The Interaction of Color

“In visual perception, a color is almost never seen as it really is-- as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art.”

-- Josef Albers

• Due to physical processes in our retinas, our eyes quickly acclimate to whatever color we are looking at. We can observe this process in afterimages: when we stare at a colored shape and then at a blank field we see an image of that shape in its complementary color.

• Josef Albers, a student of Hans Hoffman, wrote a very influential book called The Interaction of Color, which shows studies of many color phenomena based on this physiological process. Simultaneous contrast is his term for the tendency of a color to appear different from an adjacent color and to make colors that are not adjacent to the color appear more similar to it. (Think about how when hazel-eyed Anna wears a green shirt her eyes look green.)

• ‘Local color’ is the named color of a thing, i.e. whether it is red or blue. Color in painting, however, is about local color and more, a whole universe of more. Color can seem to dissolve into pure light; it is all about the relationship of the colors.