Theories of Color

     The first major philosopher to write a dedicated treatise on color was Aristotle (ca. 330 BC), who argued that it emerged out of the shift from brightness to darkness. Nearly two thousand years later, Isaac Newton provided a different scientific definition in his Opticks (1665): color was thenceforward to be understood as a phenomenon that corresponds to a particular wavelength of a light spectrum, which could be perceived through small particles moving away from sources of light. Newton’s model has the major advantage of being empirically verifiable and universalizable. This is of critical importance because colors are the most sensuous and subjective part of artistic experience.
     The symbolic associations of colors vary by culture and period and sometimes colors are even named differently. Partially for these reasons, color was held since the time of Aristotle to be less important than line, with the latter associated with structure and order as opposed to emotion and ornament.
     The most important exception in the modern period is Goethe (1749-1832), who was an amateur scientist interested in Newtonian physics (and classical ideals of balance), but who was equally concerned with the physiological and perceptual aspects of color experience. Through his own experiments, Goethe observed in his Theory of Colors (1809) [1] that the same color could be seen differently depending on what was seen right before or after it. For Goethe, light remained central but color could be understood as “a degree of darkness,” which is retained even when colors are mixed together. In this sense, vitality itself was seen as rooted not in abstract clarity but in color and opacity.