One of my favorite topics to teach was basic color theory. The first lesson encouraged students to forget all those romantic names for colors, like pea green, sky blue, and apple red. I also stressed forgetting the name purple. Colors are identifiable only in relation to other colors. If you have one red and then another red that differs from it, it is possible to adjust either one to match the other quite closely. Or if you see a red object, you can match its color with a pigment quite closely but it requires altering that red pigment, usually. Pigments are altered by other pigments and by tinting and shading and by their opposite colors. Any admixture of one pigment to another reduces its brightness or saturation, the degree of color it is. So if you add white to a red you will raise the value of the color by tinting but you'll also reduce its brightness. If you add to that a bit of green, the opposite of red, then you will gray the color as well. My admonition of purple as a color name is due to its ambiguity, designating any violet between red and blue, a whole third of the color wheel. Better to say red-violet, violet, or blue violet. That way one knows precisely where a color is in relation to other colors. Also colors are often modified by value, being lighter or darker than their pure hue.
Color theory is as simple as basic algebra. It can be very objective but never perfectly so, I could have beginning students mix and match color pigments like experts in an hour. All things we see in color can be reduced to one of the three primary colors, red, yellow, blue. Look at something near you that seems like a muddle color. As if it is primarily red, yellow, or blue. It will be one of those. Then it's simply a matter of adjusting it, There are only three direct ways to adjust a pigment color. Add white, add black, add its opposite color. Maybe all three are needed. A fourth indirect way is by simultaneous contrast or by surrounding a color with its opposite. If you have, say, a very pale yellow carpet, a 'tan carpet' it is yellow. Add white, then to reduce the yellowness, add some violet (which also darkens it). A few trials and you'll have it exactly as you see the carpet at a given time and light. One can even make up simple formulas for matching or mixing color (as the wall paint people do). The point is to recognize that color can be stipulated in quite objective terms with given pigments and percentages of mixtures of opposites and black and white. If youcan see it you can match it, no romantic terms needed. Now that I think about it, color theory is as close as you can get to an aesthetic idealism in practice. There is the concept of a perfect red paint, meaning all the redness that a pigment can be, but no one can mix it perfectly. Thus in practice color theory is an ideal guide but the guide requires that all colors be perfectly matched to their opposites to fulfill the requirement, say, that in a pure green there is no red; in a pure yellow there is no violet; in a pure blue there is no orange. I love color theory; I detest market-place color names. Any color pigment could be accurately named by listing the percentages of other colors in it. wc . ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, September 1, 2012 5:58:23 PM Subject: Re: Aesthetic Ideal On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 7:57 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > In a message dated 8/31/12 6:49:54 PM, [email protected] writes: > > > "I take it Cheerskep agrees with my statement where I mention that any word > will > elicit some meaning. When a person responds to a word by saying it's > meaningless, he is right to the extent that all words are in themselves > meaningless. In another sense he is saying that he doesn't understand the > context with word addresses. But in his brain many meanings for the word > have > already reached consciousness" > > Agreed, in large part. William, our wording is not "wrong"; but it tends to > obscure a distinction I was trying to stress. Instead of saying, "Cheerskep > agrees that any word will elicit some meaning", I'd say, "Cheerskep agrees > that any word will elicit some notion." > > I know I'm not going to eradicate the word 'meaning' from all discussion. > It is too ingrained in our way of talking. So I figure I'd better > accommodate > my phrasing. > > I know that many people will insist on saying the likes of, "Whatever comes > to my mind when I hear a word is the word's 'meaning for me'." So I use the > phrase 'meaning for me' - with the understanding that it's my phrase for > the notion occasioned by hearing/reading an utterance or scription. > > That "notion" is not to be confused with any mind-independent, "real", > "correct" THE MEANING OF the "word". > > I disapprove of seeming to use the same word for two different things, but > experience tells me that, when advancing a radically new theory, it's best > to do it while using as many familiar words as possible. Otherwise you risk > coming across as plain old wacky. I'm not sure of this, William, but I > think > it's possible you and I are the only members of this forum who believe > words > do not have an intrinsic, mind-independent "meaning". > > When it comes to words and meanings: - Some men dont have the vocabulary to describe emotions clearly. Heres an analogy. My wife can easily distinguish between sea mist, pea and grass green paint. To me they are all just light green. Olive and forest green are dark green to me. I recognize the various shades, but I dont have different names for them. So maybe the girlfriend is saying sea mist and the boyfriend is saying light green. They both might mean the same thing, or not, but the boyfriend cant explain it any better. He literally doesnt have the vocabulary to describe it any better. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/carolyn-hax-reader-advice-on-be ing-in-love/2012/08/30/7b85dab2-e71f-11e1-a3d2-2a05679928ef_story.html
