"He" Had Me at Blue: Color Theory and Visual
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00677 by guest on 30 September 2021 general article “He” Had Me at Blue: Color Theory and Visual Art Barbara L. Miller a b s t r a c t Schopenhauer and Goethe argued that colors are danger- ous: When philosophers speak Blue is the colour of your yellow hair of colors, they often begin Red is the whirl of your green wheels to rant and rave. This essay addresses the confusing and ing effects. It can leave an intolera- —Kurt Schwitters treacherous history of color the- ble and “powerful impression” and ory and perception. An overview result in a type of visual incapaci- of philosophers and scientists Color Mad tation that, he suggests, “may last associated with developing for hours” [3]. Exposure to blazing theories leads into a discussion of contemporary perspectives: A friend and colleague once confided that she hated yellow light—“red” or “white” light, as the flowers: “I can’t,” she blustered, “have them in my garden.” Taussig’s notion of a “combus- fictional character cries—in real tible mixture” and “total bodily “You sound like a scene from a Hitchcock movie!” I teased, life can result in blinding after- activity” and Massumi’s idea of and Tippi Hedren as Marnie flashed before my eyes. effects; for example, walking out an “ingressive activity” are used of a dark corridor into a bright, sun- as turning points in a discussion Marnie: “First there are three taps.” of Roger Hiorns’s Seizure—an Thunder claps. Marnie swoons, wailing: “Needles . Pins . lit room. Occurrences of such illu- excruciatingly intoxicating Black! . White! . Red! . White! . White!” sions or optical “whiteouts,” which installation. Red light floods across the white draperies and walls. are momentary and do not last “The colors,” Marnie shrieks and recoils. Collapsing onto the as long as Goethe suggests, make floor she pleads, “Stop the Colors!” [1]. Marnie’s hallucinatory condition To visualize the main character’s breakdown in Marnie, palpable, and her delusory state resonates with our percep- Hitchcock draws on Western attitudes toward the color red. tional systems. Historically, red is the color imaginatively associated with heat Whether aesthetics or taste, illusion or hallucination, our re- and passion. Its conceptual relationship to emotional or physi- sponses to color run a gamut. Color perception, however, can cal calefaction comes as no surprise: Scientifically, red is closest also elicit intense sensory responses. For instance, I recently to the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, in which stumbled across documentation of Roger Hiorns’s installation thermal waves reside. Indeed, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Seizure (2009–2010) (Article Frontispiece). To produce the art- a 19th-century Romantic playwright, poet and naturalist, was work, the British artist pumped copper sulfate solution into an one of the first scholars to delve into such cross-disciplinary abandoned council flat, and ultramarine-blue crystals grew on aspects of color. In Theory of Colours, published in 1810, Goethe the walls, floor and ceiling. The resultant crystalline crust, very connects subjective and objective apprehensions: “In some visible in the photographic documentation, is excruciatingly states of body,” Goethe contends in his appendix on patho- intoxicating. The intensity of the blue gives rise to what Henri logical colors, “when the blood is heated, and the system much Matisse called the “vivacity” of color, or intense “retinal sensa- excited,” fiery flashes of red light may appear [2]. tion.” Color, as the early avant-garde artist suggested, produces The flashes of light trigger Marnie’s psychological dis- a physiological liveliness that potentially can jump across the integration, and her psychological trauma manifests as an senses and invoke tactility or cause palpitations. He compares “overheated” body. We readily accept her colorful projection such trembling to the “‘vibrato’ of the violin” [4]. because our visual perception system lends itself to such subjec- In “Too-Blue: Color-Patch for an Expanded Empiricism,” tive episodes. As Goethe further observed, exposure to intense Brian Massumi argues that color in general, and blue in par- light has the potential to produce “dazzling” and overwhelm- ticular, has such dynamic potential; like Matisse, Massumi uses the term “vivacity.” Going beyond synesthesia or cross- sensory responses, Massumi argues that color perception is Barbara L. Miller (educator, researcher), Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, U.S.A. Email: <[email protected]>. a “self-activity of experience,” an “ingressive activity” [5]. He See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/47/5> for supplemental files associated with this ultimately aligns it with what 19th-century psychologist Wil- issue. liam James called pure experience—“the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its article Frontispiece. roger Hiorns, Seizure, installation, 2008. conceptual categories.” Pure experience is, he states, “a that Opened in 2008, in a condemned southwark, london, flat, the instal- which is not yet any definite what, tho’ ready to be all sorts of lation was closed to the public in January 2010. While the housing block was demolished in 2011, Hiorns’s work was preserved and whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects acquired by the arts council collection. the 31-ton piece was cut that don’t appear” [6]. out and relocated to the Yorkshire sculpture Park; according to their This essay addresses the confusing topic of color perception: website, Seizure is currently open to the public—even over the easter what Arthur Schopenhauer, writing almost two centuries ago, weekend. (© roger Hiorns. Photo: Marcus leith. commissioned by artangel and the Jerwood charitable Foundation, supported by the described as a “perplexing” and “dangerous” topic for philoso- national lottery through arts council england, in association with phers and scientists [7]. Quoting Goethe, Schopenhauer fur- channel 4. courtesy of the artist and corvi-Mora, london.) ther warned that if the philosopher speaks of “colour only in a ©2014 ISAST doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00677 LEONARDO, Vol. 47, No. 5, pp. 460–465, 2014 461 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_00677 by guest on 30 September 2021 general way,” he or she—like a bull—sees which individually refracted rays have a time of Goethe’s death, although the red, and “begins to rave” [8]. Such raving “disposition to exhibit this or that par- work was poorly received in the Roman- continues to haunt the debate. As Martin ticular color” [15]. The color-producing tic poet and naturalist’s lifetime. Scho- Kemp states: rays are proportionally related, and, us- penhauer understood the importance ing the sequence found in naturally oc- of its physiological analysis of color per- If there is anything upon which almost curring phenomena such as rainbows, ception and, even though he was criti- all the writers on colour agree, from the time of Aristotle to the present day, it is Newton keyed his prismatic spectrum cal, used Goethe’s insight to stake out his that colour . presents a bewildering to the ratio-related system of musical own position: variety of kaleidoscopic variations—fleet- chords, producing a descending array ing, fluctuating, and almost infinitely of hues: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, All color theories share the same mis- slippery whenever we try to entrap them take . they all speak only about what in a regular net of scientific categories indigo and violet. Newton, then, took modifications light or the surface of a [9]. his “linear diagram of spectral intervals” body must undergo to show color. and “joined [it] at its distal ends” [16]. Instead, the correct way is obviously to At the risk of perpetuating such heated In doing so, he turned his color octave direct our attention, first of all, to the or cooled madness, this article touches into a two-dimensional circle. While oth- sensation itself and to investigate if we upon the combustible history of color could not determine from its nature and ers, including Aristotle, had used a circle conformity what it consists of physiologi- vision. Following Evan Thompson, the to demonstrate their theories, Newton’s cally, in itself [22]. approach is multidisciplinary, encom- color wheel visualized the complemen- passing perspectives from neuroscience tary and analogous relationship between Building on Goethe’s theory of the to cellular biology, psychophysics, lin- hues. physiological effects of color, Schopen- guistics, philosophy and artificial intel- Radically breaking from Aristotle’s hauer directed “attention, first of all, to ligence [10]. Yet, instead of “abstracting proportional mixtures of lightness and the sensation itself”—the physiological away,” as Rainer Mausfeld warns [11], darkness, Newton published his proofs response produced in the eye [23]. The this essay clings to the vivacity of color in Opticks (1704) and, as Georg Stahl object of Newton’s study, he asserted, perception. Its ultimate focus turns on proclaims, “set off a revolution in the “was light when it should have been the the many-sided “whatness” that arises out studies of light and color” [17]. By 1800, eye” [24]. of internal vibrations that resonate with Kemp adds, “Newtonian prismatics had The debate within color and percep- external fluctuations. With that in mind, . become part of the general currency tion theory today is far from a unanimous it reincorporates an often overlooked, of academic knowledge.” Yet, through- resolution. As Joseph Levine modestly albeit parallel and equally engaged in- out the 18th century, many hotly debated puts it: “Our best theories of color vision, quiry—artistic investigation into the his findings—even scientists within the including the popular opponent-process realm of color perception. prestigious group of scholars associated theory, tell us that color experience is a with the British Royal Society, of which very complicated process” [25]. “The Newton had become president [18].