Report on Color 77, Third Congress of the International Color Association (AIC)

Lronardo, Vol. 1 I, pp. 41-42. Pergamon Press 1978. Printed in Great Britain REPORT ON COLOR 77, THIRD CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COLOR ASSOCIATION (AIC) Albert‘Garrett* The Third Congress of the AIC was held at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., U.S.A., under the presidency of Tarow Indow of the Keio University, Tokyo. About 330 delegates representing 25 countries attended the Congress and 104papers were presented on the following subjects: colorimetry; color vision; color appearance; color in art, architecture and design; color metamerism; colorant formulation; reproduction and rendering; coloring of materials (dyeing); color differences ; and subjects of general interest. My report on the Second Congress in 1973 at York, England, appeared in Leonard0 11. The proceedings for the Second Congresswerepublished in book form[2], and the same will be done for the Proceedings of the Third Congress. A paper on the history of the AIC by Gunnar Tonnquist will be included. The first Deane B. Judd gold medal, awarded in 1975, was presented to Dorothy Nickerson in recognition of her life’s work in color technology. Much of the basic quantitative information underlying present-day colorimetry has been her contribution in whole or in part. The second Deane B. Judd gold medal, awarded in 1977, was presented to physicist William David Wright, whose contributions to color science range from basic colorimetric theory and experimentation, to medical applications and, recently, to techniques for the precise measurement of color in works of art as a means to evaluating color change following photochemical attack on paint films. His paper at the Congress treated a spectrophotometer of his design that is now being used in London at the National Gallery and the Courtauld Institute. Now that the receptor chemicals responsible for selectivelight absorption in the process of color vision are known, attention is turning to the postreceptoral neural systems and the electrophysiological phenomena originating in the retina and accounting for the signals received by the brain. L. M. Hurvich, in his paper Two Decades of Opponent Processes, discussed the polarized firing of the retinal ganglion cells [3]. One of Hurvich’s explanations refersto a Vasarelytapestry, evidently based on the painting shown on page 129 of Ref. 3. In the tapestry, luminously glowing diagonals can be seen that are produced as physiolgical-contrast light. Hurvich’s photometric measurements show that there is no luminance variation giving rise to this phenomenon. The science of color vision, starting with the Hering theory, appears to be well advanced. Perhaps before long some *Artist and teacher, 10 SunningdaleAve., Eastcote, Ruislip, Middlesex HA4 9SR, England. (Received 8 Aug. 1977) basic understanding of color induction will be forthcoming . Ten papers were presented on aspects of color in art, architecture and design. My paper, Designing for Iridescence, concerns a collage of superimposed handmade Japanese papers through which light is passed to produce iridescent effects [4]. In his paper entitled Color Systems, Theories and the Artist, Faber Birren, acknowledging the roles played by the Munsell and Ostwald color systems in 20th-century Western design, and to a lesser extent in art, emphasized the significance of physicist Ogden N. Rood’s ‘modern chormatics’ [51. Rood’s concepts, which were embraced by the French neo-impressionists, lead to color combinations that tend to be found in nature. He applied known physical and psychological phenomena and the spacing of his hue circle closely approximated that of the visible spectrum. I feel that the information available in color systems is incomplete from the standpoint of art application, principally because the ‘brown phenomenon’ has not been explained. Is the perception of the colors brown and olive a function not only of selective absorption in the retina but also of some particular effect occurring thereafter in the visual process? Two papers were given on color in painting: (1) J. M. W. Turner-A Great Colorist by Terry Walker and (2) The Changing Color Space of Nineteenth-Century Painters by W. D. G. Cox. Walker, like some other recent scholars. points out that Turner was influenced by Goethe’s conception of colors only insofar as to paint several canvases in that vein. These works appeared from 1843onwards, after Turner had made notes in hiscopy of...