Light, Color and Environment by Faber Birren (review)

Books 181 change in some color parameter. These jumps stand out, for example, in Fig. 15 (between rows 12and 13in column 1 and between rows 4 and 5 in column 8) and Fig. 50 (between gores 2 and 3). It is recognized that transitions of this type will tend to occur between patches whose printing requires one and two inks, respectively, but additional reworking of the printing plates should have been effective, as it appears to have been in the 1961 volume, which was generally more successful in ‘smoothing’ the jumps in corresponding positions. A certain lossin the condensed version is the many reproductions of paintings by the masters, used to illustrate the discussion. Otherwise, Birren’sediting of text and figuresiscommendable. Thenumber and sequence of chapters is unchanged. Offhand, Itten appears at his most original in the chapters entitled ‘Color Agent and Color Effect’, ‘SubjectiveTimbre’ and ‘Form and Color’, and in discussingthe contrast of ‘extension’and the theories of color ‘impression’ and ‘expression’. (The word ‘brilliance’ has been used where, it appears, the current usage is lightness or value.) Geographically, the domain of Swiss-bornJohannes Itten (1888-1967) included Stuttgart, Vienna, Weimar (Bauhaus), Berlin and Zurich but his influences included Oriental philosophy, as well as Goethe. Technically, his domain is ethicoaesthetics (bordering on behavioral psychology, sociology and psychiatry) and not psycho-physiology (or psycho-physics, the term now used in illumination engineering,whichrefers to that branch of psychology relating stimulus to perception through neurology). Indeed, onefindsfascinating his advice that artists find self-actualization by choosing their palettes (page 24) according to their racial type (e.g., Nordic vs. swarthy) or that sculptors do likewise by choosing wood over silvery metals accordingly as their color affinitiesbe warm or cool. (Intimations of Liischer?) On the other hand, one is dismayed by his insistence that the color sphere (or the part thereof that is the color circle) is an artificial construct while the spectrum is natural-on the contrary, as D. B. Judd’s ‘Desert Island Experiment’ teaches, the color sphere is a most natural correlate of color psychology, while the spectrum, in its gross incompleteness, is natural only to meteorology. However beautiful, the spectrum is merely one effectof the underlying principles ofcolor perception and not the cause; the eye contains no prisms and, in most other situations, the relation between color and wavelength is not one-to-one. The ‘laws of color’ decidedly do not ‘shine forth in the rainbow’ A comment on the photography of colored shadows (page 82) suggests a suspension of Itten’s reason. He states: ‘Color photos showed that the colored shadowswerereallypresent, and not due ... to simultaneous contrast.’ Apart from asking what ‘really present’ may possibly mean here, one must know thatcamera and film,becausethey do not scan across boundaries between color patches, can (page 94)do no more than reconstruct the conditions of the experiment. If one seescolored shadowsin the color photo (assuming it is a direct transparency and not a print subject to manipulation of overall balance) it is because visual neurology is processing data from the film as it processed data from the original setup. There are only subtle differences between the phenomena of colored shadows and simultaneous contrast, and both are examples of a higher principle whereby visual neurology processes data from color patches in the context of surrounding patches and the boundaries between them. Itten’s chapter, ‘Color Physics’, is intentionally brief but in it he makes a statement, derived from Isaac Newton himself, that has the power to redeem all faults and remove all impediments to the understanding of color perception: ‘The light waves are not in themselves colored.’ Light, Color and Environment. Faber Birren. Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1969.pp. 131, illus. Reviewed by :Dick Land* One would have hoped that the author’s experience in the use of color would have been better displayed. Faber Birren has long been a popular lecturer and consultant on the functional use of color. His standard color practice manuals for the U.S.military have been used widely and his counsel has been sought internationally. His success arises from two needs: guidance in the use of color in public areas and interpretation...