Page 61 - Studio International - November 1971

Supplement autumn 1971

New and recent books

Goethe Dammerung circle of six hues which had a readily perceptible knows how to create diversity even though
relationship both to those adjacent and to those limited by a few basic principles.'
Goethe's Colour Theory, arranged and edited by opposite each other. His theory was based on There is nothing to suggest that Goethe's
Rupprecht Matthaei. English edition translated the primacy of physiological (subjective) colour theory will not continue to stimulate and
and edited by Herb Aach. 275 pp with 137 phenomena, with which he began and closed provoke.
illustrations, 72 in colour. New York, Van his great synthesis, the Theory of Colours of This lavishly produced volume is chiefly the
Nostrand, Reinhold Co. London, Studio Vista. 810 : they are, he claimed later, 'the beginning work of the physiologist Rupprecht Matthaei,
£13.65. and end of all colour theories'. who is certainly the most experienced living
It was in physiology that Goethe's theory guide, for he has studied Goethe's theory for
It is appropriate that this edition of Goethe's was most fruitful during his lifetime: it gave more than half a century, and is co-editor of the
writings on colour should have been translated an important stimulus to Purkinje and Johannes Leopoldina Edition of his scientific writings,
and introduced by a painter, as the first English Muller in the earliest stages of their work on which embraces everything Goethe is known to
version was made by the painter Charles Lock perception. In the 195os it seemed that Edwin have written on colour. In the Goethe-Museum
Eastlake, for it has been among artists—Albers, Land's dichromatic theory of colour vision, a at Weimar he has set up, and in some cases
Hoelzel, Herbin, Itten, Kandinsky, Klee, by-product of his work on the Polaroid camera, reconstructed, Goethe's own apparatus, much
Lothar Schreyer, Arthur Segal—that an might substantiate Goethe's conclusions on of which is illustrated in this book. Some of it
interest in Goethe's ideas has been chiefly kept the nature of colour; but in the event, Land's looks startlingly familiar, like a sort of tea-time
alive in the twentieth century, just as in the theory is as dependent upon wavelength as debris at Bridget Riley's. Matthaei also suggests
later nineteenth it was maintained primarily by Newton's, and was developed through at several points how Goethe's experiments may
philosophers, from Schopenhauer to Rudolph complicated experimental procedures of the be repeated with the simplest means available
Steiner. The superiority of Goethe's over type Goethe eschewed. Goethe's scientific to the layman. Altogether the book is a delight
Newton's theory, from the painter's point of method, which is given prominence in the to handle, and includes excellent reproductions
view, is evident. Newton arranged colours in a present book, has aroused some interest in the of some of Goethe's most beautiful diagrams,
spectral sequence according to wavelength, and twentieth century for its stress on intuition like the bust of a young girl (ill. 64), freely
neither the spectrum nor wavelength relate over experimentation: it has been seen as a link improvised from an experience described in
necessarily to colours as we perceive them. A in the history of phenomenology, and was §52 of the Theory, but recalling a possible
single perceived colour, for example green, may probably an important factor in the mental ceramic by Matisse, and the Klee-like schema
represent light of more than one wavelength; background of Werner Heisenberg, the author of colour-polarities (ill. 51). This has
some wavelengths of light, ultra-violet and of the uncertainty principle, who is one of the unfortunately been printed upside-down,
infra-red, both of which were discovered during few physicists to be sympathetic to Goethe's which makes the commentary by the editor
Goethe's lifetime, are not visible. The spectral scientific work. A statement by Goethe, of very difficult to follow. To the most important
sequence from red to violet has nothing to do 1805 (p 68) brings us immediately close to the sections of the 1810 Theory, Professor Matthaei
with the sequence of tones from light to dark of aesthetic of Albers and Hans Hofmann: has added part of Goethe's historical account
which the eye is aware, nor with the sequence of `Our precursors admired the economy of of his colour studies; most of his first publication
hues which it recognizes as most like or unlike nature. She was thought of as a rational person on colour, the Contributions to Optics, of 1791;
each other. Goethe's theory, on the other hand, who within herself created others with rather seven supplementary essays and extracts on
revived a pre-Newtonian conception of colours little material and is inclined to achieve much method and on particular aspects of colour,
as functions of the interaction of light, and its with little. When we express ourselves in this written between 1792 and 182o; a letter to a
negation, darkness; and he arranged them in a manner, we further admire her versatility: she painter of 1829, and some poems relating to

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