A version of this essay was presented at SPAN 2019 during the “Hue & Glue: Hands-On Color Theory” workshop. Read to the end to find instructions for an exercise that explores the relationship between color and light.
"If one says ( ‘red’ ) and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be ( fifty reds ) in their minds." – Josef Al
When I’m overwhelmed in a crowd, I distract myself by looking for as many red-colored objects as I can. Red is not typically a calming color, especially if you’re staring at miles of brake lights in traffic, but it’s really easy for me to see. Red becomes the most dominant thing on my mind.
Humans have used red since the neolithic era, as seen in the prehistoric cave drawings; When developing languages, red is typically the color named first after black and white. It’s now used so frequently in advertising—because it attracts the most attention—that people have learned to ignore it. ( The ad industry has successfully made a highly visible color...invisible. )
"Yellow tries to show you the way." – Laurel Schwulst
In grade school, I learned that yellow was the most soothing to color with when I brought the expensive markers I wasn’t allowed to use at home to school. I colored in a picture of Paddington wearing a raincoat well enough for my teacher to hang it on the wall for parent-teacher day.
In her piece commemorating a decade of internet colors, designer Laurel Schwulst reflects that ( yellow tries to show you the way ) in Google Maps. Artist Ian Whittlesea describes yellow as the easiest to mentally conjure in his seven breathing exercises to become invisible.
"Green can be the most difficult to keep stable." – Ian Whittlesea
According to Whittlesea, Indigo is the most difficult color to generate and green can be the most difficult to keep stable.
Colors can be hard to see. To the chemist John Dalton, red, orange, yellow, and green all appeared the same. The rest of the color spectrum appeared as gradients of blue and purple. Dalton went on to write the first scientific paper on the subject of color blindness, ( 'Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours' in 1798. )
"Blue is cold, red is a square, and green is a feeling." – Wassily Kandinsky
The artist Wassily Kandinsky could practically hear and taste color because of his synesthesia. To him yellow was a trumpet’s C note, black was the end of things, ( 'blue is cold, red is a square, and green is a feeling,' ) as summarized by the painter Amy Sillman who called Kandinsky’s philosophy a kind of color astrology in her essay 'Drug, Poison, Remedy, Talisman, Cosmetic, Intoxicant.'
In 1810, writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe decided that an equilateral triangle was the most effective form for his ideas on the psychological effect of colors. This new way of organizing color came about a hundred years after Sir Isaac Newton first arranged colors on a disk, to create an early form of the color wheel.
Black is an expression of light, in this case, it’s absence." – Kassia St Clair
We can see those softened outlines because light helps us discern forms. I find Vantablack—one of the darkest known substances, absorbing 99.96% of visible light—unsettling. As Kassia St Clair explains in The Secret Lives of Color, 'black is an expression of light, in this case, it’s absence.' My eyes hunt for the surface, and Vantablack leaves nothing to see.