Pantone your Street - Josef Albers: Use of Colour

Josef Albers: Use of Colour

In Albers’ interaction of colour, it shows that it is possible for two different colours to look alike through the process of subtracting from one another. Colours have different roles with colour differences caused by varying hues and light. By increasing these through the use of contrasts their initial qualities are subtracted. Any background subtracts its own hues from colours on top of it.

When looking at the centre of a coloured dot for a period of time and then looking at a white circle and afterimage or simultaneous contrast of the previous colour is seen on the white dot.

There are two kinds of physical mixture, a direct mixture of projected light, which is concerned with the scientific analysis of lights physical qualities e.g. wavelength, and an indirect mixture of physical light, for example when paint is mixed it is seen by the eye as reflected light. Direct mixture proves sum of all colours in light is white. Prismic lenses show colour spectrum dispersion of white sunlight showing that it is an additive mixture. In indirect mixtures, white, will never be the sum of all colours. The more colour that is added the more it becomes grey, making it a subtractive mixture. Mixes gain light in direct colour but lose light in reflected colour.

The Bezold Effect is an optical mixture where colours are perceived as merging. Impressionists used tiny dots in varying colours which when looked at mix creating the perception of one colour. This effect depends on the size of the dots and the distance at which the work is seen from.

A colour can have many faces, with the same colour looking different on varying backgrounds.

When the same coloured foreground element is placed on two varying backgrounds the foreground on one background will take on the appearance of the opposite background, this is called reversed grounds.