Color juxtaposition — harmony — quantity
Harmony
Color systems usually lead to the conclusion that certain constellations within a system provide color harmony. They indicate that this is mainly the aim and the end of color combination, of color juxtaposition.
As harmony and harmonizing is also a concern of music, so a parallelism of effect between tone combinations and color combinations seems unavoidable and appropriate. Although a comparison of composed colors with composed tones is very challenging, it should be mentioned that, while it can be helpful, it is often misleading.
This is because different basic conditions of these media result in different behavior.
Tones appear placed and directed predominantly in time from before to now to later.
Their juxtaposition in a musical composition is perceived within a prescribed sequence only. Vertically, so to say, 1 tone, or several simultaneously, sound for a varying but restricted length of time. Horizontally, the tones follow each other, perhaps not in a straight line, but of necessity in a prescribed order and only in 1 direction — forward. Tones heard earlier fade, and those farther back disappear, vanish. We do not hear them backward.
Colors appear connected predominantly in space. Therefore, as constellations they ean be seen in any direction and at any speed. And as they remain, we can return to them repeatedly and in many ways.
This remaining and not remaining, or vanishing and not vanishing, shows only 1 essential difference between the fields of tone and color.
The accuracy of perception in one field is matched by the durability of retention in the other, demonstrating a curious reversal in visual and auditory memory.
Tone juxtapositions can be defined by their acoustical relationship and thus measured precisely by wave length.
Consequently, a graphic registration of tones in musical composition has been developed.
Color, also, can be measured, at least to some extent, and particularly so when it is presented as direct color — as the physicist registers it, by optical wave length.
Reflected color, however, coming from paint and pigment — our main medium — is much more difficult to define.
When analyzed with an electrical spectrograph reflected color shows that it contains all visible wave lengths. Therefore, any reflected color — not just white — consists of other colors.
This many-sided relationship between colors is clearly visible in the plates of a 4-color reproduction, when singly shown, because each of the 4 plates, although presenting only 1 color, shows a complete picture.
Color, when practically applied, not only appears in uncountable shades and tints, but is additionally characterized by shape and size, by recurrence and placement, and so on, of which particularly shape and size are not directly applicable to tones.
All this may signify why any color composition naturally defies such diagrammatic registration as notation in music and choreography in dance.
With regard to constellation, tone intervals, such as third, fifth, and octave, differentiate exact vertical distance. We say “vertical” probably because tones are described as low and high.
Slide deflections (aberrations), such as in flat and sharp, remain equally precise.
Color terms which could be considered parallel to tone intervals are complementaries, split complementaries, triads, tetrads, and octads. Though these characterize distance and constellation within color systems, their deflections, such as incomplete triads and incomplete tetrads, indicate that their measure is only arbitrary.
Significantly, complementaries, though they are the basic color contrast or interval, are topographically quite vague.
In principle, a complementary is a color accompanied by its after-image.
However, the complement of a specific color, when placed in different systems, will look different.
Similarly, a triad or tetrad of one system will hardly fit into another system.
Usually, illustrations of harmonic color constellations which derive from authoritative systems look pleasant, beautiful, and thus convincing. But it should not be overlooked that they are usually presented in a most theoretical and least practicable manner, because normally all harmony members appear in the same quantity and the same shape, as well as in the same number (just once) and sometimes even in similar light intensity. Such outer equalization may unify them, but at the expense of the more important inner relatedness — namely, as color only.
When applied in practice, these harmony sects appear changed. In addition to quantity, form, and recurrence, wider aspects exert still more changing influences. These are:
- Changed and changing light — and, even worse, several simultaneous lights;
- reflection of lights and of colors;
- direction and sequence of reading;
- presentation in varying materials;
- constant or altering juxtaposition of related and unrelated objects.
With these and other visual displacements, it should not be a surprise that the sympathetic effect of the original “ideal” color combination often appears changed, lost, and reversed.
Observe the interior and exterior, the furniture and textile decoration following such color schemes, as well as commercialized color “suggestions” for innumerable do-it-yourselves.
Our conclusion: we may forget for a while those rules of thumb of complementaries, whether complete or “split,” and of triads and tetrads as well. They are worn out.
Second, no mechanical color system is flexible enough to precalculate the manifold changing factors, as named before, in a single prescribed recipe.
Good painting, good coloring, is comparable to good cooking. Even a good cooking recipe demands tasting and repeated tasting while it is being followed. And the best tasting still depends on a cook with taste.
By giving up preference for harmony, we accept dissonance to be as desirable as consonance.
In searching for new color organization — color design — we have come to think that quantity, intensity, or weight, as principles of study, can lead similarly to illusions, to new relationships, to different measurements, to other systems, as do transparence, space, and intersection.
Besides a balance through color harmony, which is comparable to synmmetry, there is equilibrium possible between color tensions, related to a more dynamic asymmetry.
Again: knowledge and its application is not our aim: instead, it is flexible imagination, discovery, invention — taste.
With this study of color effects, that is, of color deception, a special interest in quantity — amount as well as recurrence — has developed.
Quantity
Although quantity and quality often are considered disparate, in art and music they appear closely related. We may even hear, “Quantity is a quality,” because here quantity not only designates amounts, as of weight or number, but also is a means of underlining, of pronouncement, and a means of equilibrium, of balance.
One who particularly recognized the latter was Schopenhauer. When he tried to improve Goethe’s 6-part color circle — to Goethe's dismay — he changed the previous presentation of 6 equal areas to decidedly different quantities.
Thus yellow, the lightest color, appears in the smaller amount, and its opposite, violet, as the darkest, in the largest amount, He first allotted 3 equal thirds of a color ring to the 3 pairs of opposites — yellow & violet — blue & orange — red & green. Second, he subdivided those thirds, for the same order of pairs, in ¼ + ¾ − ⅓ + ⅔ − ½ + ½. These figures in fractions of 12ths (relatively 36ths) are proportionate to 3 : 9 − 4 : 8 − 6 : 6 equal parts. When seen in a color circle, from yellow around to green, they present the following quantities: 3 : 4 : 6 : 9 : 8 : 6.
The 2 basic quantity questions, how much and how often, distinguish 2 kinds of quantity: 1 of size — extension in area — and 1 of recurrence — extension in number. Both measurements concern predominance and emphasis. They establish weight in space — and weight in time.
Such considerations are both the source and result of our quantity studies in which 4 colors usually appear in 4 different juxtapositions, so different that all 4 studies appear as unrelated as possible.
And thus they present changes in climate or temperature, in tempo or rhythm — that is, changes of atmosphere or mood, so that the factual contents (the same 4 colors) are hidden or, better, hardly recognizable.
To use a theatrical parallel: A set of 4 colors is to be considered — singly as “actors,” together as “cast.” They are to be presented in 4 different arrangements — as “performances.”
Although they remain unchanged in hue and light, in “character,” and appear in an unchanging outer frame, the “stage,” they are to produce 4 different “scenes” or “plays,” cach to be so different that one and the same set of colors will be seen as 4 different sets, presented by 4 different casts.
And all this can be achieved mainly through changes in quantity which result in shifts of dominance, of recurrence, and consequently of placement.
The essential question: which group of colors is ready to lose its identity as a cast?
A parallel question: which distribution of appearance (quantities of space, tine, and weight) protects, disguises recognition of the same color cast?
Such quantity studies have taught us to believe that, independent of harmony rules, any color “goes” or “works” with any other color, presupposing that their quantities are appropriate. We feel fortunate that so far there are no comprehensive rules for such aims.
Here we may point to a discovery made by a few contemporary painters, that the increase in amount of a color — not merely in size of canvas — visually reduces distance. As a consequence, it often produces nearness — meaning intimacy — and respect.