Color overview

Inevitably, after days of swimming from beaches of black volcanic sand, of reading on white terraces overlooking the sea, you return to the path that leads to the volcano.
You start early morning. You climb for hours. The path becomes steeply dangerous. Then village and sea are lost in smoke. Fear sets in. It is night when you return.
(Victor Burgin, from Some Cities, writing on the island of Stromboli)

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
(Alan Menken & Stephen Schwartz, from Pocahontas)

If one says “Red” (the name of a color)
and there are 50 people listening,
it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.
And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different. (Albers 3)

In developing practices for using color (in a work, or a location), we’ll be utilizing a number of different materials and sources, and it is essential to find, recognize, and describe the limits of these materials. Through observation, we’ll see that the interaction of color is highly contextual and flexible. Different tubes of paint with the same label (or color name) will appear completely different when opened and applied to a surface. The same color may appear completely different on different days. There is no single way to “read” color; it is mutable and our relationship with it is fluid.

Initially, we’ll be looking at color abstracted (removed) from its native environment. We’ll begin by cutting out color samples and reproducing them in paints, in colored pencils, in ink, in pastels —analyzing their properties, and beginning to discuss their relationships. Direct observation will be our primary means of exploration. What do we see happening? How can we chart our observations for future use? How does a color move out of its environment only to seamlessly slide back? Where is the right place for a certain color? How much color can be hidden? When and how (and why) do we look for color? Which colors look good together? What influences those decisions? In researching on the difficulties of working with color as material, the following description from Wikipedia proved helpful:

The most important problem has been confusion between the behavior of light mixtures, called additive color mixing, and the behavior of paint or ink mixtures, called subtractive color mixing. A second problem has been the failure to describe the very important effects of strong luminance (lightness) contrasts in the appearance of surface colors (such as paints or inks) as opposed to light colors. Thus, a strong lightness contrast between a yellow paint and a surrounding bright white makes the yellow appear to be green or brown, while a strong brightness contrast between a rainbow and the surrounding sky makes the yellow in a rainbow appear to be a fainter yellow.
A third problem has been the tendency to describe color effects holistically, for example in the contrast between yellow and blue, when most color effects are due to contrasts on three relative attributes that define all colors: lightness (light vs. dark, or white vs. black), saturation (intense vs. dull) and hue (e.g., red, yellow, green, blue or purple).
Color theory has always assumed that three pure primary colors can mix all possible colors, and that any failure of specific paints or inks to match this ideal performance is due to the impurity or imperfection of the colorants. In fact, only the fictional, mathematical primary colors used in colorimetry can "mix" or quantify all visible (perceptually possible) colors; but to do this the colors are defined as lying outside the range of visible colors: they cannot be seen. Any three real "primary" colors of light, paint or ink mix only a limited range of colors, called a gamut, but a physical gamut is always smaller (contains fewer colors) than the space of perceptually possible colors, and this is always true no matter which "primary" colors are chosen and no matter which medium — inks, paints, dyes, filters, phosphors, artificial lights, or monospectral lights — is used to mix the colors. Thus, primary colors define a gamut of color mixtures, and can only mix colors within that gamut. (Wikipedia, see link below)
As with all of our projects, it is essential that you question what you’re observing—we don’t see colors the same way, and the colors themselves are constantly shifting (in front of our eyes, in our eyes). The poet Mark Strand has noted “when color challenges the safe, enclosing geometrical properties of the pictorial surface, as it is meant to, it does so with a slowness and delicacy that are disarming and a beauty that is exhilarating”. (Albers 2)

SOME DEFINITIONS

HUE (or chroma)
Particular wavelengths corresponding to a single name
Primary Hues: Red, Yellow, Blue (RYB) OR Red, Green, Blue (RGB) OR Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (CMYK)
Primary because they cannot be reduced or broken down any further AND can be mixed together to make all other colors in their gamut. The different combinations relate to the different modes of their production—RYB is typical of paint, RGB is video, CMYK is printing.
Secondary Hues: Mixing equal parts of two primary hues produce secondary colors orange (red + yellow), green (yellow + blue), violet (blue + red)
Tertiary (intermediate) Hues: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet, etc.
Mixing primary and secondary hues together produces intermediate hues.

THE COLOR WHEEL
Examples will follow in class, but it is vital to understand that there is no single color wheel. The model of a wheel is used to show possible color interactions (and historically to show emotions, and philosophical differences in a range of colors. (See Goethe’s color triangle).

COLOR TEMPERATURE
Colors may be classified as having WARM or COOL attributes— historically, these designations arise from observed contrasts in landscape light, with warm colors associated with daylight (or sunset), and cool colors associated with gray or overcast days. The transition points between the anchor polarities is open to debate, but is typically asserted between reddish- orange and greenish-blue.
Explore how do colors change based on their spatial relationships; how does red-violet seems *warm* relative to blue, but *cold* relative to orange? Examples: Jan Andriesse, http://www.depont.nl/nc/nl/collectie/vaste-collectie/werk_id/17/kunstenaar/2/werk/

COLOR CONSTANCY (Goethe)
This refers to how a color is affected by illumination (the difference of white in an egg from where the light lands and where it is in shadow). Constancy points out the discrepancy between optical data and our minds’ interpretation of that data. (We think the egg is all one white)

VALUE
Relative brightness, or the range of dark and light in a color: each hue has its own natural value (can be seen in B&W photocopy), and when a hue is altered it can change its value.

INTENSITY
Saturation of a color, a hue’s purity
Pure hue = the most intense form of a given color, or a hue at its highest saturation, or its brightest form.
Low saturation happens when a hue is mixed with gray

COLOR HARMONIES
This refers to the relationships between different groups of colors

Monochromatic: One color pervades the composition. That color can be modified by the addition of white (tints), black (shade), gray (tone), and tertiary colors. As long as all the mixtures contain the one color, the work will be monochromatic. Examples include works by Joseph Marioni, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Blinky Palermo, Marica Hafif, Stephen Prina

Analogous: Colors that are adjacent to one another on the wheel, that create a similar environment or quality of light, and when mixed create variations on themselves. Think of the variations from yellow to green to blue-- a fluid transition (or more closely, yellow to yellow green to green).

Complmentary: These hues are opposite each other on the wheel and have a complex relationship. They can mix to make a colorless neutral or they can sit next to each other and create intense contrast and excitement. Examples: Josef Albers, Victor Vasarely, Chuck Close, Georges Seurat, Auguste Renoir (I’ll show a bunch of stuff in class!)

SPLIT COMPLEMENTARY: Employs a range of analogous hues, "split" from a basic key color, with the complementary color as contrast.

TRIADIC HARMONY Adopts any three colors approximately equidistant around the hue circle.

SOME COLOR MIXING STRATEGIES
Pure Hue mixed with white
Red – gets sharply cooler
Yellow – gets cooler
Blue – hardly changes
Pure Hue mixed with black
Yellow – deprived of brilliance
Carmine Red – pushes to violet
Vermillion red – becomes brown
Blue – can only take a bit before disappearing
Violet – is enhanced
Black generally deprives color of light and sooner or later deadens it
Pure Hue mixed with gray
Renders color duller or neutral
Pure color mixed with its complement (in most cases, primaries will have a secondary color that functions as their complement)
Moves to gray in the middle (my experience in mixing compliments is that there are many types of brown to be discovered as well--)

REFERENCES
General reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory#Traditional_color_theory

Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color: New & Revised. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Blechman, Hardy. Disruptive Pattern Material: An Encyclopedia of Camouflage. London: Firefly Books, 2004.

Doerner, Max. The Materials of the Artist and Their Uses in Painting: With Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters. New York: Harcourt, 1984.

Goethe, Johannes Wolfgang von. Theory of Colors. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970.

Grigely, Joseph. “Colors: White”. Cabinet Magazine, Issue 27, Fall 2007, pp. 15-16.

Itten, Johannes. The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color. New York: Wiley, 1997.

Itten, Johannes. The Elements of Color. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1970.

Jacobson, Egbert. Basic Color: An Interpretation of the Ostwald Color System. Chicago: Paul Theobold, 1948.

Kandinsky, Wassily (M.T.H. Sadler, trans.). Concerning the Spiritual in Art. New York: Dover Publications, 1977.

Munsell, A.H. A Color Notation: An Illustrated System Defining All Colors and Their Relations By Measured Scales of Hue, Value, and Chroma. Baltimore: Munsell Color Company, Inc., 1954. ND 1493 M8

special thanks to Eileen Woods who taught me more about painting than everyone else all put together.