By a slight and scarcely perceptible change, the beautiful impression of fire and gold is transformed into one not undeserving the epithet foul and the color of honour and joy reversed to that of ignominy and aversion. When a yellow color is communicated to dull and coarse surfaces, such as common cloth, felt, or the like, on which it does not appear with full energy, the disagreeable effect alluded to is apparent. Thus, the color of sulphur, which inclines to green, has a something unpleasant in it. State is agreeable and gladdening, and in its utmost power is serene and noble, it is, on the other hand, extremely liable to contamination, and produces a very disagreeable effect if it is sullied, or in some degree tends to the minus side.

In its highest purity it always carries with it the nature of brightness, and has a serene, gay, softly exciting character. How the chemical yellow develops itself in and upon the white, has been circumstantially described in its proper place. In prismatic experiments it extends itself alone and widely in the light space, and while the two poles remain separated from each other, before it mixes with blue to produce green it is to be seen in its utmost purity and beauty. It appears on the slightest mitigation of light, whether by semi-transparent mediums or faint reflection from white surfaces. Light and darkness, brightness and obscurity, or if a more general expression is preferred, light and its absence, are necessary to the production of color… Color itself is a degree of darkness.īut perhaps his most fascinating theories explore the psychological impact of different colors on mood and emotion - ideas derived by the poet’s intuition, which are part entertaining accounts bordering on superstition, part prescient insights corroborated by hard science some two centuries later, and part purely delightful manifestations of the beauty of language.

One of Goethe’s most radical points was a refutation of Newton’s ideas about the color spectrum, suggesting instead that darkness is an active ingredient rather than the mere passive absence of light. Though the work was dismissed by a large portion of the scientific community, it remained of intense interest to a cohort of prominent philosophers and physicists, including Arthur Schopenhauer, Kurt Gödel, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. One of the earliest formal explorations of color theory came from an unlikely source - the German poet, artist, and politician Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749–March 22, 1832), who in 1810 published Theory of Colors ( public library | public domain), his treatise on the nature, function, and psychology of colors. Color is an essential part of how we experience the world, both biologically and culturally.

Color wheel with its emotions