There are only six hues in subtractive pigments, those that block parts of the light ray: red, yellow, blue; orange, violet, green. All other colors (we can discern a few hundred) are variations of those plus tints or shades obtained with white or black (properly values, not colors). No one knows what is the ideal red, yellow, blue, etc. But whatever red yellow and blue are chosen will predetermine the ideal green, orange, violet derived from them.
The newspaper picture I saw of the set of the Red play showed a vertical floating shape ptg. But Rothko didn't make any vertical floating shapes. I suspect that was done to avoid trivializing his work for the play. I should have said no one recognizes red intuitively, I mean no one recognizes that what he or she sees is red until being told. But this doesn't mean the color could be anything. Only particular rods and cones in the eye are stimulated by "redness". wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, April 4, 2010 1:35:59 PM Subject: Re: "What is happening during an 'a.e.'?" In a message dated 4/4/10 2:17:35 PM, [email protected] writes: > At some point one (probably as a very young child) has to be told that a > certain optical cognitive activity is the sensation of redness. No one > knows redness intuitively. > I can't be sure what you have in mind with 'know', but if you mean no one knows what to call a certain color until they're taught -- "This is red!" -- I agree. The other night we saw RED, the play about Rothko. At one point Rothko (played energetically by Alfred Molina) rattles off the names of a dozen or so different hues, and I realized I couldn't begin to "picture" them, or even, if I were shown them, put the "right" names on each.
