Cristina Boeri
Chapter Summary. Relationships between colors are of primary importance to both the color theorist and the designer. Historical perspectives on color relations include a number of different points of view, both theoretical and personal. This analysis of the leading authors who investigate color relationships provides a comparative discussion of the literature and probes the usefulness of these treatises in developing a critical color sense that is the basis of any design process. The study of color relationships is not intended to achieve rules within which to operate, but to provide a theoretical and practical structure to support the compositional and perceptual possibilities of color.
A much-studied aspect of color theory is the relations among colors, sometimes described as “harmonies,” “chords,” “interactions,” or “contrasts.” The fact that colors, in their practical applications, are almost never seen as an isolated phenomenon, but are always related with other colors, is probably the main reason this topic is particularly interesting. As observed by Josef Albers “we are able to hear a single tone. But we almost never (that is, without special devices) see a single color unconnected and unrelated to other colors. Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbours and changing conditions.”1 Much attention has been placed on the aspects connected to color combinations, both in terms of mutual relationships and chromatic interactions—how colors interact via perceptive change. Is it possible to trace the reasons why some color arrangements seem more effective than others? Numerous authors have tried to answer this question, starting from the consideration that some color combinations will be seen as more balanced, efficient, and pleasant than others. Although the concept of “harmony” itself is subjected to different interpretations, we can ascribe its sense to the etymology of the Greek word armonía, namely link, disposition, proportion, that derives from the verb armózein, namely to connect, to link, to agree. In other words a correspondence among the parts creates a tie that sustains color relationships.
In treating the theme of color relationships, two diverse approaches to color harmony are delineated. For some color theorists, color harmony can be ascribed to a “scientific nature” and therefore to principles, rules, laws, objectives, on the basis of how the eye and the mind conceive relations among what is different. For others, the selection of colors is an innate ability, an instinct which no rule can accomplish. John Ruskin warned: “if you need examples of utterly harsh and horrible colour, you may find plenty given in treatises upon colouring, to illustrate the laws of harmony…. If ever any scientific person tells you that two colours are ‘discordant’, make a note of the two colours, and put them together whenever you can.”2 In more recent times, Albers expresses the necessity to develop an eye for color “instead of mechanically applying or merely implying laws and rules of color harmony.”3
Even if it is clear that employing any of the theories on color harmony doesn’t automatically produce effective chromatic results, we can still conclude that the purpose of studying relations among colors is not to achieve strict rules within which to operate but to offer a structure of support. As Itten already noted in the introduction to his book The Art of Color,4 the purpose of studying relationships is to provide a theoretical and practical structure to support all the possible chromatic compositions; in this case, even today, the importance of these theories and this particular study field is still tangible. The true risk in dealing with the issue of relations among colors starting from any of the available treatises is to be persuaded to have unambiguous and shared “recipes” that can be employed when making chromatic choices. So, in analyzing the treatises of the leading authors who investigated the relations among colors, the emphasis is not on the value of the single contribution. But, through a comparative view of the whole area of study, emphasis is on the real current usefulness these treatises can still offer in developing that necessary critical sense that is the basis of any design process.
MUTUAL INFLUENCES AMONG COLORS
In 1824, the chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889) was appointed director of the dyes department of the Paris Gobelins’ royal tapestry factories with the intention of remedying the apparent “gloominess” of the pigments employed in the factory. He discovered that the problem didn’t concern the coloring agents, but the way the yarns were woven or the way the colors were matched. Goethe had earlier noticed how the observation of colors led to the emergence of changes in their qualities, attributed to the fact that contrasting colors intensify themselves.5 Leonardo da Vinci observed how each color is seen more distinctively when it is opposed to its contrary than when matched with any other similar color.
From his studies on the mutual influences among colors, Chevreul came to demonstrate, through a series of experiments, that by simultaneously observing two juxtaposed colored surfaces, two types of alterations are produced in the color appearance: one concerns the color intensity or lightness (contrast of tone) and the other applies to the color itself (contrast of color); these alterations happen because each color “yields” to the one close to its complementary, the so-called law of simultaneous contrast and it is for this reason that complementary colors, when matched, seem brighter. See Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 An exemplification of Michel Eugène Chevreul’s harmonies of analogous colors and harmonies of contrasts. Image by Cristina Boeri.
In 1839, Chevreul published his observations on chromatic combinations in a book, entitled The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Application to the Arts,6 which later would strongly influence the Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism art movements. As Ball observes, his work spread rapidly among painters not because his discoveries were something new—painters had known for a long time that color perception was influenced by what surrounded it—but it was rather due to the scientific aura of his systematic treatise.7 Chevreul also describes a particular aspect of the relations among colors starting from the notion that if “the eye undoubtedly takes pleasure in seeing Colours, independent of design and every other quality in the object which exhibits them”8 the sight of some color combinations produces a pleasant experience.
He categorizes the chromatic harmonies in two substantial typologies, which he called harmonies of analogous colors and harmonies of contrasts. The harmonies by analogy are produced by the simultaneous viewing of colors sharing similarities: colors of different tones belonging to the same scale and adjacent, that is, colors of the same hue with different lightness; colors with the same, or similar, tones belonging to adjacent scales, that is, colors with the same lightness that are adjacent on the color circle; and, finally, colors even very distant, different, one from the other, provided that one prevails on the others, as it happens when colors are observed through a slightly colored glass or when the same hue, although left transparent, is laid on different colors.
The harmonies by contrast are produced by the simultaneous sight of very different colors: colors of different tones belonging to the same scale yet distant one from the other, colors with different tones belonging to adjacent scales, that is, adjacent colors on the color circle having different lightness; or colors belonging to very distant scales, for example, complementary colors, selected in accordance with the law of contrast.9 Chevreul then focuses upon some combinations of primary colors with white, black, and gray, observing how they appear particularly beautiful; nonetheless to conclude that in treating this particular field of relations among colors, he only aimed at stating general propositions expressing his own personal idea and not at establishing rules based on scientific principles.10
Another author who has dedicated particular attention to the action of color and to the reciprocal relation among colors is Josef Albers (1888–1976). Trained in the Bauhaus School in Weimar, where he taught until the school was shut down in 1933, Albers developed an experimental way of studying and teaching color based on the observation and experience of color interaction. The effects of simultaneous contrast are highlighted through a series of practical exercises that show us how the same color applied on different backgrounds appears different, but also, vice versa, how two different colors can look alike or nearly alike in function of the backgrounds with which they interact.
The interdependence of color is not limited to the interactions between color and color, but also between form, placement, quantity, quality of light, and the existence of separating or connecting boundaries that all can modify color appearance. It is just this interdependence of color with the context, its relativity, that in Albers’s opinion ratifies the necessity of an approach to color which, beyond any color arrangement theory, sees in discovery and experimentation the only means to utilize color effectively. See Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2 Examples of color interactions: the smaller gray squares contained in the bigger squares are identical, but they appear different in lightness (Plate 8) and also in hue and saturation. Image by Cristina Boeri.
COLOR ORDER SYSTEMS AS COLOR RELATIONSHIP SYSTEMS
Color organizational systems represent the human being’s innate desire to create an order able to subject colors. Starting from Aristotle’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s linear color sequences, followed by two-dimensional representations of color circles, and eventually three-dimensional models that structure color according to its characteristics of hue, lightness, and saturation, the goal of these models is, as Philipp Otto Runge said referring to his sphere,11 to provide universal charts that allow one to find an orientation within a color context. These systems are also attempts to structure and highlight the relations among colors. As Rudolf Arnheim notes, the purpose of these systems is clearly to allow an objective identification of any color, but also to “show which colors reciprocally match.”12 This is the principle of common elements, which comes from the prerequisite that, as Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) once said, colors, in order to harmonize, must be equal in their essential elements.13 Ostwald based his harmony principles on hue identity and on the content of white, black, and saturation. Therefore, according to Ostwald, a pleasant effect results from chromatic juxtapositions arranged in a precise and well-regulated mutual relation, stating the fundamental principle that harmony is equal to order. See Figure 3.3.
Ostwald, who had a chance to meet Albert Munsell in 1905 during a trip to the United States, developed his harmony principles from a color order system, which, similar to Munsell, is based on the perceptual comparison of the respective similarities and differences among colors. He organized the full colors, to their maximum saturation, in a twenty-four-hue color circle, which, drawing from Ewald Hering’s14 system, is organized starting from four primary colors: yellow, red, blue, and seagreen. Among these colors, he then places four more principal colors (orange, purple, turquoise, leafgreen) so that the complementary colors—according to Ostwald’s definition these are the most different hues that once combined in an optical mix produce a neutral gray—lie directly opposite each other on the color circle. He then assembles a series of perceptually equally spaced colors that, starting from the full color, progressively lighten toward white and darken toward black. These series are represented in an equilateral triangle on whose vertexes are placed the white, the black, and the full color. Inside the triangle, we also find all the possible series, which are formed by mixing the full color and the gray scale. Observing these triangles all together, for each of the hues forming the chromatic circle, the shape of a double cone appears, a color solid in which the entire world of colors is included.15 It is within this color organizational system that Ostwald thinks we can find all the possible harmonies, by studying all the possible arrangements allowed by its solid, in accordance with the geometric rules. The simpler the relation among colors is, the more effective the harmony will be.16
Figure 3.3 An exemplification of Wilhelm Ostwald’s monochromatic harmonies of equal white, black, and hue content. Image by Cristina Boeri.
Among the various attempts to achieve a logical color order system, the effort of the American painter Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918), at the beginning of the twentieth century, is generally acknowledged as one of the most successful. In accordance with the three dimensions employed by Munsell to describe and identify each possible color—that is, hue, value (lightness), and chroma (saturation)—the samples of the system are placed in a solid, the so-called Munsell’s tree, based on the principle of “perceived equidistance,” so that the variations between each color and its adjacent one are perceived as identical.
In Munsell’s solid, the vertical lightness scale is divided into nine steps of gray with white at the top and black at the bottom; hues are organized in a circle made up of five basic hues: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple—selected by his skilled eye on the basis of their apparent equidistance and with a gray of the same lightness—and of five intermediate hues, formed by their mixtures. The chroma parameter is assigned to the principal hues and to their mixtures, following an open horizontal scale that depends on the intensity that each hue can reach.17
While the Munsell color system was such a success, which today is still one of the most widespread methods of color identification and notation, Munsell’s theories and principles on harmony are less known. Munsell dealt with the issue of color harmonies starting from a simple and easily verifiable principle: in order to be harmonic all color combinations must be well balanced. This means that the addition of the employed colors has to produce a middle-value gray (N5 according to Munsell’s scale). He detected several harmonic and well-balanced color sequences, which he called “color paths,” moving along or through his color solid. The paths, identified by Munsell, could move horizontally from one side of the solid to the other, thus detecting color sequences of the same lightness, or on an inclined level, thus detecting colors compensating in lightness; these paths could move from one color to its complementary one, passing through the achromatic lightness axis or not passing through the neutral scale. Among the series of harmonic colors detected by Munsell, besides those based on colors of opposite hue, there are those within the same hue and those among adjacent hues, in which harmony, as Chevreul had already enounced, is produced by proximity and not by contrast. At the root of his “color paths,” there is the concept that every color combination can be harmonic and well-balanced if traced back to a color sequence intended as a gradation scale between one color and the other, in which some steps are cut off. The color harmony is therefore achieved through order that is implicit in the relations among colors.18
The attraction exercised by this systematic kind of approach is widely counterbalanced by the numerous criticisms regarding the excessive simplification of the problem. Arnheim, in underlining how Ostwald, as much as Munsell, recognized the influence played by the dimension in altering the relations among colors, raises doubt that the simple intervention of this single additional factor would make the above-mentioned harmony rules so complicated, they would become almost useless (and size is only one of the many factors that cannot be as easily controlled through quantitative measurement).19 Sivik and Hård presenting their studies on a color combination model based on the NCS system for color description outline still more clearly the heart of the matter: “geometrical relations in a graphic model have, of course, no value per se. Of value, on the other hand, are those color-phenomena that the model and its geometry may possibly stand for—and this must also be critically tested.”20 Finally, if it is true, as Narciso Silvestrini underlines, that we cannot “force” the color into strict geometrical models, then we have to consider the color order models as an attempt to dominate more complex concepts through visual representation. In this sense they can inevitably offer and represent only a partial vision of reality and nonetheless provide a useful support to its comprehension.
In the discussion of color harmony in the past there has been too much of a tendency to lay rules which must be followed. There are no rules; there are only possibilities.21
—Arthur Pope
Among the different authors who have investigated and systematized the relations among colors, the work of Johannes Itten (1888–1967) is well known. His work is founded on the concept of harmony as balance—symmetry of forces—and on the opposition or antagonism of the colors fading away in the gray, which he synthesized in the seven chromatic contrasts of his color theory (see Plate 9).22
In comparison to the idea that only those color combinations that share the same character and therefore can be juxtaposed without strong contrasts can be described as harmonic, Itten defines as harmonic those colors whose combination produces a neutral gray. He traces the “fundamental principle of harmony” back to the rule of complementary colors, referring to the simultaneous and successive contrasts investigated by Chevreul. Itten, who was both painter and teacher at the Bauhaus School in Weimar, strongly objected to Ostwald’s theories, as well as his chromatic circle that placed green on the same level as red, yellow, and blue, among the primary colors, thus breaking the rules of pigment mixture.
Starting from his chromatic twelve-hue color circle where the complementary colors are placed on the opposite sides, Itten identifies the harmonic combinations in all the pairs of complementary colors and in those colors that can be combined by an equilateral or isosceles triangle, by a square, or by a rectangle; these schemes, once applied to Runge’s sphere, allowed him to obtain endless combinations. At the root of Itten’s theory is an explicit intent to move the concept of color harmony from the emotional level, subjectively influenced, to a level of strict objectivity.23 Therefore, we see that if the gray combines with the balanced state demanded by our optical system—as it is demonstrated by the simultaneous and successive contrast phenomena in which the eye produces the complementary color to automatically restore the balance—Itten establishes that harmony happens every time the need of the eye’s physiological balance is satisfied.
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) sums up the chromatic action in four major inner contrasts or pairs of opposites. For Itten “we speak of contrast when distinct differences can be perceived between two compared effects”24—highlighting how our senses value always and only through comparisons. Kandinsky’s contrasts are the contradictions of his time “antitheses and contradictions, these make up harmony.”25 Kandinsky introduces the concept that over time the considerations about color combinations regarded as harmonic and disharmonic can change and yesterday’s dissonances might become today’s consonances.
As fundamental as are the “spatial” specificities, for instance, both the dimension, in which a chromatic composition is concretized, and also the cultural and temporal “context,” changing our evaluations on color combination, play a role in questioning the necessity of reasoning by rules that lead to the good color combinations. Indeed if we accept, as Michel Pastoureau underlines, that color is in the first place defined as a social phenomena and that it is the society that assigns to color its meanings and values,26 then also the color relationships and hence the related theories on harmonies feel the effect of the social and cultural conventions peculiar to each time.
THE DESIGN CONTEXT
The interest in studying color relationships relates to the practical implications involved. Color, in fact, is a fundamental design component not just in the fine arts, but also in several application sectors such as textiles, fashion, packaging, and interior design. As Gaetano Kanizsa observes, we never perceive pure chromatic qualities, since we always feel colors in relation to a particular perceptive structure; these are colors belonging to something, they appear to us as integrated with other phenomenal aspects of our visual world.27 In other words, when a color combination is applied, it is necessarily subjected to the sense that the colors concur in expressing and it is only in coherence with the context that we can value its effectiveness. And it is just starting from these semantic implications, sensorial and emotional, implied in color relationships, that the more recent studies on color combinations move from. The work of Shigenobu Kobayashi, who organizes color combinations into categories motivated by the different moods to which they refer, can be mentioned as an example.28 If, on one hand, these studies represent the umpteenth attempt of the impossibility to ascribe the relations among colors to a univocal theory, on the other hand, they attest the vitality that still characterizes this research field on color. As cultural contexts change, so do notions of order and harmony. Contemporary color literature continues to explore color relationships and the coexistence of a scientific approach along with intuitive ability that is still an integral part of both color theory and practice.
NOTES
1. Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, paperback ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971), 5.
2. John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1857), 233–34.
3. Albers, Interaction of Color, 1.
4. Johannes Itten, The Art of Color (New York: Reinhold, 1961); original ed., Kunst der Farbe (Ravensburg: Otto Maier Verlag).
5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe’s Theory of Colors (London: Murray, 1840); original ed., Zur Farbenlehre (Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1810).
6. Michel Eugène Chevreul, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Application to the Arts (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1854); original ed., De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs et de l’assortiment des objets colorés (Paris: Pitois-Levrault, 1839).
7. Philip Ball, Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
8. Michel Eugène Chevreul, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Application to the Arts, new ed. with an introduction and commentary by Faber Birren (West Chester, PA: Schiffer, 1987), 75.
9. Chevreul uses the word tones to designate the modifications of color, taken at its maximum intensity, due to the addition of white and black. With the word scale, he designates a collection of tones of the same color thus modified. Finally the word hues denotes the modifications that color assumes by the addition of a small quantity of another color. Principles of Harmony, 1987, 70.
10. Principles of Harmony, 1987, 81.
11. Philipp Otto Runge, Die Farben-Kugel, oder Konstruktion des Verhältnisses aller Mischungen der Farben zu einander, und ihrer vollständigen Affinität, mit angehängtem Versuch einer Ableitung der Harmonie in den Zusammenstellungen der Farben (Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes, 1810).
12. Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954).
13. Wilhelm Ostwald, The Color Primer, ed. Faber Birren (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969); original ed., Die Farbenfibel (Leipzig: Unesma, 1916).
14. Ewald Hering (1834–1918), physiologist, highlighting the difference among physical, chemical, and psychological colors, concludes that the fundamental colors are four, that is, yellow, red, blue, and green, since, along with white and black, these colors take part in the elementary visual experiences, not ascribable to any kind of mixture.
15. Ostwald, The Color Primer, 58.
16. Ostwald, The Color Primer, 65.
17. Albert Henry Munsell, A Color Notation (Boston: Ellis, 1905).
18. Albert Henry Munsell, A Grammar of Color (Mittineague: Strathmore Paper Co., 1921); new ed. edited by Faber Birren (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969).
19. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception.
20. Sivik, Lars, and Hård, Anders, On Studying Color Combinations: Some Reflexions and Preliminary Experiments (Färgrapport 22, Stockholm: Scandinavian Color Institute, 1989).
21. Arthur Pope, “Notes on the Problem of Color Harmony and the Geometry of Color Space. With Reference to Articles by Moon and Spencer,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, 34/12 (December 1944): 759–65. See also P. Moon and D. E. Spencer, “Geometric Formulation of Classical Color Harmony,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, 34/1 (1944): 46–59.
22. Itten, The Art of Color.
23. Johannes Itten, The Elements of Color: A Treatise on the Color System of Johannes Itten Based on His Book The Art of Color, ed. Faber Birren (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970), 19.
24. Itten, The Elements of Color, 32.
25. Wassily Kandinsky, The Art of Spiritual Harmony (London: Constable, 1914), 86; original ed., Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Munich: R. Piper, 1912).
26. Michel Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); original ed., Bleu. Histoire d’une couleur (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000).
27. Gaetano Kanizsa, Organization in Vision: Essays on Gestalt Perception (New York: Praeger, 1979); original ed., Grammatica del vedere (Bologna: il Mulino, 1980), 211.
28. Shigenobu Kobayashi, A Book of Colors (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1987); original ed., Haishoku Imeiji Bukku (Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd, 1984).
REFERENCES
Albers, J. (1963), Interaction of Color, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Chevreul, M. E. (1987), The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and Their Application to the Arts, West Chester, PA: Schiffer; original ed. (1839), De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs et de l’assortiment des objets colorés, Paris: Pitois-Levrault.
Itten, J. (1961), The Art of Color, New York: Reinhold; original ed., Kunst der Farbe, Ravensburg: Otto Maier Verlag.
Kandinsky, W. (1914), The Art of Spiritual Harmony, London: Constable; original ed. (1912), Über das Geistige in der Kunst, Munich: R. Piper.
Kobayashi, S. (1987), A Book of Colors, Tokyo: Kodansha International; original ed. (1984), Haishoku Imeiji Bukku, Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd.
Moon, P., and Spencer, D. E. (1944), “Geometric Formulation of Classical Color Harmony,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, 34/1: 46–59.
Munsell, A. H. (1921), A Grammar of Color, Mittineague: Strathmore Paper Co.; new ed. edited by Faber Birren (1969), New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Ostwald, W. (1969), The Color Primer, ed. Faber Birren, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold; original ed. (1916), Die Farbenfibel, Leipzig: Unesma.
Pope, A. (1944), “Notes on the Problem of Color Harmony and the Geometry of Color Space. With Reference to Articles by Moon and Spencer,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, 34/12: 759–65.
Sivik, L., and Hård, A. (1989), On Studying Color Combinations: Some Reflexions and Preliminary Experiments, Färgrapport 22, Stockholm: Scandinavian Color Institute.
