A Color System for Artists

Leonnrdo, Vol. 9, pp, 48-51. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain A COLOR SYSTEM FOR ARTISTS Get4 Marcus* I. The number of colors that are perceived by humans is very large. Furthermore, at present the nomenclature of colors is inadequate and confusing, being characterized by terms stemming from varied sources [l]. For a very long time, systems have been sought in which all colors can be categorized rationally. Painting at the time of Empedocles (5th cent. B.C.) was characterized by the clair-obscure and the only artists’ colors used were white, black, earth yellow and red [2]. These colors were taken to correspond to the assumed four ‘primary matters’-air, water, Earth and fire. Democritus (5th cent. B.C.), one of the founders of atomism, conceived black and white as attributes of atoms. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) followed with his sevencolor hypothesis. Centuries later, the English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton (16421727 )dispersed sunlight into a continuous spectrum using a prism and explained the phenomenon of refraction [3]. The German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1 749-1 832) contributed a hypothesis of color that continues to be of interest [4]. However, the English physicist Thomas Young (1773-1 829), the German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and the German psychologist Ewald Hering (1834-191 8) stand out as major contributors to an understanding of color perception. II. One might wonder in what way artists have contributed to an understanding of color. Certainly they select their palettes. Thus, perhaps one owes to them the idea of a systematic arrangement of colours. Indeed, I suppose that this is the case. I think first of the German romantic painter Philip Otto Runge (1777-1810) who worked out a 3-dimensional system using a sphere for the representation of colors in a logical way [5-71. The vertical axis of his sphere, or spherical color space, represents the white-black series passing * Artist living at Gotgatan 66, I1621 Stockholm, Sweden. (Based on a text in French.) (Received 16 April 1974). from white at the north pole progressively through greys to black at the south pole. He located the spectral colors and the purples in a continuous sequence along the equator. All possible color mixtures are represented either within the sphere or on its surface between the equator and the poles. Runge might have been influenced by the color sphere of the Swedish physicist and clergyman Sigfrid Forsius (1611), which also has a whiteblack vertical axis [S]. But the arrangement of the colors along the equator is different. Possibly Runge’s spherical system influenced the German physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) when he devised a color space in the form of two cones joined at the base in which the axis also represents the achromatic range from white to black [7, 91 and the cone junction or equator represents a color circle containing 24 complementary colors. An achromatic axis has been employed in a number of other color space systems, or color solids, for example, in the irregular color solid of the American artist Albert H. Munsell (1 858-1918) [10,11], in the cylinder of the artist and teacher Arthur Pope [12, 131,in the double-cone of Manfred Richter [7, 141 and in the rhombohedron of Harald Kiippers [7]. Among artists concerned with the systematic arrangements of colors is the French impressionist painter Georges Seurat (1859-1891) who, inspired by the ‘scientific aesthetics’ of Charles Henry (1859-1926), used a color wheel of 22 complementary colors to arrive at a hypothesis of color harmony [15-171. Perhaps less known are the mathematical relations of color harmony derived by the Belgian sculptor and painter Georges Vantongerloo (I 886-1 965) [IS]. ILI. With modern instruments it is possible under controlled conditions to measure colors with precision . Furthermore, it is possible to designate colors precisely and to locate them in a rigorously defined color space. Such a system was introduced by the Commission Internationale d’Eclairage (CIE) in 1931. Although certain shortcomings may be noted in the CIE system [19, 201, it has 48 A Color Systemfor Artists 49 been widely adopted throughout the world. It...