Contents
Introduction 7
Part One
1 The Contexts of Colour 11
The history of art as a unifying subject • Artefacts and attitudes • The harmony of colours
The non-standard observer· Colour in context
2 Colour and Culture 21
Colour-usage and colour-systems • The spectrum and the natural world· 'Basic Color Terms'
A disdain for colour • Colour-psychology: chromotherapy and the Luscher Test High culture, popular culture
3 Colour in Art and its Literature 34
The politics of colour • Colour and gender • The formalist tradition · The substance of colour Theories and assumptions • Alberti to Durer • Science into art • Science - 'the taste of all minds'
Twentieth-century theory • Colour as content • Colour-change: shot fabric and modelling • Colour and
symbol • Reception and response • Theories of harmony • Representing colour • The history of colour
Part Two
4 Colour in History - Relative and Absolute 67
Iconography in the early Middle Ages: brightness versus hue • Colour as symbol Red and purple in the scale of colours • Medieval blues • The point of pointillism • The mind of the mosaicist • Atoms and mixtures • The luminous imperative
5 Colour-words and Colour-patches 90
Scribes and spectacles • Nequam's colour-terms • Marginal notes • The medieval palette Red and green: the psychological effects of colour
6 Ghiberti and Light 98
Ghiberti and gemstones • The art of glass • The humanists and light
7 Color Colorado - Cross-cultural Studies in the Ancient Americas 105
'Basic Color Terms' - the problems • Colour-terms and colour-products Colour and direction • The significance of red
8 The Fool's Paradise 121
The hexagonal stone • The reduction of means • The prism in the sixteenth century Scarmiglioni on colour • Glass versus crystal • The spectral colours
9 Newton and Painting 134
Doctrines of mixture • In search of harmony - printing the primaries • The principles of harmony: colour and music • Harmony and complementarity
10 Blake's Newton 144
Adapting Michelangelo • Blake's interest in optics • The material bow
11 Magilphs and Mysteries 153
The lure of Venetian colour • The Secret exposed • The aftermath
12 Turner as a Colourist 162
Local colour • Primaries - the 'colour-beginning' • Light and colour • The relativity of colour
13 'Two Different Worlds' - Runge, Goethe and the Sphere of Colour 169
Goethe and Runge • Steffens, Schiffermiiller and the Farben-Kugel The suppression of symbolism
14 Mood Indigo - From the Blue Flower to the Blue Rider 185
The blue flower • Gendering of blue • An anthropology of colour • Goethe 's following: symbol versus substance • Bocklin and Bezold • Experimental psychology: Fechner and Wundt Kandinsky and blue • Goethe in the twentieth century
15 Chevreul between Classicism and Romanticism 196
Chevreul and Vernet • Painting in fiat tints • Shades of grey
16 The Technique of Seurat - A Reappraisal 209
Seurat 's reading • Painterly experiment • The primacy of Chevreul
17 Seurat's Silence 219
Helmholtzian chromatics • Dubois-Pillet and Hayet • Vibert and science • Indefinable colour
18 Matisse's Black Light 228
Matisse 's Manet • Half a scientist • Dark light
19 Colour as Language in Early Abstract Painting 241
Colour in Theosophy and in Kandinsky • Nature and system
The significance of primaries • A language of colour
20 A Psychological Background for Early Modern Colour 249
Kandinsky 's grammar of colour • Delaunay's practical theory
Mondrian's primary order, Ostwald's theory of harmony
21 Making Sense of Colour - The Synaesthetic Dimension 261
Perception and deception • The unity ef the senses • Colour and physiology
Synaesthesia and aesthetics
Acknowledgments 270
Notes to the Text 271
Select Bibliography 306
List of Illustrations 312
Index 315