Goethe’s Visual World by Pamela Currie (review)

Pamela Currie presents a thoroughgoing analysis of Goethe’s color theory and perspective of color in works of art. The book’s eight chapters flesh out his collaboration with the artist and art historian Heinrich Meyer whom he met in Rome during his first trip to Italy. Although Goethe already had developed a rudimentary understanding of color, it was from this point on that he developed his mature perspective and even to some extent obsessed over color.

The first and third chapters establish the psychology of Goethe’s visual perspective. The first chapter deals with Goethe’s “mental images.” Drawing on David Wellbery’s readings, Currie demonstrates that Goethe’s early works such as Wertherreveal his obsession with imagery. She also uses Jacques Lacan’s psychological hypothesis of the individual’s “narcissistic fixation on the mental image of the counterpart of the mirror stage” (7) to explain Goethe’s thinking. Currie’s point via both theorists is that Goethe’s use of mirror images explains his penchant for portraying the subjective beholder as being in love with someone who reflects himself. Such a condition clarifies the relationship between Werther and Lotte or even between the youth and his paramour in early lyrics such as “Willkommen und Abschied” (32).

Currie further explores Wellbery’s idea that this mirroring relationship results in a “specular moment,” which supposedly functions as an organizing concept (32). For Wellbery this involves the psychosexual mother-son relationship. Although Currie cannot wholeheartedly underwrite Wellbery’s argument, she does agree with both Wellbery and Lacan that Goethe purposely portrays individuals who often possess narcissistic inclinations that depend on mirroring.

Currie’s second chapter, “Ambiguous Figures in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre,” expands upon this idea. Here Currie conceives of the Lehrjahreas a novel that “identifies childhood with self-absorption, and … narrates a narcissist’s quest for a partner who is not a mere self-image” (22). For Currie, this explains Wilhelm’s attraction to women who possess a (slightly) masculine side that mirrors himself. These figures include Chlorinde, Natalie, and even the “hermaphroditic Mignon” (23). We might easily add other Goethean female figures with similarly masculine traits to this list, such as Götz’s wife Elisabeth, Adelheid von Waldorf, and Egmont’s Klärchen, not to mention Goethe’s gender-ambiguous lads in Faust II, Knabe Lenker, and Euphorion.

The fourth chapter, “Goethe’s Green: The ‘Mixed’ Boundary Colours in Zur Farbenlehre,” provides the theoretical underpinning for the remaining chapters in the book. Currie chronicles Goethe’s argument against Newton’s color theory and his obsession with the boundary color green when seen through a prism. This green actually turns out to be only a “spectral color” that results from a range of wavelengths and is not akin to mixed pigments (such as when blue and yellow are mixed in painting to make green). The upshot of Currie’s dense technical discourse is that Pieter Johannes Bouma, in reexamining Goethe’s argument, substantiates the fact that, Newton to the contrary, “Goethe was therefore quite correct in thinking that boundary colors could form the basic building blocks for all color mixing” (56).

This revelation provides the basis for the following discussions of Goethe’s view of coloration in painting with respect to such specific topics as the “Harmoniespiel der Farben,” “classical colour harmony,” and the “Mannigfaltigkeit des Farbenspiels.” Currie’s discussion principally focuses on Goethe’s long collaboration with Meyer and the way in which these two men conceived of color in works of art with respect to the problems of saturation, the proper use of fringe colors, and the strength of color necessary to achieve a chromatic harmony with the best possible luminosity. Indeed, the idea of luminosity is the pivotal point of departure for Goethe’s perspective of coloration because it arose directly from his dislike of the Flemish tradition of using dark colors—particularly black—to portray shadow. Goethe and Meyer preferred the use of heavier saturation levels of the same color to show shadows. Their reasons...