How has the experience and experimentation of artists influenced our understanding of colour and the development of a theory of ‘colour vision’?
Originally, vision was thought of as an external process; an exchange of information from outside to inside, but, over time, improved theories have been formed and refined. It was Newton who made the first real scientific investigations and initiated the theory of a “quantifiable colour-order” (Gage, 1993, p. 191). By his experiments splitting light through a prism into the colours of the spectrum, he determined that vision was an external process – the colours existed externally and there was no element of internal perception involved. In the 1820’s, Chevrul began to recognise a relationship and interference between colours, where a glow could be observed on the fringe of two complimentary colours placed side by side, which he called ‘simultaneous contrast’ (Gage, 1993, p. 191) – this was an early indicator that colour recognition involved an internal process. Following this, Goethe proposed a theory that it is the brain which recognizes colours. He discovered this by experimentation with “complimentary after-images” at “junctions of light and dark areas”, where he could see the outline of an object after staring at it for some time, even when it was gone (Gage, 1993, p. 201). These outlines he concluded were a result of internal perception of colour, and so an internal process must exist. Following Geothe’s theory formation, Runge and Turner coordinated the complimentary colours and set up the primary colour scheme respectively. These discoveries and many others have been monumental in the collaboration of ‘colour theory’ today, where we understand colour vision due to experimentation and discovery by these artists.
Gage, J. (1993). Colours of the Mind in Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (pp.191-212). New York: Thames and Hudson.
