Interaction of Color

3 ideas

1. One colour can appear as two

   The same physical colour takes on visibly different hues and values depending on the ground around it: placed on a light field it looks darker, on a dark field lighter, and a surrounding colour pushes it toward that colour's complement. Albers shows this by setting identical small squares on contrasting grounds until viewers refuse to believe they are the same paint, which shows that perception reports relationships rather than the physical properties of the colour itself.

2. Experience before theory in teaching

   Students learn colour by doing exercises with loose sheets of coloured paper, making and correcting visual effects by trial, rather than by memorising colour wheels, systems, or optical laws. Each exercise poses a specific perceptual problem, such as making one colour look like two or two colours look alike, and the student learns by making something that works and comparing it against the attempts of classmates.

3. Subtraction: making two colours look alike

   A colour's apparent character can be taken away by choosing a ground that carries the same qualities the colour has: a ground rich in a hue absorbs that hue from a colour placed on it. By this method two different colours can be made to look nearly identical, so apparent sameness, like apparent difference, is built by context and not given by the colour itself.

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