Chromosphere: The Color Theory Podcast

Part 2 of 3. In this episode, I read the middle portion of an essay I have written, which could become a chapter in a future publication.  (Read in three parts.)Abstract:This essay charts how the term harmony came to be used by European and North American artists, designers, and educators as a qualitative descriptor of color usage and design. Originating in metaphysics and philosophy in BCE Greece as a method to link the functioning of the five senses, including color vision, the concept entered into the vernacular of design via architecture during the Italian Renaissance. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, theorists and educators claimed the authority to define objective harmonies in color usage and design; forming methodologies that have been ubiquitous in practice over the past 100 years. The final section of the essay, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. Send us a text

Part 1 of 3. In this episode, I read the beginning of an essay I have written, which could become a chapter in a future publication.  (Read in three parts.)Abstract:This essay charts how the term harmony came to be used by European and North American artists, designers, and educators as a qualitative descriptor of color usage and design. Originating in metaphysics and philosophy in BCE Greece as a method to link the functioning of the five senses, including color vision, the concept entered into the vernacular of design via architecture during the Italian Renaissance. Throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, theorists and educators claimed the authority to define objective harmonies in color usage and design; forming methodologies that have been ubiquitous in practice over the past 100 years. The final section of the essay, A New Canon, places the work of color theorists, Mary Gartside and Emily Noyes Vanderpoel in historical context so as to examine how their inclusion (and by extension, additional underrepresented color theorists and practitioners) may help us to understand how we may expand our contemporary approaches to color usage in all creative visual fields. Send us a text

Welcome to Season 2! This episode features a correction on the first episode of Season 1, followed by the continued investigation of how red, yellow, and blue became known widely as primary colors.Send us a text

The final episode of Season 1. I explore whether or not there are more variations of color within the hue of green; more than those of the other hue color families. Thank you for listening to Season 1!Send us a text

Discussion of the impact of telescopes on the development of color theory.  Also linear & aerial perspective in relation to depth and space, and what any of that has to do with the newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope.Send us a text

Discussion of the work of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel and her book, Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color, of 1903. Discussion centers on where I see her concepts in relation to those of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers.Send us a text

Discussion of additive spectral color mixing and how our perception of purple may be the result of our minds experiencing a negative green. Send us a text

Discussion of how afterimages occur when the cones of the retina tire and weaken due to overstimulation, allowing other cones to briefly play a more dominant role in vision, and how that lead to the establishment of complementary colors.Send us a text

Discussion of Arthur Schopenhauer and Phillip Otto Runge's ideas about color vision and color harmonies, and how they may have impacted the teaching of color theory at the Bauhaus art school, in Germany in the early 20th Century.  Send us a text

Discussion of the speed of light, polarization, glare, mirages, and what any of that has to do with Michelangelo. (See cangiantismo and shot silk.)Send us a text