Color Vision: An Historical Introduction by Gerald S. Wasserman (review)

Books 67 perception (for example motion), Bloomer asks rhetorically what application the topic has to the visual arts; her premise is that a knowledge of visual perception ought to help one construct as well as construe such arts. What follows are her thoughts on the relation between an aspect of perception and the psychology of visual art. Some applications are undeniably interesting: attention (selectivity mandates that photographers learn to 'see what the camera sees'), figure/ground (for example Escher's pictures), ambiguity (for example Jasper Johns' painting '0-9'), relativity (miniaturization illusions in cinema), size (viewing from above diminishes, from below augments), set (traditional visual art takes advantage of perceptual constancies and prejudices and do not challenge them), inferred motion (pregnant moment), etc. Much of this will not be new to most readers in the experimental psychology of art. Others of her comments miss the mark: yin/yang as oriental intolerance of ambiguity; the hodgepodge of colorword associations, 'Trust your feelings; you can usually assume that your reactions--if they are free from prejudiceare the ones the artist intended you to have' (p. 127). For Bloomer, the visual arts are a form of communication whose 'language' is visible. Her Principles is intended to provide beginning art students and their teachers with 'a basic vocabulary for unlocking the grammatical [sic] structures of vision' (p. 131). The level at which the book is pitched is important since its degree of insight is inappropriate for anyone more advanced. She possesses a keen eye, and her text betrays a fascination with phenomena, but it wants for explanation . Perhaps younger artists do not need to know: Why? Color Vision: An Historical Introduction. Gerald S. Wasserman . John Wiley, Chichester, England, 1978. 224 pp., illus.£12.60. Reviewed by George A. Agoston" In his Preface, Wasserman states, 'My aim in this book is to present the fundamental concepts of color vision in an informal manner using as little notation as possible. Yet I still aim to show the significant relations between phenomena and theory. In that way, I hope to make the conceptual treatments found in advanced works available in a nontechnical way to the nonspecialist and the newcomer.' The book begins with a brief discussion of observations made by Aristotle, Goethe, Chevreul and others on the subject of color and then continues with a critical review of Newton's important contributions, including his 'barocentric model of color vision which is generated by folding the spectrum around so that the ends are near each other', a 2-dimensional model excluding brightness (p. 21). This is followed by a careful evaluation of the contributions of subsequent scientists including George Palmer, Thomas Young, H. L. F. von Helmholtz, J. C. Maxwell and H. G. Grassmann. In the author's opinion, 'what we universally call the Young-Helmholtz theory should really be called the Newton-Maxwell theory because Newton provided the initial ideas (the barocentric rules and the first empirical observations ) and then Maxwell provided the imaginary primary concept that yielded a workable approach to color vision' (p. 37). A lucid chapter on colorimetry follows, treating, in particular , fundamentals of the C.LE. (Commission Internationale d'Eciairage) system, the data of Wright and Guild, the Maxwellian primaries and the resulting chromaticity diagram. Another chapter contains descriptions of different types of color blindness. 'The data provided by studies of color blindness constitute the basis for some of the most serious tests of theories of color vision' (p. 73). Since the middle of the 19th century a number of interesting hypotheses on color vision have been proposed. The principal ones are discussed in three chapters entitled Component Theories, Opponent Theories, and Zone Theories. The work of L. M. Hurvich and D. Jameson is discussed in particular. They 'called their theory an opponent theory, and certainly it does emphasize the opponent features. Yet, it is really a zone "4 Rue Rambuteau, 75003 Paris, France. theory because it has both component receptors and opponent analyzers of these components' (p. 114). The author comments also on the recent zone hypotheses of J. J. Vos and P. L. Walraven and of S. L. Guth. In the chapters on Color Photometry and Physiology, the author's presentation...