Color Theory

“Try, if you can, not to talk as if colors emanated from a single physical phenomenon. Keep in mind the effects of all the various surfaces, volumes, light-sources, films, expanses, degrees of solidity, solubility, temperature, elasticity, on color. Think of an object’s capacity to emit, reflect, absorb, transmit, or scatter light; think of “the operation of light on a feather.” Ask yourself, what is the color of a puddle? Is your blue sofa still blue when you stumble past it on your way to the kitchen for water in the middle of the night; is it still blue if you don’t get up, and no one enters the room to see it? Fifteen days after we are born, we begin to discriminate between colors. For the rest of our lives, barring blunted or blinded sight, we find ourselves face-to-face with all these phenomena at once, and we call the whole shimmering mess “color.” You might even say that it is the business of the eye to make colored forms out of what is essentially shimmering. This is how we “get around” in the world. Some might also call it the source of our suffering.” [Sec. 52]

Maggie Nelson, Bluets

“Apparently there is green paint on the back of my hair. An acquaintance remarked on it, calling it “chartreuse”—to my eye a horrid color and not at all the glowing green, so multiple in its inflections, with which I have thought myself painting 17th Summer. Once again I am brought face-to-face with the fact that I cannot gauge, except within a rough range, what other people see. For him, 17th Summer would appear to be chartreuse, purple, and blue—of heaven knows what specificity. It takes a certain stubbornness to keep on making objects within the strict discipline of my senses.”

Anne Truitt
17th Summer, 1974