Gather Journal
GATHER JOURNAL SPECTRUM THE COLOR ISSUE Seasonal Recipes and Exceptional Ideas summer 2015 GATHER JOURNAL GATHER Can you see color with your ears? Ken Nordine’s 1966 album Colors did just that. His paean to the spectrum in audio form is best appreciated lying down, eyes closed, ears peeled for Nordine’s iconic voice, rich and resonant, as it spins you around the color wheel, inventing personas for every shade. Lavender, “keeper of dark corners and black-blue blood, lady of the soft edges.” Orange, “the silly old color who lives next to red, the one that is orangely out of its head.” Ecru, “is a critic, loves to see the show, just doesn’t know when to say yes, and when to say no.” And white, “is just a dream of a dream, even now, if you close your eyes tight, and let your brain go to where it’s whiter than snow, you’ll see, you’ll know.” Nordine understood a simple truth: Color is imagination. For artists, color is also possibility. French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul helped to open up this new world of chromatic prospects; his 1839 book, The Laws of Contrast of Colour, delved into the principles of how colors play off of each other when juxtaposed (e.g., deep purple will look more intense near yellow, than alongside black). His findings would serve as the basis for simultaneous contrast, a concept further elucidated a century later by Bauhaus artist Josef Albers in Interaction of Color. He wrote: “If one says red and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.” You see, color is not static, but rather something constantly in flux, often shaped and influenced by individuals and their respective histories.
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