“Colors evoke great joy in people. The eye needs them just as it needs light. Remember how we come to life when, on a cloudy day, the sun suddenly illuminates part of the area and the colors become brighter. These lines belong to the great thinker Goethe, who was the first to give a systematic description of the impact of different colors on our emotions.
Today we understand how strongly color affects our perception of the world. But two centuries ago this was not obvious. One of the first people to take color theory seriously was Johann Wolfgang Goethe. In 1810 he published his Doctrine of Color, the fruit of several decades of hard work.
Surprisingly, he put this work above his poetic works, believing that «good poets» were before him and will be after him, and much more important is that he is the only one in his century, «who knows the truth in the most difficult science of the doctrine of color» .
True, physicists were skeptical about his work, considering it amateurish. But «The Doctrine of Color» was highly appreciated by philosophers, from Arthur Schopenhauer to Ludwig Wittgenstein.
In fact, the psychology of color originates from this work.
Goethe was the first to talk about the fact that «certain colors cause special states of mind», analyzing this effect both as a naturalist and as a poet.
And although over the past 200 years, psychology and neuroscience have made great progress in the study of this topic, Goethe’s discoveries are still relevant and are widely used by practitioners, for example, in printing, painting, design and art therapy.
Goethe divides the colors into «positive» — yellow, red-yellow, yellow-red, and «negative» — blue, red-blue and blue-red. The colors of the first group, he writes, create a cheerful, lively, active mood, the second — restless, soft and dreary. Goethe considers green to be a neutral color. Here’s how he describes the colors.
Lanu samasama
“In its highest purity, yellow always has a light nature and is distinguished by clarity, cheerfulness and soft charm.
At this stage, it is pleasing as an environment, whether in the form of clothes, curtains, wallpaper. Gold in a completely pure form gives us, especially if brilliance is added, a new and high idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbthis color; likewise, a bright yellow tint, which appears on shiny silk, for example, on satin, makes a magnificent and noble impression.
Experience shows that yellow makes an exceptionally warm and pleasant impression. Therefore, in painting, it corresponds to the illuminated and active side of the picture.
This warm impression can be felt most vividly when looking at some place through yellow glass, especially on gray winter days. The eye will rejoice, the heart will expand, the soul will become more cheerful; it seems that warmth is blowing directly on us.
If this color in its purity and clarity is pleasant and joyful, in its full strength it has something cheerful and noble, then, on the other hand, it is very sensitive and gives an unpleasant impression if it is dirty or to a certain extent shifted towards cold tones. . So, the color of sulfur, giving off green, has something unpleasant.
samasama mumu
“Since no color can be considered unchanged, yellow, thickening and darkening, can intensify to a reddish hue. The energy of the color is growing, and it seems to be more powerful and beautiful in this shade. Everything we said about yellow applies here, only to a higher degree.
Red-yellow, in essence, gives the eye a feeling of warmth and bliss, representing both the color of more intense heat and the softer glow of the setting sun. Therefore, he is also pleasant in surroundings and more or less joyful or magnificent in clothes.
Yellow-red
“Just as a pure yellow color easily passes into red-yellow, so the latter rises irresistibly to yellow-red. The pleasant cheerful feeling that red-yellow gives us rises to unbearably powerful in bright yellow-red.
The active side reaches its highest energy here, and it is not surprising that energetic, healthy, stern people especially rejoice at this paint. A tendency to it is found everywhere among savage peoples. And when the children, left to themselves, begin to color, they do not spare cinnabar and minium.
It is enough to look closely at a completely yellow-red surface, so that it seems that this color really hit our eye. It causes incredible shock and retains this effect to a certain degree of darkening.
Showing a yellow and red handkerchief disturbs and makes the animals angry. I also knew educated people who, on a cloudy day, could not bear to look at a man in a scarlet cloak when they met.
Lanu moaga
“Just as yellow always brings light with it, so blue can be said to always bring something dark with it.
This color has a strange and almost inexpressible effect on the eye. Like a color it is energy; but it stands on the negative side, and in its greatest purity is, as it were, an agitating nothingness. It combines some kind of contradiction of excitement and rest.
As we see the heights of the heavens and the distance of the mountains as blue, so the blue surface seems to be moving away from us.
Just as we willingly pursue a pleasant object that eludes us, so we look at the blue, not because it rushes at us, but because it draws us along with it.
Blue makes us feel cold, just as it reminds us of a shadow. The rooms, finished in pure blue, seem to a certain extent spacious, but, in essence, empty and cold.
It cannot be called unpleasant when positive colors are added to a certain extent to blue. The greenish color of the sea wave is rather a pleasant paint.
Red blue
“Blue is potentized very tenderly into red, and thus acquires something active, although it is on the passive side. But the nature of the excitement it causes is completely different from that of red-yellow — it does not so much enliven as it causes anxiety.
Just as the growth of color itself is unstoppable, so one would like to go further with this color all the time, but not in the same way as with red-yellow, always actively stepping forward, but in order to find a place where one could rest.
In a very weakened form, we know this color under the name of lilac; but even here he has something alive, but devoid of joy.
Blue lanumumu
“This anxiety increases with further potentiation, and it can perhaps be argued that a wallpaper of a completely pure saturated blue-red color will be unbearable. That is why, when it is found in clothes, on a ribbon or other decoration, it is used in a very weakened and light shade; but even in this form, according to its nature, it makes a very special impression.
Lanu mumu
“The action of this color is as unique as its nature. He gives the same impression of seriousness and dignity, as well-willedness and charms. It produces the first in its dark condensed form, the second in its light diluted form. And thus the dignity of old age and the courtesy of youth can be clothed in one colour.
The story tells us a lot about the addiction of rulers to purple. This color always gives the impression of seriousness and magnificence.
Purple glass shows a well-lit landscape in a terrifying light. Such a tone should have covered the earth and sky on the day of the Last Judgment.
Lanu meamata
“If yellow and blue, which we consider the first and simplest colors, are combined together at their first appearance in the first step of their action, then that color will appear, which we call green.
Our eye finds real satisfaction in it. When the two mother colors are in a mixture just in balance, so that neither of them is noticed, then the eye and the soul rest on this mixture, as on a simple color. I don’t want to and I can’t go any further. Therefore, for rooms in which you are constantly located, green wallpapers are usually chosen.