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Page 25
When it rises towards white, a movement little suited to it, its
appeal to men grows weaker and more distant. In music a light
blue is like a flute, a darker blue a cello; a still darker a
thunderous double bass; and the darkest blue of all-an organ.
A well-balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The
horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards the
centre. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore
motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians but
by the world. Green is the most restful colour that exists. On
exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after
a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green
are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the
active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the
hierarchy of colours green is the "bourgeoisie"-self-satisfied,
immovable, narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when
nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive
energy of spring (cf. Fig. 2).
Any preponderance in green of yellow or blue introduces a
corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal. The green
keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the former
increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with the
inclination to depth. In music the absolute green is represented
by the placid, middle notes of a violin.
Black and white have already been discussed in general terms.
More particularly speaking, white, although often considered as
no colour (a theory largely due to the Impressionists, who saw no
white in nature as a symbol of a world from which all colour as a
definite attribute has disappeared).
[Footnote: Van Gogh, in his letters, asks whether he may not
paint a white wall dead white. This question offers no difficulty
to the non-representative artist who is concerned only with the
inner harmony of colour. But to the impressionist-realist it
seems a bold liberty to take with nature. To him it seems as
outrageous as his own change from brown shadows to blue seemed to
his contemporaries. Van Gogh's question marks a transition from
Impressionism to an art of spiritual harmony, as the coming of
the blue shadow marked a transition from academism to
Impressionism. (Cf. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. Constable,
London.)]
This world is too far above us for its harmony to touch our
souls. A great silence, like an impenetrable wall, shrouds its
life from our understanding. White, therefore, has this harmony
of silence, which works upon us negatively, like many pauses in
music that break temporarily the melody. It is not a dead
silence, but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the
appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in
the ice age.
A totally dead silence, on the other hand, a silence with no
possibilities, has the inner harmony of black. In music it is
represented by one of those profound and final pauses, after
which any continuation of the melody seems the dawn of another
world. Black is something burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral
pyre, something motionless like a corpse. The silence of black is
the silence of death. Outwardly black is the colour with least
harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the
minutest shades of other colours stand clearly forward. It
differs from white in this also, for with white nearly every
colour is in discord, or even mute altogether.
[Footnote: E.g. vermilion rings dull and muddy against white, but
against black with clear strength. Light yellow against white is
weak, against black pure and brilliant.]
Not without reason is white taken as symbolizing joy and spotless
purity, and black grief and death. A blend of black and white
produces gray which, as has been said, is silent and motionless,
being composed of two inactive colours, its restfulness having
none of the potential activity of green. A similar gray is
produced by a mixture of green and red, a spiritual blend of
passivity and glowing warmth.
[Footnote: Gray = immobility and rest. Delacroix sought to
express rest by a mixture of green and red (cf. Signac, sup.
cit.).]
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