Families of colours
[Translation:
Anne Clerget]
French text
[Recommended reading :
The colours in the French language, Pourpre.com]
In fact, it appeared recently that
the first colour chart could be more ancient. It could date from the XVIIth
century and its author is supposed to have been an astronomer,
Aron
Sigfried Forius. About this read,
The colour charts on Pourpre.com
and
Curiosities on the same website.
Nevertheless, if Kevin Mac Cloud,
like most of the authors, made a slight mistake in the dating, we must give
him credit for having described the unquestionable reality of a dimension
way more determining: "In
reality, the old shades were extremely variable, since the decorators made
their blends on the premises."
Here is the practical reality,
reality of the decorator as of the artist because what counts last is the
verdict of the palette !
But let us
go back to our initial topic. The accuracy or the inaccuracy of a colour as
well as its belonging to a precise "family" are relatively new concepts.
Whereas modern times taught us to use chromatic classifications which seem
to have always existed, let us question ourselves about our conceptual
heritage for a moment.
Different
peoples – including western peoples – distinguished only late
in their
languages the blue from the green, or assimilated violet to black or dark
green to grey, for example. Besides, it is maybe quite right to advance
that
value prevails often upon
colour in our perception, and that is still particularly true in the field
of composition. It may explain the slowness of mankind to identify colours
rightfully. However, a lot of ideological a priori (political, religious)
contributed greatly to some confusions, or delays.
Traces of
these misguided thoughts are handed over from generation to generation,
doubtlessly because their origin is historical, and also because they result
from former power conflicts badly elucidated or healed.
This is
not for nothing that for a very long time, a
priori rejections and (sometimes violently) libellous remarks pepper the
"hearsay" still circulating in the world of painting – just like, at certain
periods, in the world of religion or politics - about such or such pigment,
such or such colour family (for example, read
the introduction of the article about yellows).
This is
the occasion to say that always and from any point of view, colour needs
light, despite the advancements.
Distinction of colours
According to an information
(not yet confirmed), our visual system would have preferential aptitudes
to perceive hues of green, yellow and brown, but would be less
effective with blue, and especially with violet, red and orange which are
less present in our natural environment. Any
further
scientific
information on this
subject
is
welcome.
From time to time, such or such master declares that
"the blue gets away", thinking to report an almost universal value (the
distant in the nature, on our planet, is bluish; the sky itself is blue).
Many painters have shown many times that the impression of distance proceeds
in the first place from the contrast, thus from a relative fact, and not
from a unique, immutable chromatic reference; A colour truly reveals itself
only in the presence of other colours. Just like in physics, everything is
relative.
The artists who work on the image(photographs, film or
video directors, painters) do not ignore that a black juxtaposed to a green
will look reddish, that an ultramarine placed close to a violet will look
warmer than beside a cobalt blue. The eyes try to separate shades by
exaggerating them.
Therefore, it is not very surprising that humans
waited such a long time before making the first colour charts: it was so
easy to get lost. It was much easier to hang onto families to which such or
such virtue or symbolic signification was ascribed.
Colour and eye
Eyes are the second half of the concept we call
"colour". Claude Monet, operated for cataract, is supposed to have modified
his palette after the surgery. This is not an isolated case.
While, very often, we seek for symbols in the choice
of colours, we forget that because of a simple problem of cristalline lens –
which can be solved now with a ten minutes surgery -, a painter can perceive
red and yellow ten times better than blue, purple or green !
Cruel and humiliating reality : it reminds us that
only the perception of the differences of value (luminosity) is
approximately universal... when it is accessible.
The colour exists because of the pigment and the lighting
What painters and visual
artists manipulate, are real pigments and not some theoretical
spectrum
classified into theoretical categories.
Each jar of pigment, each
flake, each grain of pigment, is a unique kind. Each of the coloured
substances we manipulate has a story and has not been waiting for us to
exist under multiple forms. A trivial bottle of iron oxide contains atoms
that saw galaxies, worlds uprise. The instant look of a radiation (colour,
light) sent back by a substance is often only a part of the criterias
conditioning the painter’s choices.
Whatever the classification of
colours : the aspect, the origin, the fabrication, the history of the
pigment will govern the artist’s preference, which is not always reasonable.
There are genuine passionate
relationships between artists and pigments.
They owe more to feelings and
sensitivity than to classifications and tradition, all the more as lots of
pigments have been created during these last centuries.
Moreover and above all, the
colour of a pigment is not an immutable fact. It depends entirely of the
light, its intensity, its chromatism and of the viewer’s eye. The colour is
the encounter between a pigmentary substance, a lighting and a viewer.
However, in this section we present you a chromatic classification, hoping
simply that it will favour savoury encounters.
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