On Color
Page 21
Democritus, 26
Derain, André, 155
Descubes-Desgueraines, Amédée, 151
Dominican Republic, 134
Donne, John, Death’s Duel, 115
Donovan, “Mellow Yellow,” 101
“the dress” (Internet meme), 32–33, 32
dualism, 187–88
Duret, Théodore, 141
Dust Bowl, 201–2, 212
dyes, 121–34
Dylan, Bob, “Tangled Up in Blue,” 102
Earth, as photographed by Apollo 17 crew, 85, 86
Edward VIII, King of England, 160
Eggleston, William, 197
electromagnetic energy, 2, 14, 85, 122, 166, 179
Eliot, George, 102
Eliot, T. S., The Wasteland, 57
Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man, 188, 190
emotions, colors associated with, 101–7, 209–10
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 64
end of painting, 112–13
English, Darby, 222n24
environmentalism, 84–85
Euripides, 190
Evans, Walker, 197, 202, 205
evolution, 39
Exmouth, Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount, 135
Farrokhazad, Forough, 80
fascism, 94
Feeser, Amanda, 228n25
Flavin, Dan, 153
Flesh crayon, 70, 70
Florida, indigo production in, 127–33
Fludd, Robert, Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica physica atque technica historia, 172, 173
Ford, Henry, 232n5
“Ford” Little Black Dress design, 160, 161, 162
Ford Model T, 160, 162, 232n5
Forster, E. M., A Passage to India, 74
France, political associations of color in, 90–91, 93
Francis, Sam, 155
Frank, Robert, 201
Frankenthaler, Helen, 155
Fried, Michael, 231n22
Frost, Robert, 51
Galileo Galilei, 29
Garrick, David, 103
Gass, William, 58, 220n26, 224n2
Georgia, 127–28
Gernsheim, Helmut, 198
Gibson, William, Zero History, 112
Giotto: Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, 109, 110, 112
Gladstone, William, 4–5, 7–8
Glorious Revolution (1688), 95
God: blue associated with, 108–9
creation by, 168
and rainbows, 11, 123
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 109, 163, 189
Golden Dawn (Greece), 94
González de Mendoza, Juan, 63
Gore, Al, 89
Goya, Francisco, 169
Grant, Ulysses S. and Julia Ward, 25–26
gray, 197–213
as color of photographs, 197–213
connotations of, 209
dull reality associated with, 211–13
essential nature of things associated with, 199–201
innocence associated with, 209–11
memory and history associated with, 201–2, 205, 207–9
universality associated with, 201–5
Great Depression, 202, 205, 212
Great Mosque of Muhammed Ali, Cairo, 87
Greeks: color perception of, 4–8
sculpture of, 188–89
green, 83–97
connotations of, 182
emotions associated with, 101
environmental connotations of, 84–85
Islam and, 87–88
political and policy connotations of, 83–89
political connotations of, 96–97
as primary color, 83
shades of, 44
Green Movement (Iran), 85–89
Green parties, 2, 83–85
Green Path of Hope, 82, 87–88
Greenpeace, 83
Gregory XIII, Pope, 63
Haiti, 134
Handy, W. C., “Memphis Blues,” 103
Harvey, John, 232n9, 232n10
Hawes, Elizabeth, 158
Hawthorne, Sophia, 186
Haydon, Benjamin, 10
Hearst, William Randolph, 66
The Heartbeat of France (film), 113
Henry VIII, King of England, 93
Hepburn, Audrey, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 158, 164
Hering, Ewald, 223n15
Herodotus, 124, 227n9
Himmler, Heinrich, 164
Hindu nationalism, 94, 95
Holbein, Hans, 163
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr., 197
Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey, 4–5
Hooker, William, 44
Hooker’s green, 44
House of Orange, 46
Hugo, Victor, 175
human nature and experience, color in, 8–9, 17, 37–39
humors, 70, 101–2
hunter green, 44
Hurston, Zora Neale, 74–75, 77
Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 141
illusions, 13–15, 13, 73
impressionism: and abstraction, 148–49, 152–53
and color, 146–50, 152–53, 155
criticisms of, 140–42, 149–50
emergence of, 140
light and atmosphere as subjects of, 144–48, 151–52
and perception, 142, 144–45, 149–51
revolutionary character of, 149–51
violet as characteristic of, 140–42, 144, 146–47, 149
India, 94
Indian Red crayon, 79
indigo, 121–34
cakes of, 125; as a color, 121–23
demand for clothing dyed with, 124, 133–34
as a dye, 121–24
etymology, 123
production of, 124–35, 131; synthetic, 134
International Klein Blue, 54, 111–12, 113, 114
Iran, 85–87
Ireland. See Northern Ireland; Republic of Ireland
Irish Republican Socialist Party, 91
Ishihara, Shinobo, 35
Ishihara test, 35, 36
Isidore of Seville, 12
Islam, 87–88
Iturrino, Francisco, 106
Jackson, Frank, 217n12
James, Henry, 162, 181
James II, King of England, 95
Jarman, Derek, 45, 194
Blue, 100, 114–17
Jobs, Steve, 12
Johns, Jasper, 155
False Start, 77–78
Johnston, Mark, 217n13
Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 23
Judd, Donald, 145
Kahlo, Frida, 166
kaleidoscopes, 153
Kandinsky, Wassily, 53, 109, 152, 155
Kant, Immanuel, 71
Kapoor, Anish, 53, 165, 166
Keats, John, 9–11
Keevak, Michael, 64, 220n6, 221n9, 221n10
Kelly, Ellsworth, 53, 155, 180
Color Panels for a Large Wall, 72
Kelly green, 44
Kim, Byron, Synecdoche, 62, 71–73
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 69
Klee, Paul, 53
Klein, Yves, 53–58, 111–14, 113, 116–17, 171
Expression de l’univers de la couleur mine orange, 54–57
Kodachrome, 200
Krasner, Lee, 53–54
Kristeva, Julia, 109
Kuntz, Doug: The Instability of Color: Haiti after the Earthquake, xiv–xv
Migrant Mother, 205, 206, 207, 213
Kuomintang (KMT), 92–93
Labour Party (United Kingdom), 90, 91–92
Lamb, Charles, 10
landscapes, impressionist, 144–45, 150
Lange, Dorothea, Migrant Mother, 202, 203, 204–5, 213
language: cultural basis of, 9
in Ligon’s paintings, 75
limitations of, regarding color, 5, 31
Ryman’s white paintings and, 191–92. See also color words/names
lapis lazuli, 109
La Tour, Georges de, 169
Lawrenc
e, D. H., 185, 187
Lax, Robert, 175
Léger, Fernand, 1
Leibniz, Gottfried, 71
length, property of, 24–26
Leonardo da Vinci, 14, 73
Leroy, Louis, 141
Levertov, Denise, 136
Lewis, Wyndham, 107
Libya, 87
light: autonomous treatment of, in art, 153
color as, 27
effect of, on colors, 4, 14, 24, 32, 148
impressionists’ rendering of, 145–48, 151–52
rainbows as result of water and, 10
role of, in perception, 27–28
Ligon, Glenn, 74, 77–78
Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background), 74–75, 76, 77
Linnaeus, Carl, 71, 185
Little Black Dress (LBD), 158, 159–60, 161, 162
Lora, León de, 150, 151
Lostelot, Alfred de, 142
Lowell, Percival, 68
Luther, Martin, 164
macropesia, 25
madder, 122, 134
magenta, 43
Maggio, Antonio, “I Got the Blues,” 103
Magnetic Fields, “Reno Dakota,” 98
Malevich, Kazimir, 112, 169–72, 174–75
Black Square, 169–71, 170, 174–75
Mandelstam, Osip, 152
Manet, Édouard, 141, 146–47, 149, 169
Mao Zedong, 91
Marcos, Ferdinand, 94
Mark, Mary Ellen, 197
maroon, 43
Martians, 84
Marx, Karl, 91
Massumi, Brian, 108
Matisse, Henri, 58, 155, 169
McGuire, Toby, 209
McKinley, William, 65
Meléndez, Luis Egidio, Still Life with Oranges and Walnuts, 50, 51
Melville, Herman, 18, 102–3
Moby-Dick, 176, 180–82, 184–88, 192–93
memory, 201–2
Merton, Thomas, 175
micropsia, 25
migrants, 202–7, 212–13
Miller, Joaquin, 166
Miller, Philip, 121
Milton, John, 12, 168, 187
mind, ix, 27–29, 33, 217n8
Miró, Joan, 108
Mitchell, Joan, 155
Model T Ford, 160, 162, 232n5
modernism and modern art: Eastern influences on, 68
Monet’s and Cézanne’s roles in, 153, 155
monochrome painting and, 55
origins of, 140, 142, 144
role of color in, 72. See also abstract art; impressionism
Modi, Narendra, 95
Mondrian, Piet, 149
Monet, Claude: and aims of impressionism, 145, 148–49, 151–52
Charing Cross Bridge, The Thames, 146
criticisms of, 141–42
emergence of impressionism and modern art from work of, 140–42, 153, 155
eye disease of, 147
Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression sunrise), 141
and materiality of paint, 151–52
representation of color by, 147–49
series paintings of, 147–48
violet in paintings by, 142, 144, 146, 148–49, 152
Water Lilies (detail), 138, 153
monochrome paintings: Klein and, 54–55, 58
Malevich and, 169–75
Rodchenko and, 111–12
Ryman and, 190–92
Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de, 128
Moore, George, 141
Morice, Charles, 106–7
Morisot, Berthe, 140, 169
Morris, William, 133
Morse, Samuel, 198
Mousavi, Seyyed Mir Hossein, 86–88
Muhammad (prophet), 87
murrey, 46
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 72, 153, 171, 197
Muybridge, Eadweard, 199
Nabokov, Vladimir, 11, 107
Napoleon. See Bonaparte, Napoleon
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 69
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 72
Native Americans, 79, 128
navy blue, 135
neoclassicism, 189–90
Netherlands, political associations of color in, 46–47, 94, 95
neurobiology, 28
Newman, Barnett: Abraham, 171
The Third, 56–58, 56
Newton, Isaac, 10–13, 15, 19, 27–28, 47, 121–23, 139, 179
“Of Colours,” 16
Niépce, Nicéphore, View from the Window at Le Gras, 196, 198–99
Noah, 11
normalcy, 35
Northcote, James, Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, 135
Northern Ireland, 94–97
ocular realism, 148, 231n22
Oka, Francis Naohiko, 60
O’Keeffe, Georgia, 155
Oldenburg, Henry, 12
ontology of color, 2, 17, 23–31
opponent colors, 96, 223n15
Optic White, 188
orange, 44–59
as color word, 44–48
connotations of, 58
monochrome paintings of, 54
as name of fruit, 47–48
political connotations of, 94–97
and role of color in art, 48–59
Orange Revolution (Ukraine), 94
oranges, 47–48
Our Ukraine, 94
“Over the Rainbow” (song), 212–13
Oxford University, 172
painting: autonomy of, 53, 112–13, 150–53, 171, 172, 174, 190–92
black in, 169–75
end of, 112–13
materiality of, 48, 53, 111, 151–52
metaphor of the window applied to, 151
photography compared to, 144
representational function of, 48, 112, 151–52, 172, 174
and transcendence, 57, 112–13. See also abstract art; impressionism; modernism and modern art; monochrome paintings
Pamuk, Orhan, 20
Panhellenic Socialist Movement, 89
Pantone, 122
Parks, Gordon, 202
Parti Québécois, 94
Pastoureau, Michel, 228n27, 229n33, 232n9
Pater, Walter, 189
Patou, Jean, 162
Patrick, Saint, 96
Peach crayon, 70, 70
Penn, Irving, 197
people of color, 69
perception. See sense perception
Perry, Katy, 33
Perry, Lilla Cabot, 148
Philip II, King of Spain, 63
Philippines, 94
phosphenes, 15
photographs and photography, 197–213; art/serious, 197, 200–201
black-and-white (gray), 197–213
and color, 197–201, 207–13
connotations of black-and-white vs. color, 201–13
as mechanical drawing, 199–200
painting compared to, 144
and verisimilitude, 197–99
photojournalism, 204
Picasso, Pablo, 104–7, 114, 116–17
The Blind Man’s Meal, 104
La Nana, 106
The Tragedy, 104, 105, 106
Yo, Picasso, 106
pigeons, 37–39
pigments, 109, 111, 121–22
pink (color), 101
pink (pigment), 122
Pires, Tomé, 63
Pissarro, Camille, 140, 142, 144, 150, 152
Poplars, Sunset at Eragny, 143
Plato, 26
Pleasantville (film), 209–11, 210
Pliny, 124
Plutarch, 140
politics, color associations in, 83–97
Polo, Marco, 64, 124
Porter, Fairfield, 18
Pound, Ezra, 68
primary colors, 83
prisms, 27, 139, 179
Progressive Party (South Africa), 94
property, color as, 23–26, 30
Protestantism,
orange associated with, 94–97
Proust, Marcel, 153
purple: dye for, 122
emotions associated with, 101
political connotations of, 94
problem of, for Newton’s color theory, 139
violet compared to, 139–40, 147
Quentin, John, 115
Qur’an, 88
race and racism: Asians as threat, 65–66
Moby-Dick and, 187–88
Pleasantville and, 210
skin color and, 65–66, 69–79
Rahnavard, Zahra, 88
rainbows, 9–13, 11, 121, 123, 139
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, Delle navigatione et viaggi, 63
Ray, John, 108
Rayleigh scattering, 168
Reagan, Ronald, 90
realism, 148, 150, 199
red, 23–39
British army uniforms in, 134
connotations of, 58
dyes for, 122
emotions associated with, 101–2
in Hungarian language, 6–7
political connotations of, 89–93
shades of, 43–44
Redon, Odilon, 156
red states (United States), 1–2, 89–90
Reinhardt, Ad, 171, 174–75
religion, 174–75
Rembrandt, 169
Renoir, Auguste, 140
Republican Party, 89–90
Republic of Ireland, 94–97, 97
Resettlement Administration, 202
retina, 15, 28, 34, 224n15
revelation theory, 31, 33–34, 217n13
rhetoric, 73
Ricci, Matteo, 64
Richter, Gerhard, 155
256 Farben (256 Colors), 72
Riley, Bridget, 155
Rimbaud, Arthur, 169
Robbins, Tom, 118
Rodchenko, Aleksandr, 112–13, 171
rods (vision), 28, 34, 224n15
Rogers, Ginger, 211
Romans, Bernard, 127–29, 131–32
rose (color), 23, 101–2
roses, 23–24, 29–30
Rossetti, Christina, 40
Rothko, Mark, 155
ROY G. BIP, 139
Rushdie, Salman, 211–13
Ruskin, John, 108
Russell, Bertrand, 31–33
Ryman, Robert, 190–92
Untitled #17, 191
Sabartés, Jaime, 104, 106
sadness, blue associated with, 102–7
Sagan, Carl, 168
Sainte-Domingue, 134
Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, 54, 55
Salvétat, Jean, 152
Santorini, 6
Sapir, Edward, 8
Saudi Arabia, 87
Schama, Simon, 46
Schilling, Erich, The Japanese “Brain Trust,” 66, 67
Schulz-Dornburg, Ursula, Abandoned Ottoman Railway Station (#28), 207–9, 208
Scott, Walter, 121
seduction, 17, 112, 150, 209
sense perception: impressionism and, 142, 144–45, 149–51
knowledge of color fully given in, 31–34, 217n12
mechanism of, 27–29
physical properties not the object of, 26–27. See also vision
sepia, 201