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Page 16
PART II: ABOUT PAINTING
V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKING OF COLOUR
To let the eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colours,
produces a dual result. In the first place one receives a PURELY
PHYSICAL IMPRESSION, one of pleasure and contentment at the
varied and beautiful colours. The eye is either warmed or else
soothed and cooled. But these physical sensations can only be of
short duration. They are merely superficial and leave no lasting
impression, for the soul is unaffected. But although the effect
of the colours is forgotten when the eye is turned away, the
superficial impression of varied colour may be the starting point
of a whole chain of related sensations.
On the average man only the impressions caused by very familiar
objects, will be purely superficial. A first encounter with any
new phenomenon exercises immediately an impression on the soul.
This is the experience of the child discovering the world, to
whom every object is new. He sees a light, wishes to take hold of
it, burns his finger and feels henceforward a proper respect for
flame. But later he learns that light has a friendly as well as
an unfriendly side, that it drives away the darkness, makes the
day longer, is essential to warmth, cooking, play-acting. From
the mass of these discoveries is composed a knowledge of light,
which is indelibly fixed in his mind. The strong, intensive
interest disappears and the various properties of flame are
balanced against each other. In this way the whole world becomes
gradually disenchanted. It is realized that trees give shade,
that horses run fast and motor-cars still faster, that dogs bite,
that the figure seen in a mirror is not a real human being.
As the man develops, the circle of these experiences caused by
different beings and objects, grows ever wider. They acquire an
inner meaning and eventually a spiritual harmony. It is the same
with colour, which makes only a momentary and superficial
impression on a soul but slightly developed in sensitiveness. But
even this superficial impression varies in quality. The eye is
strongly attracted by light, clear colours, and still more
strongly attracted by those colours which are warm as well as
clear; vermilion has the charm of flame, which has always
attracted human beings. Keen lemon-yellow hurts the eye in time
as a prolonged and shrill trumpet-note the ear, and the gazer
turns away to seek relief in blue or green.
But to a more sensitive soul the effect of colours is deeper and
intensely moving. And so we come to the second main result of
looking at colours: THEIR PSYCHIC EFFECT. They produce a
corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step
towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical
impression is of importance.
Whether the psychic effect of colour is a direct one, as these
last few lines imply, or whether it is the outcome of
association, is perhaps open to question. The soul being one with
the body, the former may well experience a psychic shock, caused
by association acting on the latter. For example, red may cause a
sensation analogous to that caused by flame, because red is the
colour of flame. A warm red will prove exciting, another shade of
red will cause pain or disgust through association with running
blood. In these cases colour awakens a corresponding physical
sensation, which undoubtedly works upon the soul.
If this were always the case, it would be easy to define by
association the effects of colour upon other senses than that of
sight. One might say that keen yellow looks sour, because it
recalls the taste of a lemon.
But such definitions are not universally possible. There are many
examples of colour working which refuse to be so classified. A
Dresden doctor relates of one of his patients, whom he designates
as an "exceptionally sensitive person," that he could not eat a
certain sauce without tasting "blue," i.e. without experiencing a
feeling of seeing a blue color. [Footnote: Dr. Freudenberg.
"Spaltung der Personlichkeit" (Ubersinnliche Welt. 1908. No. 2,
p. 64-65). The author also discusses the hearing of colour, and
says that here also no rules can be laid down. But cf. L.
Sabanejeff in "Musik," Moscow, 1911, No. 9, where the imminent
possibility of laying down a law is clearly hinted at.] It would
be possible to suggest, by way of explanation of this, that in
highly sensitive people, the way to the soul is so direct and the
soul itself so impressionable, that any impression of taste
communicates itself immediately to the soul, and thence to the
other organs of sense (in this case, the eyes). This would imply
an echo or reverberation, such as occurs sometimes in musical
instruments which, without being touched, sound in harmony with
some other instrument struck at the moment.
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