Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Monday 5 July 2010

Colour Separation


.

File:Colibri-thalassinus-001-edit.jpg

Yellow. This is the colour nearest the light. It appears on the slightest migration of light, whether by semi-transparent mediums or faint reflection from white surfaces. In prismatic experiments, it extends itself alone and widely in the light space, and while the two poles remain separated from each other, before it mixes with blue to become green it is to be seen in its utmost purity and beauty. In its highest purity, it always carries with it the nature of brightness, and has a serene, gay, softly exciting character.




Between all the colours in the world




Blue
. As yellow is always accompanied with light, so it may be said that blue brings a principle of darkness with it. This colour has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect upon the eye. As a hue it is powerful, but it is on the negative side, and in the highest purity is, as it were, a stimulating negation. Its appearance, then, is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose.


File:Indian pigments.jpg





and all the colours of the world





File:Sagami Temple 2600px.jpg

Red. We are here to forget everything that borders on yellow or blue. We are here to imagine an absolutely pure red, like fine carmine suffered to dry on white porcelain. Whoever is acquainted with the prismatic origin of red will not think it paradoxical if we assert that this colour partly actu, partly potentia, includes all the other colours.




there is all the difference in the world.




Green. If yellow and blue, which we consider as the most fundamental and simple colours, are united as they first appear, in the first state of their action, the colour which we call green is the result. The eye experiences a distinctly grateful impression from this colour. If the two elementary colours are mixed in perfect equality so that neither predominates, the eye and the mind repose on the result of this junction as upon a simple colour. The beholder has neither the wish nor the power to imagine a state beyond it. Hence for rooms to live in constantly, the green colour is most generally selected.

File:Red-eyed Tree Frog - Litoria chloris  edit1.jpg



Agate text: from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Geschichte der Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours), 1810, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake, 1840

The human body cannot create colour -- Walter Benjamin, 1926

Green Violet-ear (Colibri thalassinus), Finca Lerida, Boquete, Panama: photo by Mdf, edited by Laitche, 2008
Pigments for sale, market stall, Goa, India: photo by Dan Brady, 2005
Pillars of Sagami Temple, Hyogo, Japan: photo by 663highland, 2007
Red-eyed Tree Frog (Litoria chloris), found in eastern Australia: photo by Liquid Ghoul, edited by Muhammad, 2008

12 comments:

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Beautiful to contemplate and consider.

For some reason, the first thing that popped into my mind reading the Benjamin quote was the human aura.

human being said...

more beautiful when they come together...

what a great post, Tom...

TC said...

Still more beautiful to contemplate and consider when in the grey dawn the colours, absent and separated all night, come back together, popping into and out of the big mind aura all across the world.

(As it were.)

Thanks, friends.

Radish King said...

Oh that first photo made me gasp. And the rest did too. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. I need to get my easel out...

TC said...

A gasp, a sigh -- it's the world.

About that need I understand it acutely. The colours have been out of my hands of late. Not touching colours, it's like holding your breath, you can do it for a while, but then...

John B-R said...

Just as "Issa" had Benjamin/aura pop into mind, I had Hendrix,, "bold as Love":

Anger he smiles, towering in shiny metallic purple armor
Queen jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground
Blue are the life giving waters taking for granted
They quietly understand.
Once happy Turquoise armies lay opposite ready
But wonder why the fight is on

But they're all bold as love
they're all bold as love
they're all bold as love
Just ask the Axis

My Red is so confident
He flashes trophies of war and ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring
But very unsteady for the first go round
My Yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact I'm trying to say that it's frightened like me
And all this emotions of mine
Keep holding me from giving my life to a rainbow like you

But I'm, yeah, I'm bold as love
Well, I'm bold, bold as love
I'm bold as love
Just ask the Axis, he knows everything

TC said...

John,

This throws me into a Purple Haze.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Such intensities of colors here, whereas here there's only grey now -- which doesn't keep the quails from calling their greeting to the day ---

7.6

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
ridge, silver of drop falling from leaf
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

the sky in the painting made,
“more sky on the right”

essence of disclosure, as to
what might be, and what

grey-white of fog reflected in channel,
line of 5 cormorants flapping above it

TC said...

Thank gods for the quails and the cormorants, is what I say.

“more sky on the right”

(A bit more on the left and in the middle would also help this morning.)

TC said...

The idiot Blogger gremlin who's gleefully disappearing thousands of comments will probably find out I've restored some of these, and disappear them again.Oh well. Here are some of the missing comments from this post.

____

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Beautiful to contemplate and consider.

For some reason, the first thing that popped into my mind reading the Benjamin quote was the human aura.
5 July 2010 04:07

human being said...

more beautiful when they come together...

what a great post, Tom...
5 July 2010 05:21

TC said...

Still more beautiful to contemplate and consider when in the grey dawn the colours, absent and separated all night, come back together, popping into and out of the big mind aura all across the world.

(As it were.)

Thanks, friends.
5 July 2010 07:34

Radish King said...

Oh that first photo made me gasp. And the rest did too. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. I need to get my easel out...
5 July 2010 08:43

TC said...

A gasp, a sigh -- it's the world.

About that need I understand it acutely. The colours have been out of my hands of late. Not touching colours, it's like holding your breath, you can do it for a while, but then...
5 July 2010 09:39

John B-R said...

Just as "Issa" had Benjamin/aura pop into mind, I had Hendrix,, "bold as Love":

Anger he smiles, towering in shiny metallic purple armor
Queen jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground
Blue are the life giving waters taking for granted
They quietly understand.
Once happy Turquoise armies lay opposite ready
But wonder why the fight is on

But they're all bold as love
they're all bold as love
they're all bold as love
Just ask the Axis

My Red is so confident
He flashes trophies of war and ribbons of euphoria
Orange is young, full of daring
But very unsteady for the first go round
My Yellow in this case is not so mellow
In fact I'm trying to say that it's frightened like me
And all this emotions of mine
Keep holding me from giving my life to a rainbow like you

But I'm, yeah, I'm bold as love
Well, I'm bold, bold as love
I'm bold as love
Just ask the Axis, he knows everything
5 July 2010 11:45

TC said...

John,

This throws me into a Purple Haze.
5 July 2010 19:16

Julia said...

Oh, I've been missing all your last posts! I'm going now to another city for some days, but will enjoy all of them in my holidays.
I love when you do that thing with colours! You always have the most beautiful pictures!

TC said...

Gracias, Julia.

I hope it's not a voyage over water, except with flies.