Color Theory

A Critical Introduction

Aaron Fine

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350027282
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Diseño
• Subtopic: Diseño general

Giving an overview of the history of color theory from ancient and classical cultures to contemporary contexts, this book explores important critical principles and provides practical guidance on the use of color in art and design. Going beyond a simple recitation of what has historically been said about color, artist and educator Aaron Fine provides an intellectual history, critiquing prevailing Western ideas on the subject and challenging assumptions. He analyses colonialist and gendered attitudes, materialist and romanticist perspectives, spiritualist approaches to color, color in the age of reproduction, and modernist and post-modernist color strategies. Highlighted throughout are examples of the ways in which attitudes towards color have been impacted by the legacy of colonialism and are tied up with race, gender, and class. Topics covered include color models, wheels and charts, color interaction and theories of perception, with over 150 images throughout. By placing under-examined tenets of color theory such as the color wheel and color primaries within the Western industrial context that generated them, Fine helps you to connect color choices to color meanings and apply theory to practice.

CHAPTER 1

NATURAL RESOURCES AND TRADE: COLOR USE IN TRADITIONAL CULTURES

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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 in Genesis 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 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.

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.

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 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 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 ...