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.
In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually. To this end, the beginning is not a study of color systems.
What counts here - first and last - is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision --seeing.
If one says "Red" (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.
Even when a certain color is specified which all listeners have seen innumerable times - such as the red of the Coca-Cola signs which is the same red all over the country - they will still think of many different reds.
Even if all the listeners have hundreds of reds in front of them from which to choose the Coca-Cola red, the will again select quite different colors. And no one can be sure that he has found the precise red shade.
In musical compositions, so long as we hear merely single tones, we do not hear music. Hearing music depends on the recognition of the in-between of the tones, of their placing and of their spacing.
In writing, a knowledge of spelling has nothing to do with an understanding of poetry.
It is discovered that certain colors are hard to change, and that theer are others more susceptible to change.
We try to find those colors which are more inclined to exert influence and to distinguish them from those which accept influence.
One theory maintains that the nerve ends on the human retina (rods and cones) are tuned to receive any of the 3 primary colors (red, yellow, or blue), which constitute all colors.
Staring at red will fatique the red-sensitive parts, so that with a sudden shift to white (which again consists of red, yellow, and blue), only the mixture of yellow and blue occurs. And this is gree, the complement of red.
The fact that the after-image or simultaneous contrast is a psycho-physiological phenomenon should prove that no normal eye, not even the most trained one, is foolproof against color deception. He who claims to see colors independed of their illusionary changes fools only himself, and no one else.
The tune of Good morning to you consists of 4 tones. It can be sung in high soprano, a low basso, and in all in-between voices as well as on many levels and in many keys. It can be played on innumerable instruments
In all possible ways of performance this melody will keep its character and it will be recognized instantly.
Why? The intervals of the 4 tones, that is, their acoustical constellation (again comparable with a topographical relationship), remains the same.
The purpose of most of our color studies is to prove that color is the most relative medium in art, that we almost never perceive what color is physically.
The mutual influencing of colors we call-interaction. Seen from the opposite viewpoint, it is-interdependence.
Though we were taught, only a few years ago, that there is no connection whatever between visual and auditory perception, we know now that a color changes visually when a changing tone is heard simultaneously. THis, of course, makes the relativity of color still more obvious, just as tongue and eye preceptions interdepend when colors of food and its containers increase or diminish our appetite.