| | Robert Davison asked,
"What is your favorite color? Why is your favorite superior to other hues?"
Joe Maurone replied,
"Actually, a color is more akin to a tone, and one could not say that a tone in itself has moral value. The use of the tones is what counts."
Hmmm. Rand asserted that people of high self-esteem will respond with disgust or boredom to muddy colors, and that they will respond with admiration and exaltation to pure colors. I don't recall her making such a strong (and moral) statement about notes or chords.
Also, I thought the following excerpts from an analysis on the language of color might be of interest to some here (please forgive the length):
There is no need to engage in the finer shades of complicated color, but rather at first to consider only the direct use of simple colors.
Two great divisions of color occur to the mind at the outset: into warm and cold, and into dark and light. To each color there are therefore four shades of appeal -- warm and light or warm and dark, or cold and light or cold and dark.
Generally speaking, warmth and cold in a color means an approach respectively to yellow or to blue. This distinction is, so to speak, on one basis, the color having a constant fundamental appeal, but assuming a more material or non-material quality. The movement is a horizontal one, the warm colors approaching the spectator, the cold ones retreating from him. [Shades of Michael Newberry's notion of "transparency" are evident here.]
The colors, which cause in one another this horizontal movement, while they are themselves affected by it, have another movement of their own, which acts with a violent separative force. This is, therefore, the first antithesis in the inner appeal, and the inclination of the color to yellow or blue is of tremendous importance.
Yellow and blue have another movement which affects the first antithesis -- an ex- and concentric movement. If two circles are drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, brief concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the center, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator.
An attempt to make yellow colder produces a green tint and checks both the horizontal and excentric movement. The color becomes sickly and unreal. The blue by its contrary movement acts as a brake on the yellow, and is hindered in its own movement, till the two together become stationary, and the result is green. Similarly a mixture of black and white produces gray, which is motionless and spiritually similar to green.
But while green, yellow and blue are potentially active, though temporarily paralyzed, in gray there is no possibility of movement, because gray consists of two colors that have no active force, for they stand the one in motionless discord, the other in a motionless negation, even of discord, like an endless wall or a bottomless pit. [Black, white, and their mixtures of gray are always neutral, and, therefore, strictly vertical on any "chart" of their effects on us -- they are mostly limited to vertically modifying the horizontal movement of the other colors.] Because the component colors of green are active and have a movement of their own, it is possible, on the basis of this movement, to reckon their spiritual appeal.
The first movement of yellow, that of approach to the spectator (which can be increased by the intensification of the yellow), and also the second movement, that of over-spreading the boundaries, have a material parallel in the human energy which assails every obstacle blindly, and bursts forth aimlessly in every direction.
Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometric form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the color an insistent, aggressive character (it is worth noting that the sour-tasting lemon and the shrill-singing canary are both yellow). The intensification of yellow increases the painful shrillness of its note. (Any parallel between color and music can only be relative. Just as a violin can give various shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments.)
Yellow is the typically earthly color. It can never have profound meaning. An intermixture of blue makes it a sickly color. It may be paralleled in human nature with madness, not with melancholy or hypochondriacal mania, but rather with violent raving lunacy.
The power of profound meaning is found in blue, and first in its physical movements (1) of retreating from the spectator, (2) of turning in upon its center. The inclination to blue to depth is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is deeper.
Blue is the typical heavenly color. The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human. When it rises toward white, a movement little suited to it, its appeal to men grows weaker and more distant. In music, a light blue is like a flute, a darker blue like a cello; a still darker a thunderous double bass; and the darkest blue of all - an organ.
A well-balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards the center. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians, but by the world. Green is the most restful color that exists. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the hierarchy of colors, green is the "bourgeoisie" -- self-satisfied, immovable, narrow. It is the color of summer, the period when nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive energy of spring.
Any preponderance in green of yellow or blue introduces a corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal. The green keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the former increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with the inclination to depth. In music the absolute green is represented by the placid, middle notes of a violin.
Black and white have already been discussed in general terms. More particularly speaking, white, although often considered as no color, is a symbol of a world from which all color as a definite has disappeared. This world is too far above us for its harmony to touch our souls. A great silence, like an impenetrable wall, shrouds its life from our understanding. White, therefore, has this harmony of silence, which works upon us negatively, like many pauses in music that break temporarily the melody. It is not a dead silence, but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age.
A total dead silence, on the other hand, a silence with no possibilities, has the inner harmony of black. In music it is represented by one of those final pauses, after which any continuation of the melody seems the dawn of another world. Black is something burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral pyre, something motionless like a corpse. The silence of black is the silence of death. Outwardly, black is the color with the least harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the minutest shades of other colors stand clearly forward. It differs from white in this also, for with white nearly every color is in discord, or even mute altogether (vermilion rings dull and muddy against white, but against black with clear strength. Light yellow against white is weak, against black pure and brilliant).
Not without reason is white taken as symbolizing joy and spotless purity, and black grief and death. A blend of black and white produces gray which, as has been said, is silent and motionless, being composed of two inactive colors, its restfulness having none of the potential activity of green. A similar gray is produced by a mixture of green and red, a spiritual blend of passivity and glowing warmth (Delacroix sought to express rest by a mixture of green and red).
The unbound warmth of red has not the irresponsible appeal of yellow, but rings inwardly with a determined and powerful intensity. It glows in itself, maturely, and does not distribute its vigor aimlessly. The varied powers of red are very striking. By a skillful use of it in its different shades, its fundamental tone may be made warm or cold.
Light warm red has a certain similarity to medium yellow, alike in texture and appeal, and gives a feeling of strength, vigor, determination, triumph. In music, it is a sound of trumpets, strong, harsh, and ringing.
But there remains brown, unemotional, disinclined for movement. An admixture of red is outwardly barely audible, but there rings out a powerful harmony. Skillful blending can produce an inner appeal of extraordinary, indescribable beauty. The vermilion now rings like a great trumpet, or thunders like a drum.
Cool red (madder) like any other fundamentally cold color, can be deepened -- especially by an admixture of azure. The character of the color changes; the inward glow increases, the active element gradually disappears. But this active element is never so wholly absent as in deep green. There always remains a hint of renewed vigor, somewhere out of sight, waiting for a certain moment to burst forth afresh. In this lies the great difference between a deepened red and a deepened blue, because in red there is always a trace of the material. A parallel in music are the sad, middle tone of a cello. A cold, light red contains a very distinct bodily or material element, but it is always pure, like the fresh beauty if the face of a young girl. The singing notes of a violin express this exactly in music.
Warm red, intensified by a suitable yellow, is orange. This blend brings red almost to the point of spreading out towards the spectator. But the element of red is always sufficiently strong to keep the color from flippancy. Orange is like a man, convinced of his own powers. Its note is that of the angelus, or of an old violin.
Just as orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow, so violet is red withdrawn from humanity by blue. But the red in violet must be cold, for the spiritual need does not allow of a mixture of warm red with cold blue.
Violet is therefore both in the physical and spiritual sense a cooled red. It is consequently rather sad and ailing. It is worn by old women, and in China as a sign of mourning. In music it is an English horn, or the deep notes of wood instruments (among artists one often hears the question, "How are you?" answered gloomily by the words "Feeling very violet").
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J
(Edited by Jonathan on 10/16, 4:48am)
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