, sex, and brightly lit, saturated color more explicit.

Figure 8.21 Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson), by Spencer Finch, connects the pure qualia of color with scraps of words and memory. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin. Photo: Chan Chao. 339

Color Theory

Commencement As we come to the end of this book, we offer not a conclusion but a commencement: a sending off into the world of each reader, each artist and designer; each lover of the colorful artifacts and natural phenomena of our world. We hope to have provided a few signposts into the world of color, each of which may require a lifetime of dedicated application to fully realize. This in contrast to any summative statement explaining that here ends the study and here stands the law. Towards the end of his life, Donald Judd wrote about color and expressed a wish for a book whose scope took in the whole sweep of history. He correctly supposed that such an effort, like the history lessons we received in school, would never catch up to the present, with which he was most concerned (Judd 1993). So we end here, just about on the cusp of the present. It is for the reader of any history to carry that reading into the present and indeed the future. Contemplating the work of contemporary artists, designers, and poets is the best suggestion we can make for how that carrying of water might be undertaken. The artist Spencer Finch is among those who approach color as a poet, as a scientist, as a philosopher, and as an artist all at once. In Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson) he installs a cloud of color in a room while adding to a contextual architecture of the mind that links viewers to memories, scraps of reading, and the pure qualia of blue light as a kind of companionable echo to that poet’s own reflections. Our hope for this book is that it allows others to do the same (see Figure 8.21). I remember the fox in the light I drove forth. It was just before dawn. The headlights lit the fox’s eyes, who did not blink but passed the light back, so it shone between us. Two beams of dust in colloidal silence spread and touched the dark brush by the side of the alley. The fox was ember-colored, freshsnapped, and already cooling. Lia Purpura (Purpura 2006)

References Abbott, M., 2018. “Raymond Chandler in the age of #MeToo.” https://slate.com/culture/2018/07/raymond-chandler-inthe-age-of-metoo.html. Akasaki, I., H. Amano, and S. Nakamura, 2014. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014, 1. Bailey, A. and F. Fox, 2017. Language and Color. Presented at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education National Conference, Kansas City. Batchelor, D., 2000. Chromophobia. London: Reaktion Books. Benjamin, W., 1996. Selected Writings: 1938–1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Berger, J. (ed.), 1977. Ways of Seeing, A Pelican Original. London and New York: Penguin Books. Berns, R. S., 2000. Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley. Blaszczyk, R. L., 2012. The Color Revolution, Lemelson Center Studies in Invention and Innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Washington, DC: Lemelson Center, Smithsonian Institution. Britt, R. W., 1973. Automobile Color Popularity. n.p.p.: n.p. Chandler, R., 1995a. Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories; The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window, The Library of America. New York: Penguin Books USA. Chandler, R., 1995b. Later Novels and Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake; The Little Sister; The Long Goodbye; Playback; Double Indemnity; Selected Essays and Letters, The Library of America. New York: Library of America. Chirimuuta, M., 2015. Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Colorcube, home page, http://colorcube.com/. Drucker, J. and E. McVarish, 2013. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Boston: Pearson.

340

Postmodern: Contemporary Directions in Color Use Edwards, B., 2012. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Definitive 4th ed. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Fine, A., 2013. “No One Even Has Eyes: The Decline of Hand-Painted Graphics in Mumbai.” ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts 20, no. 2, http://doi.org/10.16995/ane.90. Flag of Italy, 2019. Wikipedia. Folwarczny, D., 2017. “Visual Note Taking.” Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, USA. “Forkscrew-Graphics.” Reframing Photography, http://www.reframingphotography.com/content/forkscrew-graphics. Garrard, M. and N. Broude (eds.), 1994. The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: H.N. Abrams. General Motors, 2018. New York Times advertisement. Gewertz, K., 2005. “A bevy of unknown beauties.” Harvard Gazette, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ story/2005/07/a-bevy-of-unknown-beauties/. Gladstone, W. E., 2016. “Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age.” Project Gutenberg, Vol. 3. Harrison, C. and P. Wood (eds.), 1993. Art in Theory, 1900–1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Hickey, D., 1993. The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty, Los Angeles: Art Issues, Press. Johnson, G., 2017. “Struggling to Get a Handle on the Flavorful Neutrino.” New York Times. Judd, D., 1993. “Some aspects of color in general and red and black in particular.” Artforum, https://www.artforum.com/ print/199406/some-aspects-of-color-in-general-and-red-and-black-in-particular-33373. Kuspit, D., 2000. “Gallery Talk.” Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, USA. Lisle, L., 1997. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Washington Square Press. Lyotard, J. F., 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McGuinness, B., 1988. Wittgenstein, A Life: Young Ludwig, 1889–1921. Berkeley : University of California Press. Morrison, T., 1993. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Books. Murabayashi, A., 2015. “Color Film was Built for White People. Can Film Be Racist?” PhotoShelter, https://blog. photoshelter.com/2015/09/color-film-was-built-for-white-people-can-film-be-racist/. National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2019. “Amy Sherald.” https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/amy-sherald. National Public Radio (NPR), 2014. “Light And Dark: The Racial Biases That Remain In Photography.” https://www.npr. org/sections/codeswitch/2014/04/16/303721251/light-and-dark-the-racial-biases-that-remain-in-photography. O’Connor, Z., 2010. Black-listed: Why Colour Theory has a Bad Name in 21st Century Design Education. Presented at the ConnectED 2010 Conference, Sydney, Australia. Pantone, 2017. “Pantone Brings the Best to Life.” https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2017?from=sharer. Pentak, S., 2017. Inventing Color Space: Where Albers Meets Munsell. Presented at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education National Conference, Kansas City, MO, USA. Purpura, L., 2006. On Looking: Essays. Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books. “Qualia: The Knowledge Argument,” 2009. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Report of the Colorimetry Committee, 1943.” Journal of the Optical Society of America 33: 539. Roberson, D., J. B. Davidoff, I. Davies, and L. Shapiro, 2006. “Colour categories and category acquisition in Himba and English.” In N. Pitchford and C. P. Biggam (eds.), Progress in Colour Studies, 159–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Roth, L., 2009. “Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Colour Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity.” Canadian Journal of Communication 34, https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2009v34n1a2196. Singh, R., 2006. River of Colour: The India of Raghubir Singh. London: Phaidon. Turner, R. S., 1994. In the Eye’s Mind: Vision and the Helmholtz–Hering Controversy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wallisch, P., 2017. “Illumination assumptions account for individual differences in the perceptual interpretation of a profoundly ambiguous stimulus in the color domain: ‘The dress.’” Journal of Vision 17, no. 5, https://doi.org/10.1167/17.4.5. Winawer, J. et al., 2007. “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 19: 7780–5. Wittgenstein, L., 1961. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Humanities Press. Wittgenstein, L., 1977. Remarks on Colour. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wolfe, T., 1965. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

341

342

GLOSSARY

Aerial Perspective In art, the depiction of spatial depth by simulating the effects of intervening atmosphere, as well as limitations of eyesight. The most salient of these effects are changes in color towards cooler, or bluer hues, decreasing contrast, and reduced clarity of detail—as the scene depicted recedes into the distance. First formalized in writings by Leonardo da Vinci, aerial perspective may be combined with, but is distinct from, the techniques of linear perspective. Albers, Josef (1888–1976) Author of Interaction of Color, Josef Albers described color as highly deceptive, and the most relative of the art elements. His career began at the Bauhaus, where he was a student and then an instructor. Upon the closure of that school, he and his wife Anni Albers (a fellow Bauhausler) emigrated to teach together at the newly formed Black Mountain College in the United States. Albers then took up a position at Yale University where he founded the first professional graphic design program in the country. Interaction of Color broke away from several conventions of color theory texts, including that it did not propose a new color wheel or any other color model, which Albers described as inevitably too inflexible to meet the task of demonstrating the properties of color. Those properties, he asserted, can only be demonstrated by examining colors as they interact with each other. Thus, his book is dominated by expensively produced color plates forming a kind of atlas of colors in combination. Aristotle (384–322 bce ) One of the most influential philosophers in the Western tradition, Aristotle founded a school, the Lyceum. He was tutor to the young Alexander of Macedon, who would become Alexander the Great. And he had been a student of Plato, who was in turn a student of Socrates and founded the school known as the Academy. A systematic and rigorous thinker, Aristotle gave more credence to the evidence of the senses as a means of finding the truth than was common in ancient Greek Philosophy. His writings on color, primarily found in De Anima, were therefore embracing of color as a means for knowing the real properties of the things we see. He also focused on the perceiver of color, concentrating on how color may cause pleasure or pain, and theorizing that the ideal applications of color will seek the mean so as to be the most pleasurable. His observations also led him to conclude that color was formed by the interaction of light and darkness. These theories were embraced and went virtually unchallenged in Western color theory for nearly 2,000 years, until Isaac Newton’s discovery that white light is made up of all the colors seen in the rainbow. Bauhaus, the Despite existing for only fourteen years (1919–33), the “School for Building” or Bauhaus was arguably the most influential school in the history of modern art. Located sequentially in Weimar, Desau, and Berlin, the Bauhaus sought to unite art and craft, and to eliminate the gap that had developed between art and everyday life. The school’s faculty, staff, and students, referred to as Bauhauslers, held disparate political, philosophical, and theological positions including some adherents to the theosophical and Mazdaznan spiritual movements. Several of the faculty were among the most innovative and significant artists and theorists of their time and the curriculum they developed was a radical departure from the past, setting the mold for subsequent pedagogical thinking around the world. With its strong ties to practical applications in industry, architecture, and design, the Bauhaus also had a significant impact on the look of modern society. Color was discussed as one of several formal elements along with line, shape, texture, and so on. And color theory at the school sought to synthesize ideas about color both as a subject of scientific study and as a spiritual potency. Upon its closure, under pressure from the Nazi regime, several of the nine remaining faculty went abroad, with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lázló Moholy-Nagy, and Josef Albers all relocating and bringing Bauhaus pedagogy to the United States. Ben-Day Dots Printed on paper in mass-media applications such as newspapers, magazines, and books, these tiny dots of color are often too small to see with the naked eye. When printed in layers of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink— and at varying densities—they are a means of cheaply achieving an optimal color gamut for reproduction. Named for the illustrator Benjamin Henry Day Jr., Ben-Day dots have become iconic, particularly through their pronounced role in the art of pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. In that context they illustrate an awareness of the impact that mechanized and mass-produced color has on our reception of color. Camera Obscura Literally meaning “dark room,” a camera obscura is a device for capturing an image of the world, and is essentially a working model of the human eye—as well as of a photographic camera. Any enclosure, such as a box or

343

Glossary literal room in a house, may be turned into a camera obscura, so long as it can be made light tight, and one small hole (aperture) can be made in the side facing the scene one wishes to capture. Ordinarily light coming through a window projects no image on the walls, floor, and ceiling—as the light rays overlap and jumble into the mixture that is white light. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi explained quite clearly, the small opening of an aperture serves to isolate just one ray from each point in the scene outside and project it onto just one point on the interior surfaces. The resulting image is strikingly lifelike, though it is projected upside down and backwards. Add any light-sensitive material, such as the cells of the retina or photographic film, to the interior surfaces to create an eye or camera. Chiaroscuro In art, the bold use of light and dark colors to model three-dimensional forms by imitating the way light and shadow fall across the form and reveal the details of its surface. Literally meaning “light-dark,” chiaroscuro can be seen in Renaissance or later art, but it is especially associated with the more muscular or dramatic use of the technique in the work of such Baroque artists as Artemisia Gentileschi. Chirimuuta, Maazvita Historian of science at the University of Pittsburgh, with an emphasis on theories of perception and cognition, Chirimuuta is the author of Outside Color. This book surveys the history of Western scientific theories of light and color, and argues that these theories are mistaken in their atomistic, mechanical characterization of the world. This mistake, she argues, as well as a focus on color as something independent of any conscious observer, is responsible for the conclusion that color is an error or illusion. In the book, she attempts to address the current landscape of physics, which has long since abandoned the conception of atoms in the manner of Newtonian physics, as though they were billiard balls. She also seeks to marshal the most recent insights of cognitive science and propose “Color Adverbialism,” an alternative way of thinking about color. Chroma The term used by Albert Munsell to describe the degree to which a color exhibits only one hue of the spectrum in its pure form (resulting in a high chroma number) or mixed with other hues (including white or black, and resulting in a low chroma number). For example, a bright fire engine red color would have a high chroma and a muted brick red would have a low chroma. This is essentially the same property others have called intensity or saturation. In Munsell’s system the use of this more specific word also reinforces that the property is measured at right angles to the central axis of values. That axis—ranging from white at the top, through increasingly dark shades of grey, to black at the bottom— is also known as the achromatic scale, and chroma is notated as 0 along that line. The further a color is located from that line, and thus the closer to the hue circle that forms the circumference of Munsell’s color solid, the higher the chroma is. Chromophobia A term coined by David Batchelor, in a book of the same title, to describe the fear and hatred of color that has been a long-running thread in Western thought. Enlisting other prejudices with binary structures, including those relating to race, gender, sickness, sin, reason, and civilization, chromophobia is argued to be a deep-seated anxiety. Its opposite, “chromophilia,” may be used generically to describe an enjoyment of abundant bright colors, or may have a specific aim of resistance to one or more of the prejudices involved in this structure. Color Adverbialism An alternative way of defining what color really is, and thus what it means for it to be real rather than illusory, proposed by Maazvita Chirimuuta in her book Outside Color. In color adverbialism, color is real, as a feature of our evolved capacity to perceive the world around us. And color is not isolated from other modes of perception but is part of a gestalt in which we perceive color for its ability to clarify ambiguities about what is perceived. Color adverbialism proposes that the senses do not have the same role as scientific apparatuses do—for instance to detect the specific color of a leaf. Rather, color in such a case is one element of what helps us perceive the leaf at all. Color Gamut The range of all colors possible given certain parameters. The concept of a color gamut is useful for comparing the range of colors that may be produced with any set of pigments (by subtractive mixing) or lights (by additive mixing). It also helps to dispel the notion that any limited set of colors (such as the conventional primaries red, yellow, and blue) will produce “all the colors.” These gamuts, such as for CMYK or RGB, are sometimes illustrated graphically by being plotted on the CIE color space, which provides the full gamut of colors visible to a standard human viewer. Any additional color added to a set of colors such as CMYK, so long as it is a reasonably saturated version of a new hue, will expand the gamut, but the law of diminishing returns applies. So, while primary colors are culturally constructed, it is worthwhile finding limited sets of colors that offer a wide gamut. Color gamuts may also be used to conceptualize the color space perceived by different species, as well as within the natural variation of human vision. Color Harmony A common conceptualization of ideal ways of applying color schemes in art and design. The concept of color harmony is grounded on an explicit metaphor with musical harmony. The analogy with music is sometimes carried out in very thorough ways: producing calculations of precise colors that may be combined into “color chords,” and ways to create consonance or dissonance among color choices. More often the analogy is left at a more suggestive level and may in fact be a simple effort to balance the effects of the various colors at play. This balance has roots in

344

Glossary Aristotle’s admonition that one seek the mean, gained credence from the discovery of simultaneous and successive contrast, and often involves a symmetrically balanced color model (circle, sphere, double cone, etc.) to aid in the selection of balanced colors. Colorimetry The measurement of color. In the twentiethcentury the creation of instruments able to measure both the amount of light (either reflecting off a surface or emanating from a light source) and the portion (or portions) of the spectrum making up any such light brought about the ability to accurately measure all physical colors. These measurements, of light as detected by machine, produced a color model known as the CIE color space. These breakthroughs in color measurement in turn led to the ability to transmit color specifications as information and to reliably reproduce them within controlled production contexts. But the CIE model does not arrange colors as they appear to human perceivers (the human eye is unevenly sensitive to the light of the visible spectrum), so colorimetrists had to calibrate their light readings to the perceptions of standard perceivers. Other challenges for colorimetry are metamers (colors which appear differently under different lighting conditions), various color finishes (such as glossy or matte), and the modes or perception which are hard to disentangle from color perception (such as translucence, sparkle, scale, etc.). “The Dress,” an ambiguously colored image which became famous on social media in 2015, is an example of a failure of colorimetry which in other contexts could have dangerous consequences. Color Mixture, Additive The combination and mixture of colors to produce new colors by means of light. Called additive because each new colored light adds to the total amount of light and pushes the mixture towards white light. In most television and computer monitors the RGB (red, green, blue) color set is used to generate a good color gamut. When the three colors are combined evenly, the result is a white light. Color Mixture, Subtractive The combination and mixture of colors to produce new colors by means of pigments or dyes. Called subtractive because each pigment or dye absorbs light—reflecting only the wavelengths that produce its color— so each new color subtracts from the total amount of light and pushes the mixture towards black. In the mass medium of offset lithography, the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) color set is used to generate a good color gamut. When the CMY colors are combined evenly, the result is a muted color, so a fourth “key color” of black is added not only to provide black areas but also to extend the color gamut into that darker range. Color Model A visual tool which arranges colors in a spatial relationship to one another so that the relative properties of the colors are made visible. Early models were not generally constructed with real intentionality in terms of this potential, and tended to be simple scales of light and dark, or even of such things as cosmological significance linked to color. Isaac Newton’s color wheel is the first to arrange the colors in a circle in a way that is meaningfully tied to their properties. This arrangement of Newton’s was not based on any evidence that the spectrum of light is circular. Rather it was a construct based on convenience (one can mix the colors at each end of the spectrum and this provides for that eventuality) and culture (the color wheel has an analogy in the musical scale which circles back on itself with each octave). Later models would add a third dimension to account for the full complexity of possible colors. There seem to be nearly as many proposed color models as there are color theorists. And the color model suggests a possible fallacy, that color may be productively studied in isolation from a given perceptual context. Nonetheless such systems combined with colorimetry technology have allowed industries to reliably detect, prescribe, transmit, and reproduce specific colors. The three dimensions conventionally correspond to the properties of hue, value, and saturation and generally (with varying degrees of accuracy) allow one to identify color complements. More recently the coordinate systems that map out these color models have abandoned the baggage of a set physical form and instead describe a color space. And there are some proposals that such a space requires more than three dimensions. Color Scheme, Achromatic A color scheme similar in nature to monochromatic, but using a range of values ranging from white through grey to black. These colors, lacking any hue or saturation, are located above and below each other in a conventional color solid. They are generally sufficient to convey the shape, texture, and relative position of any objects in a scene depicted. Achromatic images may stand alone, as a black-and-white photograph does, or may be used as an underpainting, as a grisaille. Color Scheme, Analogous Color combinations that are similar but not identical in hue. These colors, such as blue, blue green, and bluish purple, are located next to each other on a conventional color wheel. They are also deemed by most guides to color use to go well together in a manner generally described as mild and potentially calming. Color Scheme, Complementary A combination of colors, usually just two colors, that are maximally dissimilar in hue. These color complements are located opposite each other on conventional color wheels (such as Itten’s color star), for instance blue and orange or red and green. They are deemed by most guides to color use to go well together in a manner that is exciting, but potentially too stimulating. These colors are shown to make each other seem more highly saturated (high chroma or intensity) than they would appear in isolation. They also are shown to have the opposite effect when

345

Glossary intermixed in small pieces, such as Chevreul observed in woven tapestries of complementary threads. In these cases the colors mix optically and create a dull muted color of low saturation. Often guides to harmonious color-use advise some modification of a complementary color scheme, such as balancing a small highly-saturated color shape with a large area of its complement mixed with white, to avoid an overly jarring juxtaposition. Color Scheme, Monochrome A color scheme similar in nature to an achromatic scheme, but using a range of values in one hue (not shades of grey). These colors, such as light, middle value, and dark blue (and potentially shading into white and black), are located roughly above and below each other on a conventional color solid. They are also deemed by most guides to color use to go well together in a manner that is variously inflected depending on the particular hue selected. Color Scheme, Split Complementary A combination of colors that is a modification of a complementary color scheme. In this case a given color is balanced by colors adjacent on the color wheel to the first color’s complement. For instance, on Itten’s color star, green may be balanced not by red but rather with a pair of nearly red colors—orangish red and purplish red. Such combinations are generally considered to have a bit more subtlety than a standard complementary color scheme. Color Temperature A psychological attribute of color identifying colors as more or less warm or cool. Red, orange, yellow, and some purples and greens are thus described as warm—while blue, and some other purples and greens are described as cool. Some will also discuss various reds (or blues, yellows, etc.) as warm or cool, based on relative changes within more narrow ranges of hue. The associations with fire and water or ice, or with various iterations of the ancient elements, as well as with blood for red and the blue of a corpse, are straightforward enough. But these hues are not warm or cold objectively speaking. Or, if anything, it is blue that is warmer than red, and violet is the warmest, if one considers warmth as energy—for the red end of the visible spectrum is the least energetic and violet is the most. Color Wheel (Color Circle) See “Color Model.” Contrast, Simultaneous The visual effect by which colors viewed alongside each other (simultaneously) alter the way each is perceived. As Josef Albers points out, all colors are relative—more or less light or dark, warm or cool, saturated or muted—in contrast with all other colors. He points out that physical warmth or coldness appears more pronounced when juxtaposed with its opposite. So also, any color placed just next to a contrasting color will cause those contrasts to be more pronounced in each color (but if one color shape is much smaller than the other it will appear to be affected more strongly). This effect is stronger if the colors are more dissimilar, so complementary colors are ideal subjects for experiments with this phenomenon. For example, a small patch of a sage green placed against a highly saturated magenta background will appear to be a lime green and the viewer will perceive it as unlike an identical sample placed on a white background. On the other hand, two dissimilar greens, say an actual lime and an actual sage green, can be made to appear quite similar if placed apart from each other on a broad expanse of that magenta background. In this case, their relative difference from the background, and the perceivers’ tendency to draw connections between similar items, causes the perception of the colors to be altered. See also “Contrast, Successive.” Contrast, Successive The visual effect by which colors viewed sequentially, one right after the other (successively), alter the way the second color is perceived. As Goethe observed upon entering an inn when traveling, the sight of a woman against a white wall was succeeded, when she moved away, by an after-image of contrasting colors. Attributed to retinal fatigue or, in Goethe, the eye’s demand for balance, successive contrast is a constant factor in our perception of color. See also “Contrast, Simultaneous.” Disegno and Colore In Western art history, a distinction between two aspects of any piece of art or design. Disegno, which has no direct translation in English, takes in aspects of the creative process and the finished product that are achromatic—the drafting, line work, and modeling with light and shadow that determines where forms are and what their spatial contours are meant to be. Colore is more clearly translatable as color and in this context it is color as contrasted with disegno. Much of the rhetoric of Renaissance treatises on painting would seem to inscribe a prejudice in favor of disegno and against an overindulgence in colore. And within that context there has been a traditional association made between the art of Florence and disegno on the one hand, as against the art of Venice and a greater appreciation for colore on the other. Certainly much of the academic discourse and nascent art historical scholarship of the nineteenth century both held that prejudice and ascribed it to their own notions about both the Renaissance and the art of Greece and Rome. But more recent scholarship contests this as a great oversimplification of the true attitudes of Renaissance artists and patrons, and a real error regarding the use of color in ancient cultures. However it emerged in Western discourse, the phenomenon of disegno and colore is a key aspect of chromophobic traditions. Electro-Magnetic Spectrum The full range of electro-magnetic radiation from ELF (Extremely low frequency) to gamma rays, of which the visible spectrum is a small slice. Newton’s discovery that white light (a light that makes snow appear

346

Glossary white) is made up of a mixture of other colors clarified that colored light comes in a spectrum. Though he rejected the notion that light moved as a wave does, he understood this spectrum in terms of the various degrees to which each colored ray was refracted by passing from one medium into another (such as air, water, or the glass of a prism). It was Maxwell who worked out that this spectrum continued on beyond the visible wavelengths (by his time wave theory had been accepted) and thus these two men were responsible for the first and second great unifications of physics. Extramission (and Intramission) Extramission is a theory of vision holding that the eye sees by sending out effluences, sometimes described as rays but characterized by the ancient Greeks as streams of extremely subtle particles. This explanation for how our eyes “know at a distance” essentially has the eye reaching out to touch, in a manner of speaking, the things it sees. Intramission has it the opposite way, arguing that the eyes receive effluences which stream forth from every object. These theories were developed by the Pre-Socratic philosophers and their relative merits were debated at least through the Renaissance. From the perspective of these scholars working before the scientific revolution, extramissionism has the virtue of being apparently much simpler than intramissionism, as the former posits extraordinary powers only to the eye, while the latter posits that every visible object in the universe has the power of sending its image to every eye. Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the infinite number of images of itself each object gives off in all directions. Plato’s cumbersome model proposes three sets of effluences, those emitted by the eye, those emitted by the objects, and—noting the necessity of a light source—those emitted by that light. Of course, our current understanding eliminates the first two sets of effluences and allows light to do all the work of carrying images of objects to the eyes that view them. Formalism The conception of a work of art strictly in terms of what is present in the form of the art itself, excluding all historical and cultural context, and any narrative that is not strictly a part of the work of art. Any change in form, such as the application of a different color scheme to an otherwise unchanged composition, is held to bring about a change in content—the way in which the design affects the viewer. In visual art the form of the work of art has been discussed, especially in modern art and particularly at the Bauhaus, in terms of its constituent elements of line, shape, color, scale, and so on. At that time in art history, artists were seeking to unveil what is essential about art, so that they could use it to create work that was more effective in conveying what they saw as deeper truths about our world. The resulting trend in art veered away from the depiction of the material world as revealed by our senses and towards abstraction and, ultimately, non-objective art. So, while it is true that any physical art object has form and may benefit from its creator’s careful consideration of those formal elements, art described as formalist is generally abstract or non-objective. Formalism includes both the approach that the artist may take in creating their work and, in formal analysis, a way of systematically considering any artifact in terms of its impact on the viewer. And formalism is a way of approaching artifacts from any culture at any time in a manner that its proponents deem to be neutral, timeless, and free of bias. A contrary view, more in vogue since the advent of pop art, feminist art, and postmodernism more generally, is that formalism is not neutral, but is a distinctively Western perspective that all too conveniently ignores the meanings of objects within the cultures that produce them. Gestalt A gestalt is any phenomenon whose whole is said to be “greater than the sum of its parts.” Gestalt theory appears in psychology, art theory, and science of the mind, among other fields. Such theories propose that certain systems, such as the mind, or the mechanism by which we perceive the world, cannot be understood by examining each part of the system in isolation. Rather, the system must be taken in as a whole, with particular attention paid to those things that are emergent in the whole though not present in the parts. Often, as in the case of our perception of an optical illusion, “the whole” means not simply the whole illusion being viewed, but rather the thing being viewed, the mind of the viewer, and the entire apparatus of perception. A simple example of gestalt phenomena is a design consisting of three angles, arranged on a page so that a triangle might be superimposed neatly on top of the angles. There is no triangle on the page but human perceivers will instantly perceive a triangle when viewing the design. In art, such phenomena are often sought out by the artist, purposefully leaving some information out of a composition, on the aesthetic theory that the viewer’s mind, provoked to fill in details that are not really there, is more stimulated by such incomplete works. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832) Known primarily as a poet, and a towering figure in German-speaking culture, Goethe was also a scientist and a color theorist. He became internationally famous at the age of twenty-four upon the publication of his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, and his work in fiction and poetry is generally characterized as examples of Romanticism. As a well-connected person of means, Goethe became an important scientist of his day, making important contributions to the fields of geology and biology. His work in color became more controversial even in his own lifetime, owing to his aggressive attack on Newtonian principles. He insisted that Newton was wrong about the nature of white light, convinced that light and shadow were simple and homogenous, not made up of numerous colors. And he defended Aristotle’s position that the colors are made by the interaction of light

347

Glossary and darkness. These assertions are factually inaccurate according to modern physics. More fundamentally, however, Goethe argued that color could not be studied objectively, but had to take into consideration the viewing subject. This shift is a sophisticated position within the philosophy of science, and allowed Goethe to indicate important directions in color perception, physiology, and pathology. It also provided material more suitable to generating aesthetic theories about the best manner of using color, in light of the role of color in bridging the gap between the world “out there” and our inner states of being. Helmholtz–Hering Debate In color science, a dispute about the process of color perception waged between two camps advocating the views of Hermann von Helmholtz on the one hand, and Ewald Hering on the other. Helmholtz proposed the trichromatic theory, also known as the Young/Helmholtz theory, which argues that color vision comes about by the stimulation of three different color receptors in the retina of the eye, one most receptive to short wavelength light sources, one to medium, and the last to long. These receptors came to be held to correspond with the wavelengths for the colors red, green, and blue. Hering held the opponent process theory, which argues that color vision arises from the perception of three oppositional qualities of light: red or green, blue or yellow, and black or white. Color models based on these theories often depict either three primary colors for the trichromatic theory, or four colors (red, yellow, green, and blue) for the opponent process theory. Like the dispute between advocates of Goethe’s and Newton’s views, this argument often involved very personal disagreements and did damage to professional careers. For many decades before and after the turn of the twentiethcentury the trichromatic theory appeared to have more evidence to support it within the field of physics, while the opponent process theory accounted somewhat better for certain psychological aspects of color perception. When better microscopes allowed for the imaging of the cells of the retina, the existence of the three types of cones bolstered Helmholtz’s position still further. But the eventual ability to observe the function of certain brain processes has provided some evidence of the opponent process at work, with the perception of a given color causing its opposite perception to be switched off, so to speak. It has become common, but not universally accepted, to suppose that both theories are correct to a certain extent. Hue The property of color that is determined by which wavelength, along the visible spectrum, it radiates—or, in the case of mixtures of the extreme ends of the spectrum (red and violet), by the particular ratio of those wavelengths. Thus, red, green, and purple are all hues. In contemporary culture, hue is often considered to be the most salient color property— so much so that people often say “color” when they mean “hue.” In fact a color has at least three properties, which are measurable as hue, value, and saturation (though the names of these properties varies between color systems). These three properties are used to denote, transmit, and reproduce specific colors. Hue Shift A method of rendering the three-dimensionality of forms in space while maintaining highly saturated colors. Whereas using up-down modeling to model volumes with light and shadow is quite effective, the addition of white and black pigment reduces the saturation of the rich colors that may otherwise be desirable. Thus, many artists in the Renaissance would make use of the naturally shifting value structure among various hues at full saturation. For example, a red apple could be rendered with gradations shifting into orange and then yellow to maintain saturation while creating the effect of lighter values and thus the illusion that the form is curving to face the light source more directly. More extreme cases, with hues ranging around the color wheel from red to green, or from purple to yellow, are often called “shot color.” See also “Up-Down Modeling.” Iconoclasm Literally meaning the breaking of icons, iconoclasm is seen in any of variously strict prohibitions against representational imagery, especially in religious contexts, including the destruction of the art objects. Examples are seen especially in monotheistic contexts as well as in numerous cases of cultural conflict involving religious differences. At issue, in many cases, is the theological danger of worshipping false idols: the object being worshipped is seen as a distraction from, or even rival to, the true deity. The iconoclastic episodes in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church are well-known examples of a culture which made heavy use of religious imagery, then went through an iconoclastic period, and finally resumed that production of religious imagery. That conflict led to unusually thorough articulations of aesthetic philosophizing about the purpose of art. The apologists for the tradition of incorporating icons into religious practice are called iconophiles or iconodules, in contrast to their opponents, the iconoclasts. Among the elements the iconophiles discussed is color, which plays a role in making the image of the incarnate god more real, rather than the “shadow” of a simple contour sketch or grisaille image. Intensity See “Chroma,” “Saturation.” Intramission See “Extramission.” Local Color Sometimes also called object specific color, this is a conventional understanding of color as having a straightforward connection to each object we see. The optical reality is more complex, but people generally perceive the grass simply as green, the strawberry as red, and so on—and artists may depict them this way either intentionally or

348

Glossary not. When representational accuracy is desired, however, the perception and rendering of reflected colors, aerial perspective, and optical mixture will tend to create a more lifelike image. Maxwell, James Clerk (1831–79) Scottish physicist whose insight that the visible spectrum is part of the longer electromagnetic spectrum brought about the second great unification of physics. He also clarified the inverse processes of additive and subtractive color mixing, which had long caused confusion including in Newton’s Opticks, while adding a demonstration of partitive color mixing using the spinning discs which came to be called “Maxwell’s discs.” These clarifications, and his embrace of the trichromatic theory, allowed Maxwell to demonstrate the first ever color photograph. Modes of Perception A term used by the Colorimetry Committee of the Optical Society of America to reflect the way color perception is entangled with other elements of the gestalt that is perception more generally. That committee listed the attribute of location or of having no location, perceived illumination, illuminants, transparency, volume, glossiness, shape, and size as modes of perception that could not be absolutely separated out from color perception. Maazvita Chirimuuta’s discussion of color perception extends this observation, proposing a theory of color perception that begins with the gestalt, rather than attending to it as an afterthought. Munsell, Albert (1858–1915) The creator of the Munsell color system. Munsell was an academically trained artist whose interest in creating a color model was sparked by ideas of dynamic color balance but whose pursuit of empirical measurement led to an unusually asymmetrical model. Beginning with a color solid very similar to Runge’s, he soon acknowledged the ways color is not so perfectly balanced with an illustration of a color tree. This evolved into the lumpy mass he dubbed the color solid. Eventually the color service he founded expressed Munsell’s cylindrical coordinate system as the Munsell color space. But his color system was more than a color model as it included a reliable system for measuring, identifying, and standardizing colors—thus it also fulfilled the role of a taxonomy and nomenclature. The color system dovetailed well with widespread efforts in colorimetry, government bureaus of standardization, and industrial mass production and communication, and is still in use in some of those fields. Though Munsell’s conservative notions of color harmony were out of step with twentieth-century art history, his system can still be found in some college-level color curricula, and is an aid to teaching students to discern subtle variations in the three measurable properties of color. Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1726) A giant of the scientific revolution who made dramatic advances in physics and mathematics and brought about the first great unification in physics. Perhaps most popularly known for what people think of as his discovery of gravity, he in fact discovered a formula describing the relationship between mass, distance between objects, and gravitational attraction that is predictive both of the paths of celestial objects and apples falling from trees. His discovery of calculus (more or less simultaneous with Leibniz) is an aid in calculating the paths of those objects. And his discovery that white light is made up of variously colored (as we perceive them) wavelengths upended color theory that had been in place since Aristotle. Newton also deduced that light behaves as particles do (though he may have erred in dismissing light’s wave-like qualities) and that light is polarized. His construct of the color wheel began a tradition of color models whose capacity to captivate while demonstrating measurable properties of color is matched only by their prolific variation. Though he would not account for the role of the perceiver in an ontology of color, and he struggled with many of the errors about color common to his period, Isaac Newton’s work in color is arguably the most influential of any color theorist. Opponent Process Theory See “Helmholtz–Hering Debate.” Primary Colors An essential set of colors, sometimes called simple, or basic, colors. In conventional color theory, an analogy may be inferred with prime numbers; the primary colors are held to be indivisible, whereas the secondaries are formed from combinations of primaries. Furthermore, these primaries are said to be all that is needed to mix all the other colors including black in the case of subtractive mixing, or white in the case of additive mixing. In fact none of these claims is strictly true, and theoretical coherence breaks down as each new color theorist designates different sets of primaries, and as practice does not live up to the promise of theory. The impulse to name a basic set of colors was shared by the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Greeks, and potentially has grounding in the ways that language shapes our understanding of the world, as the work of Berlin and Kay, and Sapir and Whorf suggests. Pragmatically speaking, color use requires some limited set of coloring agents to be employed to create colored works, and essential considerations of which set of colors delivers the widest color gamut are implicitly framed by the question of primary colors. Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis The proposition, articulated by the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, that language structures the way we view the world, and different languages cause us to structure the world differently. Hypotheses like this are sometimes abused, as when W. E. Gladstone’s examination of color words in Homer’s writing

349

Glossary is used to assert that the ancient Greeks did not see blue. Nonetheless, there is evidence to suggest that the discernment of similar colors is influenced by color vocabulary, as in studies of Russian speakers as well as those of the Himba tribe. Saturation The degree to which the hue of a particular color is, or is not, diluted by admixture with other hues or achromatic colors. Also referred to as intensity or (in Munsell) chroma. Highly saturated colors (such as lemon yellow) exhibit the qualities of their particular hue stridently, while colors with lower saturation (such as mustard yellow) are relatively muted. The achromatic scale of white, through grey, to black has no saturation. Saturation is one of three measurable properties which (along with hue and value) are used to denote, transmit, and reproduce specific colors. Sfumato A term used for the style of modeling employed by Leonardo da Vinci, which is often contrasted with chiaroscuro. While light and shadow play a role in this style, it seems to incorporate lessons Leonardo learned in his studies of aerial perspective, including graduated loss of detail and a soft, hazy light gently revealing curved forms. While the term is perhaps imposed onto its art historical subject, the unique qualities of Leonardo’s style do set his work apart from that of his peers. Shot Color see “Hue Shift.” Steiner, Rudolf (1861–1925) Founder of anthroposophy and self-professed clairvoyant, this leader in the spiritualist movements of the early twentieth century held a profoundly idiosyncratic cosmology which was belied by his pronounced and practical impact in multiple fields of endeavor. His concrete accomplishments included establishing the worldwide movement of Waldorf or Steiner schools, camps for disabled individuals, and principles of holistic farming—while designing and constructing two successive centers for his movement (each called the Goetheanum). In color theory, Steiner advanced propositions relating to color’s past, its reality, its interactions, and its power that completely defy the materialist scientific view. Early modern artists, including Wassily Kandinsky, considered him an important source for insight into the spiritual nature of color, although they generally did not adopt his theories wholesale. Students in the school movement he founded experience a very specific instance of his views on color by occupying warmer colored classrooms in their younger years—the better to induce a contrasting calm response in the student—and conversely cooler rooms as they age—to induce a more energetic response. Suger (1081–1151) A French abbot whose patronage of masons and other artisans in the renovation of the Abbey of St. Denis was instrumental in developing the Gothic style in architecture. A powerful figure in the kingdom of France, the Abbot Suger put great wealth to use in making St. Denis a model of a new international style in which the heavy stone walls of Romanesque churches were replaced by soaring vaults with stone ribbing supported by flying buttresses which allowed much of the wall surface to be turned over to dazzling displays of colorful stained glass. Against any criticism of such lavish displays of wealth and indulgence of the senses, it should be noted that Suger was an articulate defender of the role of such arts in the elevation of the soul. Color as light itself is described by him as drawing our thoughts up out of the material realm and to a contemplation of the divine light of God. It is arguably no coincidence that at St. Denis these expensively wrought wonders also serve to elevate the status of the French monarchy as a manifestation of God’s will on earth. Up-Down Modeling A method of rendering the three-dimensionality of forms in space, especially as developed in the Renaissance by artists newly interested in depicting the world as it actually appears to the eye. In one description of the process, an artist lays out bowls of pigments in a range of values. In the center is simply the pigment providing a specific hue (red, for the local color of an apple, for example) in its full saturation. To one side of that dish are bowls in which that pigment is combined with white pigment. To the other side the same is done with black pigment. The artist then renders the effect of light and shadow falling across the surface of an object by painting the unadulterated pigment in the areas that are neither in shade nor most directly lit. As the form turns in space towards the light source the artist “up-models” by using increasingly light versions of the hue. As it turns into the shadows, they use increasingly dark versions of the hue. This term may also be broken up into “up-modeling” and “down-modeling” as there are cases where artists may choose not to do both in the depiction of a particular object. See also “Hue Shift.” Value The property of color that is determined by how much light it radiates. The achromatic value scale ranges from white, through a series of gradually darkening greys, to black—but all colors have value and are typically displayed in three-dimensional color models alongside the particular grey that has the same value as they do. In some color systems the word “key” is used instead. And in the CIE color space value is simply luminance. In some ancient and medieval cultures, value appears to play a more prominent role than hue in discussions of color, as writings from those periods often emphasize brightness, light, and modes of perception such as shimmer. Meanwhile, ancient color terms for hue, so salient today, are sometimes lacking or ambiguous. Value is one of three measurable properties which (along with hue and saturation) are used to denote, transmit, and reproduce specific colors. Young–Helmholtz Theory See “Helmholtz–Hering Debate.”

350

INDEX

achromatic 37, 39–41, 44–6, 54, 58, 66, 204, 266, 308, 328 aesthetics of balance / harmony 55, 173, 206 dissonant 211, 232 and environment 13, 15 and ethics 64, 90, 176 extra-terrestrial 12 feminist 324 functional / formal 180, 320 iconophilic 74 Islamic 81, 83 machine / military 202–3, 252, 333 modernist 209, 228, 279, 312, and ordering systems 31, 256, 276 physiological 3, 149, 157, 160–1 racist 153–4 reform 210, 212 restrained 39, 137, 152, 231, 287, 325, 335 taste 133 unaesthetic 266, 271, 273, 280 of variation 99, 101 af Klint, Hilma 237–40 Albers, Anni 271 Albers, Josef 199, 245–6, 270–3, 275–6, 280, 284, 289, 310 Anscombe, G. E. M. 297 Aquinas, St. Thomas 89–91 Aristotle 10, 35, 37, 41, 45, 50–3, 55–8, 64–5, 67, 71, 80, 89–90, 97–8, 103, 110–11, 119, 126, 133, 158, 161, 225, 297 art history, discipline of 9, 37, 61, 66, 150, 152, 327 atom / atomism 45–6, 54, 67, 121, 129, 132, 151, 160, 163, 216, 280, 308 Augustine, St. 29, 74, 89, 90, 115 Bacon, Francis 118, 121, 123, 127, 150–1 balance, see harmony basic colors additive primaries 171, 315 and architecture 287–8 asymmetry of 182 and basic shapes 251, 256 and Bauhaus 250–6 black and white 31, 101 in conceptual art 326 Egyptian 27 and the elements 41 as gendered 237 Greek 37–9, 54, 61 and humors 262 linguistic 4, 24, 25, 299–300

mixing to create secondaries, tertiaries 196–7 in perception 307 primaries, theory of 162–7 and printing 163–4, 178, 202, 314–15 rejection of 275 set of five 205–6, 209 set of four 98, 173; see also Egyptian, Greek set of seven 90, 127 set of six 3, 169, 202 set of ten 206 set of three 8, 57, 166 set of twelve 254, 302 set of two 157–8, 237 in theory and practice 274 unempirical nature of 2, 194, 221–2, 268 as warm and cool 228 Batchelor, David 1, 28, 325 Baudelaire, Charles 175, 188 beauty 7, 20, 43, 72, 80, 83, 89–91, 111–12, 133, 150, 153–5, 175–6, 188, 190, 209, 211, 325, 327, 332 ben-day dots 295–6, 314, 322 Benjamin, Walter 294–5, 317 Berger, John 300 Berkeley, George 123–4, 130–3, 137 Berlin and Kay 4, 24–5, 27, 38, 326 Birren, Faber 9, 10, 20, 215, 225, 302 black 7, 10, 12, 13, 25, 26, 27, 31, 37, 38, 43, 49, 61, 87, 98, 99, 111, 112, 127, 128, 169, 176, 186, 221–2, 231, 239, 240, 241, 259, 281, 285, 299, 308, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 338, 339 Blake, William 131, 150–1 Blasczyk, Regina Lee 316 Blavatsky, Madame 217–18 blindness 7, 54, 93, 160, 168 see also vision blonde 298, 327–8 blue 3, 15, 18, 24–6, 31, 38–9, 83, 87, 98, 103, 110, 112, 127, 132–5, 157–8, 160, 163, 166–7, 169–73, 182, 201, 205–6, 209, 220, 223–5, 229–30, 236–7, 254, 256, 259, 262, 266, 293, 300–1, 307, 314–16, 331, 333, 337–8 body, the 16, 18, 47, 71, 74, 75, 89, 91, 122–3, 153, 218, 221–3, 225, 324, 336 Bradley, Milton 198, 201–2, 205, 209 Bragdon, Claude 194, 227–30 branding / marketing 4, 10, 13, 160, 178, 214, 232, 236, 313–14, 316–18, 320, 331, 333–4, 339 breathing exercises, see mindfulness Breton, Andre 262, 264 bright 12, 15–16, 25, 38, 43–4, 54, 75, 91, 95, 99, 175, 338 brown 13, 16, 25, 214, 225, 231

351

Index Cadillac, see cars Calkins, Mary Whiton 198 cars 3–4, 293, 295, 312–13 caste, see class Chevreul, Michel Eugene 9, 168–71, 182, 188–9, 203, 233–4, 295, 302–5, 313 chiaroscuro 113, 119–20, 140, 280 china girls 332–3 Chirimuuta, Maazvita 45, 306–11, 313 chromolithography, see printing chromophobia 1, 28–9, 46, 286, 318, 325 C.I.E. Color Space 305, 316 class 18, 20–1, 26–7, 32, 173–5, 190, 228, 266, 280–1, 299, 312, 318–20, 324, 328, 333, 338 CMYK / CMY, see cyan magenta yellow black cognitive science 83, 302 colonialism, see post-colonial color adverbialism 308–10 code 20–1, 27, 32–3, 190, 311, 318–19, 338 forecasting 214–15 gamut 206–7, 314–15 guides, for naturalists 136, 194–8 mixture 13–14, 32, 41–2, 98, 112, 127, 158, 163, 165–8, 171–2, 182, 196–7, 199, 206–7, 215, 233–4, 256, 289, 302–3, 313–16 model 2, 4, 8, 17, 90, 125, 127, 158, 162–73, 182, 190, 194, 200, 202–7, 210–11, 222, 227–30, 241, 245–6, 248, 253–60, 261–2, 275–6, 289, 302–7, 310, 315–16 nomenclature 194–8, 201–3, 207, 316 order 12, 18–19, 25, 56, 98, 112, 127, 164, 166, 169, 170, 253, 256, 259–60, 262, 312, 337 science 1–2, 9, 71, 128, 136, 144, 156, 157, 160, 167, 169, 171, 173, 182, 194, 196, 197, 198, 201, 203, 207, 210, 211, 214, 215, 220, 241, 246, 254, 262, 270, 289, 302, 307, 312, 317, 329, 330 sphere, see color model system 4, 9, 37, 158, 160, 164–71, 182, 195–7, 201–15, 254–8, 275–6, 302–6, 316–17 taxonomy 163, 195–8, 201–3, 207 wheel, see color model colorimetry 172, 194, 210, 214, 215, 241, 257, 302, 303, 305, 306, 307, 310, 311 coloring-in model (of perception) 45, 258–9, 308–10, 313, 318 colorism, see race, skin tone coordinate system 13, 122–4, 204, 206–7, 210, 293, 303, 313–14 cyan 293, 314–16 cyan magenta yellow black 164, 202, 252, 313–15 cycles 7, 14, 18–19, 21, 28, 327 darkness 7, 8, 10, 11, 18, 22, 25, 38, 41, 42, 43, 46, 55, 90, 111, 158, 327 see also light data 4, 203, 214, 236–7, 253, 303, 311, 317 day-glo, see fluorescent de Stijl 246, 248, 266, 280, 287, 322 death 11, 19, 27–8, 38, 40, 71, 80, 182–3, 186, 188, 297 decorative 19, 23, 33, 58, 79, 81, 86, 92, 180–1, 209, 228, 232, 246, 250, 282, 287–9, 325–7

352

Descartes, Rene 46, 117–18, 122–4, 130–1, 156, 301 detectionist paradigm 308–10 dichotomy / opposite 7, 32, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 54, 55, 57, 73, 158, 159, 160, 187, 205, 225, 227, 228, 229, 262, 298 direction, cardinal 7, 12, 18, 19, 30, 31, 32, 327 disciplines / interdisciplinarity 1, 2, 9, 37, 66, 98, 119, 120, 128, 190, 198, 208, 271, 283, 294, 302, 307, 327, 335 discord, see dissonance disease 48, 226, 287 disegno and colore 73, 78, 99, 103, 107, 111, 113, 119, 137, 152, 187, 190, 233, 258, 281, 283, 285, 310 dissonance 210–11, 275 see also harmony divine, see supernatural domestic sphere – 9, 20, 173–5, 193, 312 dreams / dreaming – 50, 230, 262, 338 dress, the (illusion) 309–10 more broadly see fashion dualism 122–3 Duchamp, Marcel 266, 271, 280 dye 12, 16–17, 23–4, 101, 127, 130, 169, 171, 173, 201, 212, 214, 216, 303–5, 313, 324, 326 see also pigment ease of consumption 293, 336 Eddy, Mary Baker 216 education 1, 8, 64, 127, 160, 163, 168, 194, 198–201, 207–12, 218, 223–4, 239, 246–53, 256–7, 270–1, 276–7, 293–4, 297–8, 300–1 elements, the 14, 18–20, 27, 37, 39, 41, 43, 48–9, 98, 119, 163, 255 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 153–4 emotion 10, 29, 36, 39, 49, 61, 64, 140, 144, 179, 182–4, 187, 193, 199, 200, 217, 228, 235, 299, 310–11, 326 empathy, see emotion empirical / empiricism 2, 4, 9, 90, 114, 118–24, 127, 130–3, 136–7, 151–2, 158, 171–2, 190, 194, 199, 203, 206, 208–9, 239, 241, 245, 253, 257, 299, 302, 305 environment 2, 12–14, 17, 21–4, 27, 30–3, 219, 293 error, see illusion esoteric / occult 9, 28–9, 33, 194, 216–7, 224–5, 227, 237–8, 247, 270 eugenics 225–6, 264, 270 evolution 24, 162, 207, 218, 225–6, 287 expressionism 137, 144, 182–3, 186–7, 190, 224, 231, 233, 240, 246, 248, 253, 261, 264, 271–2, 277–83, 289, 334 faith 44–5, 49, 53, 57, 72–3, 78–9, 88, 90, 130–2, 150, 241, 248, 258, 264, 266, 334–5 fan deck, see paint chip fashion 89, 135, 144, 173–6, 180, 214, 231, 312, 316, 319 fauvism 231–6, 238–9, 246, 248 feminine, see gender fiber optics 311, 336 Field, George 165, 182, 189, 254 film / television 207, 266, 286, 315, 328, 331–3 flag, see vexillology flesh color, see skin tone fluorescent, 293, 330–2

Index food 89, 139, 174, 178, 332 formal elements / formalism 3, 177, 180, 224, 237, 240–1, 247, 249–50, 262–3, 255–6, 258–9, 271–2, 281–3, 285, 293–4, 301, 313, 319–24, 329, 334–5, 337 Franklin, Christine Ladd 198 Froebel, Friedrich 199–200, 248, 273 function / functional 72, 79, 174–5, 180, 247–50, 271, 287, 318 games, see toys gender 2, 5, 18, 20–1, 26–7, 32, 149, 173–6, 190, 237–8, 256, 299, 312, 318–28, 332–4, 338 geometry 35, 45, 57, 97–8, 122–3, 125, 227–8, 237, 253–5, 257 Gerber, Rosa 201 gestalt 289, 308–10 Gladstone, William Ewart 38, 152, 300 Gobelins Manufactory 169, 171, 302–5 god / deity, see supernatural Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 3, 9, 117, 124, 130, 149, 154–62, 167–9, 173–4, 182, 187, 190, 195, 200, 219, 220, 223, 225, 234, 237, 254, 256, 270, 276, 298 gold 12, 14, 15, 27, 54, 76, 83, 86–7, 89, 95, 99, 103, 155, 181, 337 graphic artifacts 178–9, 181, 269, 320, 326, 333–4 Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide (Drucker and McVarish) 293 green 9–10, 18, 24–7, 37, 48, 55–7, 87, 98, 112, 127, 155, 158, 160, 167–8, 171, 173, 201, 205, 220–4, 236–9, 255–6, 259–60, 262, 293, 301, 307, 315–16, 333, 338 Greenberg, Clement 277, 279, 282–3, 289, 319, 325 hair 15, 154, 175, 298, 327–8 harmony / balance / proportion in aesthetics 83, 91, 144 in color application 14, 17, 278 in color models 170, 172–3, 182, 203, 205–12, 228–9, 253–4, 257–8, 302, 305 in color selection 160–1, 165–7, 232, 336; see also in color models in cosmos 31–2, 41, 43 and dissonance 275 as guiding principle 55–7 for health / healing 18–19, 43, 51, 225 of light and dark 7, 12 and randomness 280 and the senses 47–9, 169, 225, 337 of subject and object 152 and utopianism 268 see also dissonance Harrington, Leslie 237, 317 Harris, Moses 136, 164–6, 197 Helmholtz, Hermann von 172–3, 198, 262, 293, 305, 307 Helmholtz-Hering debate 172–3, 198, 293, 307 Henri, Robert 223 Heraclitus 28, 44, 45, 48, 132 Hering, Ewald 172–3, 198, 262, 293, 307 Heurtaux, Sylvie 303–5 Hickey, David 144, 325 Hofmann, Hans 276–81 Hornung, David 3, 210

humanism 52, 97–8, 109–10, 114, 118, 151, 258, 271 Hume, David 123–4, 130–3, 152 humors, the four 43, 90, 98, 225, 262 hypothesis 121, 127 iconoclasm 28, 72–5, 79, 139–40 see also idolatry ideal 10, 16, 18, 20–1, 33, 39, 40, 53–5, 74, 100, 108, 136, 152–3, 172, 185, 203, 210, 226–7, 246, 252, 266, 280, 287–8, 299, 301, 312, 324 idolatry 72–4, 77–9, 89, 91, 95, 103, 239 illusion / error 22, 24, 33, 37, 40, 45, 49, 56, 61–3, 67, 80, 106–7, 111, 117, 121–3, 128, 131, 156, 158, 170, 209–10, 220, 222, 238, 258, 260, 284, 298, 308–10 image 11, 19, 29, 31, 37, 49–50, 54–5, 74, 78, 81, 98–9, 103, 120, 178–9, 222–3, 294–5, 299, 309–10, 327 impressionism 170, 188, 233, 246 indeterminacy 299, 311, 328–9 indigo 24, 127, 333, 337 industrial / industrialization and the Bauhaus 248, 256, 258 and childhood 199–202 and colonization 154 color technology of 266, 280, 293, 336 and color use 173–6 and color vocabulary 4, 25 conformity with 193, 207, 212–13 and counter culture 231–3 and decorative arts 179–80 destabilizing effects of 150, 193, 228 expressions of power 295 impact on color theory 2, 8–9, 17, 212–13 and mass media 164, 198 production 305–6, 312–13, 317, 322 and race 241 standardization 193, 202, 210, 247, 257, 289, 293, 305, 317, 331 infection, see disease information 5, 27, 49, 118, 300–1, 307, 310–11, 317–18, 338 infrared 172, 299, 311, 336 instrument / instrumental 117, 119–22, 123, 128–9, 140, 157, 171, 176, 193, 285–6, 306, 308 interaction, of color 10, 37, 42, 55, 58, 111, 113, 126, 158–9, 170–1, 188, 199, 213, 221, 223, 238, 272, 275–6, 310, 330 interdisciplinarity, see disciplines invisible 33, 54, 67, 74, 80, 88–9, 91–4, 121, 128, 131, 193–4, 216, 225, 227, 258, 260, 264, 278 irrational 35–6, 45–6, 54, 193, 235, 261–5, 310–11, 318, 327, 334 Itten, Johannes 201, 223, 246, 248–50, 252–6, 258–60, 264, 270, 276, 278, 302 Jones, Owen 181–2 Jung, Carl 17, 262 Kandinsky, Wassily 194, 217, 237, 247–52, 257, 258–9, 266–7, 270, 276 Kant, Immanuel 152, 158

353

Index kindergarten 199–201, 248, 250, 256, 273, 278 Klee, Paul 223, 247–8, 250, 256, 258–60, 264–5, 266–7, 270, 278 Knowledge argument, the 301, 310 Kuspit, Donald 320 landscape design 137, 144, 236 language / linguistics 12, 23, 25, 27, 31, 38–9, 131, 152, 173, 209, 297–302, 338–9 Lao Tzu 7, 28, 29 Le Blon, Jacob Christophe 163–4, 178, 202, 252 LED, see light emitting diode Leibniz, Gottried Wilhelm 124, 130 Leonardo 100, 110–13, 120, 322 light additive mixture of 293, 215–16 artificial 232–6 as basic experience, with darkness 7, 10, 11, 30, 38–9, 41–2, 46 and beauty 91 in creation 7, 31 displays of, in art 113, 137–44, 182–7, 278 divinity and 23, 87, 96, 254 and enlightenment 19 Goethe’s theory of 156–61 Greek theories of 37, 48, 54–7 healing and 217, 225 inner perception of 28 and insubstantiality 90 measurement of 305–6 mechanical theory of 117–18, 121, Newton’s theory of 2–3, 117, 124–8 nineteenth-century advances in 167–73 optics of 97, 111 photography 176 physics of 299, 311, 336 poetry of 130, 340 race / racism and 153, 155, 338 and rainbow 35 recent technology 330–2 in sacred spaces 72–6, 93–5 and space 272, 295, 330 3-D modelling with 62–3, 81, 99–103, 108, 120 as varna 18 in vocabulary 25 see also darkness light emitting diode 315 light and space 272, 295, 330 linguistics, see language Locke, John 118, 123–4, 130–1, 133, 150–1 Loos, Adolf 287, 326 Lyotard, Jean-Francois 319 magenta 127, 158, 172, 293, 314–16 madness, see irrational mandala 17–19, 227, 253–4, 256 Mary problem, see knowledge argument masculine, see gender

354

mass media 9, 144, 179, 190, 198, 203, 207, 232, 289, 295–6, 322 see also visual culture mathematics 12, 17, 18, 31, 37, 39, 42, 45, 53, 57, 84, 118, 121, 124, 150, 209, 308 see also number Mayer, Tobias 166–8 mechanical / mechanistic 3, 37, 45, 48–9, 118, 121, 122, 128, 131–2, 150–1, 216–18, 221, 223, 276, 293–4, 317 medicine / healing / therapy 9, 17, 18, 19, 23, 37, 43, 45, 47, 89, 90, 133, 155, 184, 216, 217, 224, 225 Melville, Herman 154–5 memory 47, 54, 218, 246, 262, 300, 339 metallic 173, 178, 327, 330 metamer 167 mindfulness 252–3, 262, 265 mirror, see reflection modelling, three-dimensional 60, 63, 72–3, 99–104, 109, 113, 120, 220, 233, 273, 283, 285 modern / modernism aesthetics of 180, 209, 220, 228, 312 and the Bauhaus 246–50 and childhood 199–200 and chromophobia 29, 33, 286–9 color use in 160, 238, 224, 265–70 and counter-culture 231 and disenchantment 151 early 97, 118 idea of 175, 258, 261, 278–9 as outlier 8–9 philosophy 90, 118, 122, 151–2 postmodernism and 322–7, 334–5 progress, narrative in 282–3, 319–20 and spiritualism 237–41 and urban life 233 monism 40, 257–8, 260, 279 Montessori, Maria 199 monuments 66, 87, 93, 180, 334 Morrison, Toni 10, 327 motherhood 93–4, 112–13, 174–5, 200, 321 Mozi 16–17, 171 Munsell, Albert Henry 9, 168, 171, 198–9, 202–16, 223, 231–2, 234, 237, 241, 245, 250, 257–8, 289, 302–3 music 16, 42, 49, 89, 98, 100, 112–13, 119, 127, 137, 155, 162, 165, 169, 182, 202, 208, 214, 228–30, 247–8, 297 narrative, historical 2, 7, 8, 37, 65, 66, 71, 72, 128, 194, 261, 270, 271, 283, 289, 290, 319, 320, 322, 325 National Security Agency 311, 336 national socialism / nazi party 227, 248, 270–1, 287, 294, 302 nationalism 183, 227, 278, 333–4 New York school 245–6, 261, 271, 276–82 Newton, Sir Isaac 1–3, 31, 45, 50, 71, 117–18, 121, 124–34, 137, 144, 149–51, 156–62, 164–5, 167, 169, 172, 253, 298, 300, 311, 337 nomenclature 194–8, 201–3, 207, 316 NSA, see National Security Agency Number 7, 18, 19, 23, 42, 44, 45, 121, 123, 132, 254, 255, 327 see also mathematics

Index objectivity 3–4, 67, 101, 128, 137, 151–2, 193–4, 239, 247, 250, 252, 252–4, 256–8, 266, 278–9, 303 observer 54, 111, 117, 120, 122, 128, 156–62, 167, 169, 303, 307, 330 occult, see esoteric O’Connor, Zena 293 octave, see music ontology, see real op art, 83, 329–30, 337 opacity / opaque, 38, 88, 111–12, 127, 207, 231 opponent process theory, 172, 198, 307 opposite, see dichotomy optical instruments 117, 119–23, 125–9, 134, 140–1, 160, 176, 193, 208, 257, 303, 311 orange 23–5, 103, 109, 127, 158–60, 169, 201, 251, 255–6, 259, 333 original 58, 61, 294–5, 313 see also reproduction Ostwald, Wilhelm 256–8, 262, 270, 275, 298, 305 packaging 178, 209, 232, 280–1, 289, 293, 313, 318, 338–9 paint chip 4, 54, 204, 208, 210–11, 275, 310–12, 316 pantone 316–17 paradise, see reality, higher particle theory, of light 125, 126, 167 see also wave theory pattern and decoration movement 225–6 Paul, St. 89 Pentak, Stuart 301, 312 perspective, arial and linear 62, 73, 97–9, 103, 106–7, 110, 112, 119, 125, 137–8, 144, 220, 234, 239, 272, 310 phenomena 25, 56–7, 98, 111, 122, 152, 156–60, 162, 216–17, 311, 328 photography 171, 176–7, 178–9, 217, 227, 236, 241, 266, 269, 285–6, 295, 308–9, 327, 332–3 photon 126, 311, 336 physiology 2, 149, 157–8, 160–1, 166–70, 172, 182, 190, 203, 223, 228, 275, 296 pigment 11–14, 22–5, 27, 31–2, 38–9, 41, 46, 86, 90, 101, 103, 127–8, 158, 165–7, 169–71, 173, 185, 189, 198, 206–8, 220, 236, 293, 295, 313, 315, 330, 331–2, 335–6, 338 see also dye Pillsbury, J. H. 198, 201–2, 205, 209, 257 pink 3–4, 25, 189, 220, 295, 301, 313, 331, 333–4 Plato 28–9, 36–7, 43–4, 46, 50–6, 60, 63, 66–7, 72, 74, 89–90, 100, 108, 110, 114, 117, 187 poetry 1, 38, 98, 124, 129–31, 149–51, 154–5, 187–9, 200, 217, 245, 340 politics / political 2, 17, 24, 27, 36, 52–3, 55, 66, 94, 96, 106, 124, 137, 150, 175, 241, 248–9, 252, 261, 266, 270, 279, 282, 312, 320, 324, 333–4, 338 Pope, Alexander 124, 129–30, 151 post-colonial 2, 16, 25, 279, 287 post-formal 319–22 postmodern 282, 319–26, 334–5 potency, of substances / colors 19, 23–4, 27, 32–3, 54, 76, 89–90, 93, 155, 187, 189, 220, 224, 225, 238–40, 295, 335 power 14, 23–4, 27, 31, 33, 77, 89, 93–4, 111, 137, 144, 149, 186–8, 198, 223–4, 232, 237–9, 245–6, 250, 295, 313, 317–18, 327–8, 333, 334

Prang, Louis 179, 201 precious stones / substances 14–15, 23, 27, 89–90, 92, 220 pre-Socratic 37, 39–51, 52–5, 67 primary color, see basic color printing methods 118, 120, 137, 163–4, 170, 178–9, 181–2, 207, 212–13, 245, 266, 286, 312–17, 322, 326 PRISM, see National Security Agency proportion, see balance public sphere 77, 139, 173, 261, 319, 333 purity 10, 17, 29, 42, 83, 87, 108, 159, 165, 175, 204, 252, 256, 266, 278, 306, 315, 338, Purkyne’, Jan Evangelista 169 purple 9–10, 15, 24–5, 56, 76, 112, 127–8, 172, 205–7, 302, 315, 337 push pull theory 277–8, 337 Pythagoras 39, 42, 44–5, 47, 53–4, 125 qualitative 42, 44–5, 54, 73, 97, 128, 250 see also quantitative quantitative 2, 31, 42, 45, 73, 97, 99, 121, 128, 250, 257 see also qualitative quantum 280, 311, 326 race / racism anachronistic application of 17 in ancient Egypt 26–7 in color marketing 312–13, 318 constructs of 7, 12, 20 in contemporary art 327–9, 338–9 and figurative art 324 in film technology 331–2 and industrialization 173 and manifest destiny 150, 226 in modern art 240–1, 287, 320 and occult theory 225, 227, 270 pseudo-science of 153 views on 154–5 see also skin tone rainbow 5, 35–6, 48–9, 56–7, 67, 90, 122, 127, 130, 150, 246, 256, 333, 337–8 see also spectrum ratio 42, 45, 55, 125, 152, 166, 172, 169, 228 rationalism 118, 121–4, 130, 137, 152 readymade 266, 330 real / reality alternate 106 as changeless 40, 49–50, 258 color as lacking 45–6, 74, 137, 194, 337; see also mechanical nature of color as link to 27, 29, 33, 56, 77–8, 89, 131, 159, 189, 220, 224, 238, 245, 260, 289, 298–301, 308, 334–5 and color theory 2–3 darkness as 41 doubt about 36–7, 39, 52, 262, 306 higher 19, 53–4, 99–101, 264, 277–80 mathematical nature of 42, 44 mechanical nature of 121–3, 129, 161 observer’s role in 151, 156 of spiritual realm 216, 220

355

Index rebirth 27–8, 47, 97, 100, 109 red 3–4, 12–13, 18, 20, 23–7, 31, 37–9, 48, 54, 56–9, 61, 82–3, 89–90, 98, 103, 112, 127, 158, 160–1, 163, 166, 173, 176, 182, 188–9, 198, 201, 205–6, 210, 220–1, 223–5, 229, 232, 238–9, 252, 254, 256, 259, 262, 266–8, 273–4, 293, 295, 305, 307, 311, 313–16, 324, 326, 328, 333, 328 red green blue 313–15 reflection 18, 23, 48, 49, 56, 76–7, 81–2, 103, 106, 124–5, 140–1, 153, 180, 185, 201, 207, 233, 236, 330–1 see also symmetry relativism 48, 52, 56, 57, 101, 124, 159, 228, 275, 276, 284, 337 reproduction, 4–5, 160, 170, 178–9, 193, 198, 201, 214, 266, 286, 289, 294–6, 313, 317, 339 see also original RGB, see red green blue Ridgway, Robert 196–8, 201–2 rods and cones 169, 308 romanticism 129, 136, 140, 149–55, 173–4, 182, 187–9, 193, 200, 231, 310, 322, 324 Rood, Ogden 203, 233 Rorke, Margaret Hayden 214 Rothko, Mark 281–3, 338 Runge, Philipp Otto 167–8, 170–1, 200–1, 256 Saffron, see orange Sapir Whorf hypothesis 300–1 Schopenhauer, Arthur 160, 168–9 science, philosophy of 45, 118–19, 121–2, 151–2, 156–8, 160–1, 220, 307–8 senses, the 16, 28–9, 33, 35–6, 45–50, 52–6, 64, 72–5, 80, 86, 89–91, 93, 100, 114, 117–19, 121–3, 130–3, 150, 152, 156, 200, 217, 308–9, 311 Seurat, Georges 203, 233–5 sexuality 5, 89, 176, 190, 218, 327–8, 332–4, 338–9 Shirley cards 331–2 sickness, see disease sight, see vision silver 15, 178, 333 sin 33, 89 Singh, Raghubir 286 skin tone 12, 18, 20, 65, 79, 103, 153, 154, 195, 196, 220, 227, 328, 332, 338 see also race Socrates 37–9, 52–3, 67 spectrum 2–3, 38–9, 103, 117, 127, 162, 164–5, 167, 169–72, 193, 197, 201, 204–5, 209–10, 224, 254, 259–60, 262, 305–6, 311, 315, 330, 336–7 see also rainbow Spinoza, Baruch 123, 130, 218 standardization 193, 194, 201, 202, 203, 210, 214, 237, 250, 257, 289, 302, 305, 306, 312, 317, 322, 321, Steiner, Rudolf 194, 199, 216–24, 231, 237–41, 248 subject and object 3–4, 28, 55–6, 64, 67, 99, 101, 127–8, 137, 151–3, 156–7, 158, 161, 176, 193–5, 220, 223, 247, 250, 252–4, 256–8, 266, 278, 303, 306, 310, 324

356

supernatural 2, 5, 7, 11, 15, 18, 24, 27, 31–3, 35–6, 38, 40–2, 71–4, 77–81, 88–91, 114, 121, 131–2, 149, 154, 167, 170, 216, 218, 220, 224, 227–8, 337–8 surveillance 294, 311 symmetry 18, 75, 81–4, 172–3, 190, 208, 257–8 see also reflection taste, see aesthetics taxonomy 163, 194–8, 201, 203, 207, 312, 327 television, see film temperature 23, 48, 90, 105, 107, 110, 122, 134, 158–9, 211, 223–4, 228–30, 255, 283–4, 289, 324 toys 199, 201, 215, 319 trade 13–16, 21, 23, 101, 139, 201, 214, translucent 38, 43–4, 54, 106, 127, 180 trichromatic theory 167, 169, 171–3, 198, 307 Turner, Joseph Mallord William 8, 185–7 Tzara, Tristan 261 ultraviolet 172, 178, 225, 228, 230, 303, 330 universality, claims of 2, 8, 9, 17, 250, 252, 278, 279, 287, 288, 317, 320 Vanderpoel, Emily Noyes 198–9 Vantablack 331 varna, see class Vasari, Giorgio 100–2, 107 vexillology 87, 266–8, 317, 333–4, 337–8 violet 37, 44, 48, 56–7, 127, 158, 167, 169, 172, 198, 201, 224–5, 228, 230, 255–6, 259–60, 305, 337 vision 7, 28, 37, 46, 48–9, 53–7, 64, 67, 73, 87, 89–90, 93, 98, 111, 118, 121–2, 124, 128, 130–1, 157–9, 160, 167–9, 172–3, 190, 194–5, 225, 227, 262, 285, 297, 301, 307–10 visual culture 101, 178–9, 232, 236, 294–5, 320, 328 see also mass media visual delight, see beauty void / vacuum 7, 10, 11, 45, 121, 129, 131–2, 151, 159, 162 wave theory 125–6, 167, 172, 216, 301, 309, 311 whitewash 139–40, 152 Whittlesea, Ian 264–5 Weber-Fechner law 257 white 3, 7, 10, 12, 25, 26, 27, 31, 37, 39, 49, 58, 60, 61, 62, 81, 87, 108, 111, 112, 126, 128, 139, 152, 153, 154, 155, 169, 175, 176, 186, 221, 222, 226, 239, 240, 266, 285, 287, 288, 289, 298, 299, 308, 326, 327, 328, 330, 332, 333, 338 Wilde, Oscar 175–6 Winckelmann, Johann 150, 152–5 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1, 246, 294, 296–300, 311, 327, 334 Young-Helmholtz theory, see trichromatic theory Young, Thomas 167, 169, 171–3

357

358

359

360

361

362