Why is our experience of a rainbow so different from our experience of representations of a rainbow?
The gap between experience and representation has never been so palpably wide as with the rainbow. We can so easily almost tremble under the magnitude of the real thing, yet wince politely at photographs and paintings of rainbows.
The diagram pictured here though reminds us also of the desire to tame the rainbow, dissect its elusive glow, understand the scientific systems at play that unite the colors red to violet in a seemingly harmonious order.
When casting a net in to the vast history of color systems, mathematicians (Pythagoras), astronomers (Forsius), physicists (Newton), chemists (Chevreul), philosophers (Aristotle), writers (Goethe), artists (Albers) and countless others are dredged up from the great sea of human seeking to weave this rich tale.
In class we looked at the history of the color circle and are doing short research assignments on one of the major theorists in the history of understanding color.
We also looked at some contemporary artists whose work is inspired by the color wheel. Some artists included are
Livia Marin and her piece Ficciones de un uso (Fictions of a use),
Regis Mayot's carved plastic containers, Ernesto Neto's Us and them on a color field, matter is light...sometimes, Judy Pfaff's Planetary time series, Brooke Inman's Everything Color Circle, Sanford Wurmfeld's Cyclorama, and the beautiful rock circle arranaged by Joelle at Purlbee.
Hopefully these works will inspire our own found object color wheels!
