Theory of Colours
Light spectrum, from Theory of Colours – Goethe observed that colour arises at the edges, and the spectrum occurs where these coloured edges overlap.
Author(s)	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Original title	Zur Farbenlehre
Translator	Charles Eastlake[1]
Language	German
Publisher	John Murray
Publication date	1810
Published in English	1840
ISBN	0-262-57021-1
OCLC Number	318274261

Theory of Colours (original German title Zur Farbenlehre) is a work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans, published in 1810. It contains some of the earliest published descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.

The work originated in Goethe's occupation with painting and mainly exerted an influence onto the arts (Philipp Otto Runge, J. M. W. Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Wassily Kandinsky).

Although Goethe's work was rejected by physicists, a number of philosophers and physicists have concerned themselves with it, including Thomas Johann Seebeck, Arthur Schopenhauer (see: On Vision and Colors), Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolf Steiner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Mitchell Feigenbaum.

In his book, Goethe provides a general exposition of how colour is perceived in a variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special cases.^[2] Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic measurement of colour phenomenon, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Philosophers have come to understand the distinction between the optical spectrum, as observed by Newton, and the phenomenon of human colour perception as presented by Goethe - a subject analyzed at length by Wittgenstein in his exegesis of Goethe in Remarks on Colour.

Goethe's theory[link]

In the preface to the Theory of Colours, Goethe explained that he tried to apply the principle of polarity, in the work – a proposition that belonged to his earliest convictions and was constitutive for all his study of nature.^[3]

It is hard to present Goethe's "theory", since he refrains from setting up any actual theory; "its intention is to portray rather than explain" (Scientific Studies^[4]). For Goethe, "the highest is to understand that all fact is really theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of color. Search nothing beyond the phenomena, they themselves are the theory."^[5]

[Goethe] delivered in full measure what was promised by the title of his excellent work: Data for a Theory of Color. They are important, complete, and significant data, rich material for a future theory of color. He has not, however, undertaken to furnish the theory itself; hence, as he himself remarks and admits on page xxxix of the introduction, he has not furnished us with a real explanation of the essential nature of color, but really postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely tells us how it originates, not what it is. The physiological colors ... he represents as a phenomenon, complete and existing by itself, without even attempting to show their relation to the physical colors, his principal theme. ... it is really a systematic presentation of facts, but it stops short at this.

—Schopenhauer, On Vision and Colors, Introduction

The crux of his color theory is its experiential source: rather than impose theoretical statements, Goethe sought to allow light and color to be displayed in an ordered series of experiments that readers could experience for themselves." (Seamon, 1998^[6]). As such, he would reject both the wave and particle theories because they are conceptually inferred and not directly perceived by the human senses. According to Goethe, "Newton's error... was trusting math over the sensations of his eye."

—Jonah Lehrer, Goethe and Color, December 7, 2006

Goethe's theory of the origin of the spectrum isn't a theory of its origin that has proved unsatisfactory; it is really not a theory at all. Nothing can be predicted by means of it. It is, rather, a vague schematic outline, of the sort we find in James's psychology. There is no experimentum crucis for Goethe's theory of colour.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour

Historical background[link]

Castel's 1740 comparison of Newton's spectral colour description with his explanation in terms of the interaction of light and dark, which Goethe later developed into his Theory of Colours

At Goethe's time, it was generally acknowledged that, as Isaac Newton had shown in his Opticks in 1704, colourless (white) light is split up into its component colours when directed through a prism.^[7]

Along with the rest of the world I was convinced that all the colours are contained in the light; no one had ever told me anything different, and I had never found the least cause to doubt it, because I had no further interest in the subject.

—Goethe

In 1740, Louis Bertrand Castel published a criticism of Newton's spectral description of prismatic colour,^[8] where he observed that the colours of light split by a prism depended on the distance from the prism, and that Newton was looking at a special case. This was an argument that Goethe later developed.^[9]

Goethe's starting point: Newton's supposed error[link]

But how I was astonished, as I looked at a white wall through the prism, that it stayed white! That only where it came upon some darkened area, it showed some colour, then at last, around the window sill all the colours shone... It didn't take long before I knew here was something significant about colour to be brought forth, and I spoke as through an instinct out loud, that the Newtonian teachings were false.

—Goethe^[10]

Goethe already in 1793 formulated his arguments against Newton in his essay "Über Newtons Hypothese der diversen Refrangibilität" ("On Newton's hypothesis of diverse refrangibility").^[11] His starting point was the supposed discovery of how Newton erred, in the prismatic experiment.^[12] However, by 1794, Goethe began to shift away from this view, sensing more and more strongly the meaning of the physiological side of colours.^[13]

Announcing the publication of the Theory of Colours, he stated:

The theory but that we postulate with certainty indeed also begins with colourless light, avails itself of outward conditions, to produce coloured phenomena; but it concedes worth and dignity to these conditions. It does not arrogate to itself developing colours from the light, but rather seeks to prove by numberless cases that colour is produced as well by light as by what is pitted against this.

—Goethe^[14]

Instead of relying on a single crucial experiment to gain knowledge of the nature of colour, Goethe strove to overcome what he perceived as mere interpretation of the phenomena by developing an ordered series of experiments from which to draw his conclusions, and thus gain an insight into the complete phenomenon.

As a look through the prism reveals, one does not see white areas split evenly into seven colours, but rather colour exists at light-dark boundaries. Yellow-red edges meet blue-violet edges, and where these overlap, there arises green. From these observations, Goethe concluded that the spectrum is not a primary, but a compound phenomenon.

Light and darkness[link]

Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe didn't see darkness as an absence of light, but rather as polar to and interacting with light; colour resulted from this interaction of light and shadow. For Goethe, light is "the simplest most undivided most homogenous being that we know. Confronting it is the darkness" (Letter to Jacobi).

...they maintained that shade is a part of light. It sounds absurd when I express it; but so it is: for they said that colours, which are shadow and the result of shade, are light itself.

—Johann Eckermann, Conversations of Goethe, entry: January 4, 1824; trans. Wallace Wood

Based on his experiments with turbid media, Goethe characterized colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness and light. Rudolf Steiner gives the following analogy:

Modern natural science sees darkness as a complete nothingness. According to this view, the light which streams into a dark space has no resistance from the darkness to overcome. Goethe pictures to himself that light and darkness relate to each other like the north and south pole of a magnet. The darkness can weaken the light in its working power. Conversely, the light can limit the energy of the darkness. In both cases color arises.

—Rudolf Steiner, 1897^[15]

Goethe writes:^[16]

Yellow is a light which has been dampened by darkness Blue is a darkness weakened by light.

Experiments with turbid media[link]

The action of turbid media was to Goethe the ultimate fact — the Urphänomen — of the world of colours.

—John Tyndall, 1880^[17]

Goethe's studies of colour began with subjective experiments which examined the effects of turbid media on the perception of light and dark. The poet observed that light seen through a turbid medium appears yellow, and darkness seen through an illuminated medium appears blue.

The highest degree of light, such as that of the sun... is for the most part colourless. This light, however, seen through a medium but very slightly thickened, appears to us yellow. If the density of such a medium be increased, or if its volume become greater, we shall see the light gradually assume a yellow-red hue, which at last deepens to a ruby colour. If on the other hand darkness is seen through a semi-transparent medium, which is itself illumined by a light striking on it, a blue colour appears: this becomes lighter and paler as the density of the medium is increased, but on the contrary appears darker and deeper the more transparent the medium becomes: in the least degree of dimness short of absolute transparence, always supposing a perfectly colourless medium, this deep blue approaches the most beautiful violet.

—Goethe, Theory of Colours, pp. 150–151

Starting from these observations, he began numerous experiments, observing the effects of darkening and lightening on the perception of colour in many different circumstances.

Boundary conditions[link]

When viewed through a prism, the orientation of a light-dark boundary with respect to the prism's axis is significant. With white above a dark boundary, we observe the light extending a blue-violet edge into the dark area; whereas dark above a light boundary results in a red-yellow edge extending into the light area.

Goethe was intrigued by this difference. He felt that this arising of colour at light-dark boundaries was fundamental to the creation of the spectrum (which he considered to be a compound phenomenon).

Varying the experimental conditions by using different shades of grey shows that the intensity of coloured edges increases with boundary contrast.

Light and dark spectra[link]

Since the colour phenomenon relies on the adjacency of light and dark, there are two ways to produce a spectrum: with a light beam in a dark room, and with a dark beam (i.e. a shadow) in a light room.

Goethe recorded the sequence of colours projected at various distances from a prism for both cases (see Plate IV, Theory of Colours). In both cases, he found that the yellow and blue edges remain closest to the side which is light, and red and violet edges remain closest to the side which is dark. At a certain distance, these edges overlap – and we obtain Newton's spectrum. When these edges overlap in a light spectrum, green results; when they overlap in a dark spectrum, magenta results.

With a light spectrum, coming out of the prism, one sees a shaft of light surrounded by dark. We find yellow-red colours along the top edge, and blue-violet colours along the bottom edge. The spectrum with green in the middle arises only where the blue-violet edges overlap the yellow-red edges.

With a dark spectrum (i.e. a shadow surrounded by light), we find violet-blue along the top edge, and red-yellow along the bottom edge – where these edges overlap, we find magenta.

Goethe's colour wheel[link]

Goethe's colour wheel

When the eye sees a colour it is immediately excited and it is its nature, spontaneously and of necessity, at once to produce another, which with the original colour, comprehends the whole chromatic scale.

— Goethe, Theory of Colours

Goethe anticipated Ewald Hering's Opponent process theory^[18] by proposing a symmetric colour wheel. He writes, "The chromatic circle... [is] arranged in a general way according to the natural order... for the colours diametrically opposed to each other in this diagram are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye. Thus, yellow demands violet; orange, blue; red, green; and vice versa: thus... all intermediate gradations reciprocally evoke each other; the simpler colour demanding the compound, and vice versa. (Goethe, Theory of Colours^[19]).

Goethe also expressed his understanding of the light and dark spectra in including magenta in his colour wheel. Whereas for Newton magenta was an 'extraspectral' colour, for Goethe magenta was a natural result of violet and red being mixed in a dark spectrum (see top of colour wheel), just as green resulted from the mixing of blue and yellow in the light spectrum (bottom of colour wheel).^[20]

"For Newton, only spectral colors could count as fundamental. By contrast, Goethe's more empirical approach led him to recognize the essential role of (nonspectral) magenta in a complete color circle, a role that it still has in all modern color systems."^[21]

Goethe attributed inner qualities to the several colours of the wheel. Red is associated to the beautiful, orange to the noble, yellow to the good, green to the useful, blue to the mean, and violet to the unnecessary.^[22]

Newton and Goethe[link]

Due to their different approaches to a common subject, many misunderstandings have arisen between Newton's mathematical understanding of optics, and Goethe's experiential approach.^[23]

Because Newton understands white light to be composed of individual colours, and Goethe sees colour arising from the interaction of light and dark, they come to different conclusions on the question: is the optical spectrum a primary or a compound phenomenon?

For Newton, the prism is immaterial to the existence of colour, as all the colours already exist in white light, and the prism merely fans them out according to their refrangibility. Goethe sought to show that, as a turbid medium, the prism was an integral factor in the arising of colour.

"Whereas Newton observed the colour spectrum cast on a wall at a fixed distance away from the prism, Goethe observed the cast spectrum on a white card which was progressively moved away from the prism... As the card was moved away, the projected image elongated, gradually assuming an elliptical shape, and the coloured images became larger, finally merging at the centre to produce green. Moving the card farther led to the increase in the size of the image, until finally the spectrum described by Newton in the Opticks was produced... The image cast by the refracted beam was not fixed, but rather developed with increasing distance from the prism. Consequently, Goethe saw the particular distance chosen by Newton to prove the second proposition of the Opticks as capriciously imposed."^[24]

Whereas Newton narrowed the beam of light in order to isolate the phenomenon, Goethe observed that with a wider aperture, there was no spectrum. He saw only reddish-yellow edges and blue-cyan edges with white between them, and the spectrum arose only where these edges came close enough to overlap. For him, the spectrum could be explained by the simpler phenomena of colour arising from the interaction of light and dark edges.

Newton explains "the fact that all the colors appear only when the prism is at a certain distance from the screen, whereas the middle otherwise is white... [by saying] the more strongly diverted lights from the upper part of the image and the more weakly diverted ones from the lower part fall together in the middle and mix into white. The colors appear only at the edges because there none of the more strongly diverted parts of the light from above can fall into the most weakly diverted parts of the light, and none of the more weakly diverted ones from below can fall into the most strongly diverted ones." (Steiner, 1897^[15])

Table of differences[link]

As a catalogue of observations, Goethe's experiments are useful data for understanding the complexities of human colour perception. Whereas Newton sought to develop a mathematical model for the behaviour of light, Goethe focused on exploring how colour is perceived in a wide array of conditions.

Goethe's reification of darkness has caused almost all of modern physics to reject Goethe's theory. Both Newton and Huygens defined darkness as an absence of light. Young and Fresnel combined Newton's particle theory with Huygen's wave theory to show that colour is the visible manifestation of light's wavelength. Physicists today attribute both a corpuscular and undulatory character to light, which is the content of the so-called Wave–particle duality. Curiously, since the crux of Goethe's theory is tied to what is experiential, he would reject both the wave and particle theories since they are conceptually inferred and not directly perceived by the human senses.

History and influence[link]

The original German edition of the Farbenlehre has three sections: i) a didactic section in which Goethe presents his own observations, ii) a polemic section in which he makes his case against Newton, and iii) a historical section.

From its publication in 1810, the book was controversial for its stance against Newton. So much so, that when Charles Eastlake translated the text into English in 1840, he omitted the content of Goethe's polemic against Newton.

Significantly (and regrettably), only the 'Didactic' colour observations appear in Eastlake's translation. In his preface, Eastlake explains that he deleted the historical and entoptic parts of the book because they 'lacked scientific interest', and censored Goethe's polemic because the 'violence of his objections' against Newton would prevent readers from fairly judging Goethe's color observations.

—Bruce MacEvoy,  Handprint.com, 2008^[25]

Influence on the arts[link]

Turner's The fighting Temeraire, 1839

Goethe initially was induced to occupy himself with the theory of colours by the questions of hue in painting. "During his first journey to Italy (1786-88), he noticed that artists were able to enunciate rules for virtually all the elements of painting and drawing except color and coloring. In the years 1786—88, Goethe began investigating whether one could ascertain rules to govern the artistic use of color." ^[26]

It was a highly welcome acknowledgement of his aim, for him, when several pictorial artists, above all Philipp Otto Runge, took an interest in his colour studyings.^[27] After being translated into English by Charles Eastlake in 1840, the theory became widely adopted by the art world – especially among the Pre-Raphaelites. J. M. W. Turner studied it comprehensively and referenced it in the titles of several paintings.^[28] Wassily Kandinsky considered it "one of the most important works."^[29]

Influence on Latin American flags[link]

During a party in Weimar in the winter of 1785, Goethe had a late-night conversation on his theory of primary colours with the South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda. This conversation inspired Miranda, as he later recounted, in his designing the yellow, blue and red flag of Gran Colombia, from which the present national flags of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador are derived. (See Flag of Colombia#History).

Reception by scientists[link]

As early as 1853, in Hermann von Helmholtz's lecture on Goethe's scientific works -- he says of Goethe's work that he depicts the perceived phenomena -- "circumstantially, rigorously true to nature, and vividly, puts them in an order that is pleasant to survey, and proves himself here, as everywhere in the realm of the factual, to be the great master of exposition" (Helmholtz 1892). Helmholtz ultimately rejects Goethe's theory as the work of a poet, but expresses his perplexity at how they can be in such agreement about the facts of the matter, but in violent contradiction about their meaning -- 'And I for one do not know how anyone, regardless of what his views about colours are, can deny that the theory in itself is fully consequent, that its assumptions, once granted, explain the facts treated completely and indeed simply'. (Helmholtz 1892) ^[30]

Although the accuracy of Goethe's observations does not admit a great deal of criticism, his theory's failure to demonstrate significant predictive validity eventually rendered it scientifically irrelevant. Thomas Johann Seebeck was the only prominent scientist among Goethe's contemporaries who acknowledged the theory, but later also saw it critically.^[31]

Goethe's colour theory has in many ways borne fruit in art, physiology and aesthetics. But victory, and hence influence on the research of the following century, has been Newton's.

— Werner Heisenberg, 1952

Much controversy stems from two different ways of investigating light and colour. Goethe was not interested in Newton's analytic treatment of colour – but he presented an excellent rational description of the phenomenon of human colour perception. It is as such a collection of colour observations that we must view this book.

Most of Goethe's explanations of color have been thoroughly demolished, but no criticism has been leveled at his reports of the facts to be observed; nor should any be. This book can lead the reader through a demonstration course not only in subjectively produced colors (after images, light and dark adaptation, irradiation, colored shadows, and pressure phosphenes), but also in physical phenomena detectable qualitatively by observation of color (absorption, scattering, refraction, diffraction, polarization, and interference). A reader who attempts to follow the logic of Goethe's explanations and who attempts to compare them with the currently accepted views might, even with the advantage of 1970 sophistication, become convinced that Goethe's theory, or at least a part of it, has been dismissed too quickly.

—Judd, 1970^[32]

Mitchell Feigenbaum has coined the phrase "Goethe had been right about colour!"^[21]

As Feigenbaum understood them, Goethe's ideas had true science in them. They were hard and empirical. Over and over again, Goethe emphasized the repeatability of his experiments. It was the perception of colour, to Goethe, that was universal and objective. What scientific evidence was there for a definable real-world quality of redness independent of our perception?

— James Gleick, Chaos^[33]

Current status[link]

Goethe started out by accepting Newton's physical theory. He soon abandoned it... finding modification to be more in keeping with his own insights. One beneficial consequence of this was that he developed an awareness of the importance of the physiological aspect of colour perception, and was therefore able to demonstrate that Newton's theory of light and colours is too simplistic; that there is more to colour than variable refrangibility.

—Michael Duck, 1988^[34]

Developments in understanding how the brain interprets colours, such as colour constancy and Edwin H. Land's retinex theory bear striking similarities to Goethe's theory (Ribe & Steinle, 2002).

A modern treatment of the book is given by Dennis L. Sepper in the book, Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color (Cambridge University Press, 2003).^[26]

Quotations[link]

See also[link]

• Theory of painting
• Checker shadow illusion (Same color illusion)

Notes and references[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. ISBN 0-262-57021-1
• Bockemuhl, M., Turner. Koln: Taschen, 1991. ISBN 3-8228-6325-4.
• Duck, Michael, “Newton and Goethe on colour: Physical and physiological considerations”, Annals of Science 45(5), September 1988. pp. 507–519.
• Gleick, James, Chaos, London: William Heinemann, 1988. pp. 165–7
• M.W. Rowe, Goethe and Wittgenstein, Philosophy, Vol. 66, No. 257 (Jul., 1991), pp. 283-303, Cambridge University Press JSTOR
• Proskauer, The Rediscovery of Color, Dornach: Steiner Books, 1986.
• Ribe, Neil and Friedrich Steinle, “Exploratory Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory”, Physics Today 55(7), July 2002.
• Schopenhauer, On Vision and Colors, Providence: Berg, 1994. ISBN 0-85496-988-8
• Sepper, Dennis L., Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-521-53132-2
• Steiner, Rudolf, First Scientific Lecture-Course, Third Lecture, Stuttgart, 25 December 1919. GA320.
• Steiner, Rudolf, “Goethe's World View”, Chapter III The Phenomena of the World of Colors, 1897.
• Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. ISBN 0-520-03727-8

External links[link]

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More spoken articles

• Complete book content in German language
• Scanned copy of English translation as a Google book
• Physics Today – Exploratory Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Colour Theory, 2002
• Goethe's Prismatic Experiments; Fotos by Sakae Tajima
• Light, Darkness and Colour, a film by Henrik Boëtius (1998)
• Connections That Have a Quality of Necessity: Goethe's Way Of Science As a Phenomenology of Nature
• Colour Mixing and Goethe's Triangle (Java Applet)
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • John Tyndall, “Goethe's Farbenlehre-(Theory of Colors) I,” in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 17, June 1880.
  • John Tyndall, “Goethe's Farbenlehre-(Theory of Colors) II,” in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 17, July 1880.
• Critical review of Goethe's Theory of Colours
• A list of links relating to Goethe's investigation of colour
• Essay discussing color psychology and Goethe's theory
• Google Scholar: Works citing "Theory of Colours"

v t e Works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Poems Der Erlkönig Ganymed Gingo biloba Heidenröslein Hermann and Dorothea Der König in Thule Marienbad Elegy Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt Prometheus Roman Elegies The Sorcerer's Apprentice West-östlicher Diwan Plays Clavigo Faust Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy Egmont Erwin und Elmire Goetz von Berlichingen Iphigenia in Tauris The Natural Daughter Torquato Tasso Prose Elective Affinities The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily The Sorrows of Young Werther Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years Autobiographical works Dichtung und Wahrheit Italian Journey Journals Propyläen Natural sciences Metamorphosis of Plants Theory of Colours Conversations Gespräche mit Goethe Bibliography

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In the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combination. There are also definitions (or categories) of colors based on the color wheel: primary color, secondary color and tertiary color. Although color theory principles first appeared in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti (c.1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490), a tradition of "colory theory" began in the 18th century, initially within a partisan controversy around Isaac Newton's theory of color (Opticks, 1704) and the nature of so-called primary colors. From there it developed as an independent artistic tradition with only superficial reference to colorimetry and vision science.

Color abstractions[link]

Additive color mixing		Subtractive color mixing

The foundations of pre-20th-century color theory were built around "pure" or ideal colors, characterized by sensory experiences rather than attributes of the physical world. This has led to a number of inaccuracies in traditional color theory principles that are not always remedied in modern formulations.^{[citation needed]}

The most important problem has been a confusion between the behavior of light mixtures, called additive color, and the behavior of paint or ink or dye or pigment mixtures, called subtractive color. This problem arises because the absorption of light by material substances follows different rules from the perception of light by the eye.

A second problem has been the failure to describe the very important effects of strong luminance (lightness) contrasts in the appearance of colors reflected from a surface (such as paints or inks) as opposed to colors of light; "colors" such as browns or ochres cannot appear in mixtures of light. Thus, a strong lightness contrast between a mid-valued 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, or white.

A third problem has been the tendency to describe color effects holistically or categorically, for example as a contrast between "yellow" and "blue" conceived as generic colors, when most color effects are due to contrasts on three relative attributes that define all colors:

1. lightness (light vs. dark, or white vs. black),
2. saturation (intense vs. dull), and
3. hue (e.g., red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple).

Thus, the visual impact of "yellow" vs. "blue" hues in visual design depends on the relative lightness and intensity of the hues.

These confusions are partly historical, and arose in scientific uncertainty about color perception that was not resolved until the late 19th century, when the artistic notions were already entrenched. However, they also arise from the attempt to describe the highly contextual and flexible behavior of color perception in terms of abstract color sensations that can be generated equivalently by any visual media.

Many historical "color theorists" have 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 reality, only imaginary "primary colors" used in colorimetry can "mix" or quantify all visible (perceptually possible) colors; but to do this, these imaginary primaries are defined as lying outside the range of visible colors; i.e., they cannot be seen. Any three real "primary" colors of light, paint or ink can mix only a limited range of colors, called a gamut, which is always smaller (contains fewer colors) than the full range of colors humans can perceive.^{[citation needed]}

Historical background[link]

Color theory was originally formulated in terms of three "primary" or "primitive" colors—red, yellow and blue (RYB)—because these colors were believed capable of mixing all other colors. This color mixing behavior had long been known to printers, dyers and painters, but these trades preferred pure pigments to primary color mixtures, because the mixtures were too dull (unsaturated).

Goethe's color wheel from his 1810 Theory of Colours

The RYB primary colors became the foundation of 18th century theories of color vision, as the fundamental sensory qualities that are blended in the perception of all physical colors and equally in the physical mixture of pigments or dyes. These theories were enhanced by 18th-century investigations of a variety of purely psychological color effects, in particular the contrast between "complementary" or opposing hues that are produced by color afterimages and in the contrasting shadows in colored light. These ideas and many personal color observations were summarized in two founding documents in color theory: the Theory of Colours (1810) by the German poet and government minister Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast (1839) by the French industrial chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul.

Subsequently, German and English scientists established in the late 19th century that color perception is best described in terms of a different set of primary colors—red, green and blue violet (RGB)—modeled through the additive mixture of three monochromatic lights. Subsequent research anchored these primary colors in the differing responses to light by three types of color receptors or cones in the retina (trichromacy). On this basis the quantitative description of color mixture or colorimetry developed in the early 20th century, along with a series of increasingly sophisticated models of color space and color perception, such as the opponent process theory.

Across the same period, industrial chemistry radically expanded the color range of lightfast synthetic pigments, allowing for substantially improved saturation in color mixtures of dyes, paints and inks. It also created the dyes and chemical processes necessary for color photography. As a result three-color printing became aesthetically and economically feasible in mass printed media, and the artists' color theory was adapted to primary colors most effective in inks or photographic dyes: cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY). (In printing, dark colors are supplemented by a black ink, known as the CMYK system; in both printing and photography, white is provided by the color of the paper.) These CMY primary colors were reconciled with the RGB primaries, and subtractive color mixing with additive color mixing, by defining the CMY primaries as substances that absorbed only one of the retinal primary colors: cyan absorbs only red (−R+G+B), magenta only green (+R−G+B), and yellow only blue violet (+R+G−B). It is important to add that the CMYK, or process, color printing is meant as an economical way of producing a wide range of colors for printing, but is deficient in reproducing certain colors, notably orange and slightly deficient in reproducing purples. A wider range of color can be obtained with the addition of other colors to the printing process, such as in Pantone's Hexachrome printing ink system (six colors), among others.

Munsell's color system represented as a three-dimensional solid showing all three color making attributes: lightness, saturation and hue.

For much of the 19th century artistic color theory either lagged behind scientific understanding or was augmented by science books written for the lay public, in particular Modern Chromatics (1879) by the American physicist Ogden Rood, and early color atlases developed by Albert Munsell (Munsell Book of Color, 1915, see Munsell color system) and Wilhelm Ostwald (Color Atlas, 1919). Major advances were made in the early 20th century by artists teaching or associated with the German Bauhaus, in particular Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Faber Birren and Josef Albers, whose writings mix speculation with an empirical or demonstration-based study of color design principles.

Contemporary color theory must address the expanded range of media created by digital media and print management systems, which substantially expand the range of imaging systems and viewing contexts in which color can be used. These applications are areas of intensive research, much of it proprietary; artistic color theory has little to say about these complex new opportunities.^{[citation needed]}

Traditional color theory[link]

Complementary colors[link]

Chevreul's 1855 "chromatic diagram" based on the RYB color model, showing complementary colors and other relationships

For the mixing of colored light, Newton's color wheel is often used to describe complementary colors, which are colors which cancel each other's hue to produce an achromatic (white, gray or black) light mixture. Newton offered as a conjecture that colors exactly opposite one another on the hue circle cancel out each other's hue; this concept was demonstrated more thoroughly in the 19th century.^{[citation needed]}

A key assumption in Newton's hue circle was that the "fiery" or maximum saturated hues are located on the outer circumference of the circle, while achromatic white is at the center. Then the saturation of the mixture of two spectral hues was predicted by the straight line between them; the mixture of three colors was predicted by the "center of gravity" or centroid of three triangle points, and so on.

Primary, secondary, and tertiary colors of the RYB color model

According to traditional color theory based on subtractive primary colors and the RYB color model, which is derived from paint mixtures, yellow mixed with violet, orange mixed with blue, or red mixed with green produces an equivalent gray and are the painter's complementary colors. These contrasts form the basis of Chevreul's law of color contrast: colors that appear together will be altered as if mixed with the complementary color of the other color. Thus, a piece of yellow fabric placed on a blue background will appear tinted orange, because orange is the complementary color to blue.

Unfortunately, the artists' primary colors are not the same as complementary colors defined by light mixtures. This discrepancy becomes important when color theory is applied across media. Digital color management uses a hue circle defined around the additive primary colors (the RGB color model), as the colors in a computer monitor are additive mixtures of light, not subtractive mixtures of paints.

One reason the artist's primary colors even work at all is that the imperfect pigments being used have sloped absorption curves, and thus change color with concentration. A pigment that is pure red at high concentrations can behave more like magenta at low concentrations. This allows it to make purples that would otherwise be impossible. Likewise, a blue that is ultramarine at high concentrations appears cyan at low concentrations, allowing it to be used to mix green. Chromium red pigments can appear orange, and then yellow, as the concentration is reduced. It is even possible to mix very low concentrations of the blue mentioned and the chromium red to get a greenish color. This works much better with oil colors than it does with water colors and dyes.

So the old primaries depend on sloped absorption curves and pigment leakages to work, while the new scientifically derived ones depend solely on controlling the amount of absorption in certain parts of the spectrum.

Another reason the correct primary colors were not used by early artists is that they were not available as durable pigments. Modern methods in chemistry were needed to produce them.

Warm vs. cool colors[link]

The distinction between warm and cool colors has been important since at least the late 18th century.^[1] It is generally not remarked in modern color science or colorimetry in reference to painting, but is still used in design practices today.^{[citation needed]} The contrast, as traced by etymologies in the Oxford English Dictionary, seems related to the observed contrast in landscape light, between the "warm" colors associated with daylight or sunset and the "cool" colors associated with a gray or overcast day. Warm colors are often said to be hues from red through yellow, browns and tans included; cool colors are often said to be the hues from blue green through blue violet, most grays included. There is historical disagreement about the colors that anchor the polarity, but 19th century sources put the peak contrast between red orange and greenish blue.

Color theory has ascribed perceptual and psychological effects to this contrast. Warm colors are said to advance or appear more active in a painting, while cool colors tend to recede; used in interior design or fashion, warm colors are said to arouse or stimulate the viewer, while cool colors calm and relax. Most of these effects, to the extent they are real, can be attributed to the higher saturation and lighter value of warm pigments in contrast to cool pigments. Thus, brown is a dark, unsaturated warm color that few people think of as visually active or psychologically arousing.

Compare the traditional warm–cool association of color with the color temperature of a theoretical radiating black body, where the association of color with temperature is reversed. For instance, the hottest stars radiate blue light (i.e., with shorter wavelength and higher frequency) and the coolest radiate red.

The hottest radiating bodies (e.g. stars) have a "cool" color while the less hot bodies radiate with a "warm" color. (Image in mired scale.)

Achromatic colors[link]

Any color that lacks strong chromatic content is said to be unsaturated, achromatic, or near neutral. Pure achromatic colors include black, white and all grays; near neutrals include browns, tans, pastels and darker colors. Near neutrals can be of any hue or lightness.

Neutrals are obtained by mixing pure colors with white, black or grey, or by mixing two complementary colors. In color theory, neutral colors are colors easily modified by adjacent more saturated colors and they appear to take on the hue complementary to the saturated color. Next to a bright red couch, a gray wall will appear distinctly greenish.

Black and white have long been known to combine well with almost any other colors; black increases the apparent saturation or brightness of colors paired with it, and white shows off all hues to equal effect.^{[citation needed]}

Tints and shades[link]

When mixing colored light (additive color models), the achromatic mixture of spectrally balanced red, green and blue (RGB) is always white, not gray or black. When we mix colorants, such as the pigments in paint mixtures, a color is produced which is always darker and lower in chroma, or saturation, than the parent colors. This moves the mixed color toward a neutral color—a gray or near-black. Lights are made brighter or dimmer by adjusting their brightness, or energy level; in painting, lightness is adjusted through mixture with white, black or a color's complement.

It is common among some painters to darken a paint color by adding black paint—producing colors called shades—or lighten a color by adding white—producing colors called tints. However it is not always the best way for representational painting, as an unfortunate result is for colors to also shift in hue. For instance, darkening a color by adding black can cause colors such as yellows, reds and oranges, to shift toward the greenish or bluish part of the spectrum. Lightening a color by adding white can cause a shift towards blue when mixed with reds and oranges. Another practice when darkening a color is to use its opposite, or complementary, color (e.g. purplish-red added to yellowish-green) in order to neutralize it without a shift in hue, and darken it if the additive color is darker than the parent color. When lightening a color this hue shift can be corrected with the addition of a small amount of an adjacent color to bring the hue of the mixture back in line with the parent color (e.g. adding a small amount of orange to a mixture of red and white will correct the tendency of this mixture to shift slightly towards the blue end of the spectrum).

Split primary colors[link]

In painting and other visual arts, two-dimensional color wheels or three-dimensional color solids are used as tools to teach beginners the essential relationships between colors. The organization of colors in a particular color model depends on the purpose of that model: some models show relationships based on human color perception, whereas others are based on the color mixing properties of a particular medium such as a computer display or set of paints.

This system is still popular among contemporary painters,^{[citation needed]} as it is basically a simplified version of Newton's geometrical rule that colors closer together on the hue circle will produce more vibrant mixtures. However, with the range of contemporary paints available, many artists simply add more paints to their palette as desired for a variety of practical reasons. For example, they may add a scarlet, purple and/or green paint to expand the mixable gamut; and they include one or more dark colors (especially "earth" colors such as yellow ochre or burnt sienna) simply because they are convenient to have premixed.^{[citation needed]} Printers commonly augment a CYMK palette with spot (trademark specific) ink colors.

Color harmony and color meaning[link]

It has been suggested that "Colors seen together to produce a pleasing affective response are said to be in harmony".^[2] However, color harmony is a somewhat misleading notion in that responses to color can be influenced by a range of different factors including individual differences (age, gender, etc.); cultural and social differences; as well as contextual, temporal and perceptual factors. The following conceptual model illustrates this approach to color harmony:

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \text{Color harmony} = f(\text{Col} 1, 2, 3, \dots, n) \cdot (ID + CE + CX + P + T)

Wherein color harmony is a function (f) of the interaction between color/s (Col 1, 2, 3, …, n) and the factors that influence positive aesthetic response to color: individual differences (ID) such as age, gender, personality and affective state; cultural experiences (CE), the prevailing context (CX) which includes setting and ambient lighting; intervening perceptual effects (P) and the effects of time (T) in terms of prevailing social trends.^[3]

In addition, given that humans can perceive over 2.8 million different hues,^[4] it has been suggested that the number of possible color combinations is virtually infinite thereby implying that predictive color harmony formulae are fundamentally unsound.^[5] Despite this, many color theorists have devised formulae, principles or guidelines for color combination with the aim being to predict or specify positive aesthetic response or "color harmony". Color wheel models have often been used as a basis for color combination principles or guidelines and for defining relationships between colors. Some theorists and artists believe juxtapositions of complementary color will produce strong contrast, a sense of visual tension as well as "color harmony"; while others believe juxtapositions of analogous colors will elicit positive aesthetic response. Color combination guidelines suggest that colors next to each other on the color wheel model (analogous colors) tend to produce a single-hued or monochromatic color experience and some theorists also refer to these as "simple harmonies". In addition, split complementary color schemes usually depict a range of analogous hues plus a key complementary color. A triadic color scheme adopts any three colors approximately equidistant around a color wheel model. Feisner and Mahnke are among a number of authors who provide color combination guidelines in greater detail.^[6][7]

Color combination formulae and principles may provide some guidance but have limited practical application. This is because of the influence of contextual, perceptual and temporal factors which will influence how color/s are perceived in any given situation, setting or context. Such formulae and principles may be useful in fashion, interior and graphic design, but much depends on the tastes, lifestyle and cultural norms of the viewer or consumer.

As early as the ancient Greek philosophers, many theorists have devised color associations and linked particular connotative meanings to specific colors. However, connotative color associations and color symbolism tends to be culture-bound and may also vary across different contexts and circumstances. For example, red has many different connotative and symbolic meanings from exciting, arousing, sensual, romantic and feminine; to a symbol of good luck; and also acts as a signal of danger. Such color associations tend to be learned and do not necessarily hold irrespective of individual and cultural differences or contextual, temporal or perceptual factors.^[8] It is important to note that while color symbolism and color associations exist, their existence does not provide evidential support for color psychology or claims that color has therapeutic properties.^[9]

Current status[link]

Color theory has not developed an explicit explanation of how specific media affect color appearance: colors have always been defined in the abstract, and whether the colors were inks or paints, oils or watercolors, transparencies or reflecting prints, computer displays or movie theaters, was not considered especially relevant.^{[citation needed]} Josef Albers investigated the effects of relative contrast and color saturation on the illusion of transparency, but this is an exception to the rule.^[10]

References[link]

1. ^ "color temperature". handprint. 2009-04-19. http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color12.html. Retrieved 2011-06-09. 
2. ^ Burchett, K. E. (2002). Color harmony. Color Research and Application, 27 (1), pp28-31.
3. ^ O'Connor, Z. (2010). Color harmony revisited. Color Research and Application, 35 (4), pp267-273.
4. ^ Pointer, M. R. & Attridge, G.G. (1998). The number of discernible colors. Color Research and Application, 23 (1), pp52-54.
5. ^ Hard, A. & Sivik, L. (2001). A theory of colors in combination - A descriptive model related to the NCS color-order system. Color Research and Application, 26 (1), pp4-28.
6. ^ Feisner, E. A. (2000). Colour: How to use colour in art and design. London: Laurence King.
7. ^ Mahnke, F. (1996). Color, environment and human response. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
8. ^ Bellantoni, Patti (2005). If it's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die. Elsevier, Focal Press. ISBN 0-240-80688-3. 
9. ^ O'Connor, Z. (2010). Colour psychology and colour therapy: Caveat emptor. Color Research and Application, (Published online in 'EarlyView' in advance of print).
10. ^ Albers, Josef (2006). Interaction of Color. Revised and Expanded Edition. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-11595-4. 

External links[link]

• Color Theory Tutorial by Worqx
• Handprint.com : Color - a comprehensive site about color perception, color psychology, color theory, and color mixing
• Color Theory in Landscape Design
• The Dimensions of Colour - color theory for artists using digital/ traditional media
• Color Thesaurus World's Largest Database of Color Names
• Stanford University CS 178 interactive Flash demo introducing trichromatic color theory.
• App that generates harmonious color palettes from photos based on color theory