The simplest element of visual experience is of course found
in light and color, the sensation of the eye as such. Yet
there is no branch of aesthetic which is so incomplete. We
know that the sensation of light or color, if not too weak
or too violent, is in itself pleasing. The bright, the
glittering, shining object, so long as it is not painful,
is pleasantly stimulating. Gems, tinsel, lacquer, polish,
testify to this taste, from the most primitive to the most
civilized man. Color, too, if distinct, not over-bright,
nor too much extended in field, is in itself pleasing. The
single colors have been the object of comparatively little
study. Experiment seems to show that the colors containing
most brightness--white, red, and yellow--are preferred.
Baldwin, in his "dynamogenic" experiments,<1> based on "the
view that the infant's hand movements in reaching or
grasping are the best index of the kind and intensity of
its sensory experiences," finds that the colors range
themselves in order of attractiveness, blue, white, red,
green, brown. Further corrections lay more emphasis upon
the white. Yellow was not included in the experiments.
Cohn's results, which show a relative dislike of yellow,
are contradicted by other observers, notably Major and
Baker,<2> and (unpublished) experiments of my own, including
the aesthetic preferences of seven or eight different sets
of students at Radcliffe and Wellesley colleges. Experiments
of this kind are particularly difficult, inasmuch as the
material, usually colored paper, varies considerably from
the spectral color, and differences in saturation, hue, and
brightness make great differences in the results, while the
feeling-tone of association, individual or racial, very
often intrudes. But other things being equal, the bright,
the clear, the saturated color is relatively more pleasing,
and white, red, and yellow seem especially preferred.
<1> _Mental Development in the Child and the Race_, 1895,
pp. 39, 50, ff.
<2> E. S. Baker, _Univ. of Toronto Studies, Psychol. Series_,
No. 4; J. Cohn, _Philos. Studien_, vol. X; Major, _Amer. Jour.
of Psychol._, vol. vii.
Now, according to the Hering theory of color, white, red, and
yellow are the so-called "dissimilating" colors in the three
pairs, white-black, red-green, and yellow-blue, corresponding
to three hypothetical visual substances in the retina. These
substances, that is, in undergoing a kind of chemical
disintegration under the action of light-rays, are supposed to
give the sensations white, red, or yellow respectively, and in
renewing themselves again to give the sensations of black,
green, and blue. The dissimilating process seems to bring
about stronger reactions on the physiological side, as if it
were a more exciting process. Thus it is found<1> that as
measured by the increase in strength of the hand grip under
the stimulation of the respective colors, red has particularly
exciting qualities, but the other colors have an analogous
effect, lessening, however, with the descent from red to
violet. The pleasure in bright red, or yellow, for instance,
may thus well be the feeling-tone arising in the purely
physiological effect of the color. If red works like a trumpet
call, while blue calms and cools, and if red is preferred to
blue, it is because a sharp stimulation is so felt, and so
preferred.
<1> Ch. Fere, _Sensation et Mouvement_, 1887, p. 80.
The question of the demands of the eye in color combination is
still more complicated. It has been traditional to consider
the complementaries black-white, red-green, blue-yellow, and
the other pairs resulting from the mixtures of these as the
best combinations. The physiological explanation is of course
found in the relief and refreshment to the organs in successive
alternation of the processes of assimilation and dissimilation,
and objectively in the reinforcement, through this stronger
functioning of the retina, of the complementary colors
themselves. This tendency to mutual aid is shown in the
familiar experiment of fixating for some moments a colored
object, say red, and then transferring the gaze to a white or
gray expanse. The image of the object appears thereon in the
complementary green. Per contra, the most complete lack of
contrast makes the most unpleasing combination, because instead
of a refreshing alternation of processes in the retina, a
fatiguing repetition results. Red and orange (red-yellow), or
red and purple (red-blue), successively stimulate the red-
process with most evil effect.
This contrast theory should, however, not be interpreted too
narrowly. There are pairs of so-called complementaries which
make a very crude, harsh, even painful impression. The theory
is happily supplemented by showing<1> that the ideal combination
involves all three contrast factors, hue, saturation, and
brightness. Contrast of saturation or brightness within the
same hue is also pleasant. For any two qualities of the color
circle, in fact, there can be found degrees of saturation and
brightness in which they will form an agreeable combination,
and this pleasing effect will be based on some form of contrast.
But the absolute and relative extension and the space-form of
the components have also a great influence on the pleasurableness
of combinations.
<1> A. Kirschmann, "Die psychol.-aesthet. Bedeutung des Licht
und Farbencontrastes," _Philos. Studien_, vol. vii.
Further rules can hardly be given; but the results of various
observers<1> seem to show that the best combinations lie, as
already said, among the complementaries, or among those pairs
nearer together in the color circle than complementaries, which
are "warmer." The reason for this last is that, in Chevreul's
phraseology, combinations of cold colors change each other's
peculiar hue the most, and of warm colors the least; because
the complementaries of these cold colors are "warm," i.e.
bright, and each, appearing on the field of the neighboring
cold color, seems to fade it out; while the complementaries
of the juxtaposed warm colors are not bright, and do not have
sufficient strength to affect their neighbors at all. With a
combination of blue and green for instance, a yellow shade
would appear in the green and a red in the blue. Such a
result fails to satisfy the demand, already touched on, for
purity and homogeneity of color,--that is, for unimpeded seeing
of color.
<1> Chevreul, _De la Loi du Contraste Simultane des Couleurs_.
E.S. Banker, op. Cit.
What significance have these abstract principles of beauty in
the combination of colors for representative art? In the
choice of objects with a definite local color, of course, these
laws will be found operative. A scheme of blues and yellows
is likely to be more effective than one of reds and violets.
If we analyze the masterpiece of coloring, we shall find that
what we at first supposed to be the wonderful single effects of
color is really the result of juxtapositions which bring out
each color to its highest power.