The Book of Colour Concepts: A New 800-Page Celebration of Color Theory, Including Works by Newton, Goethe, and Hilma af Klint

The Book of Colour Con­cepts will soon be pub­lished by Taschen in a mul­ti­lin­gual edi­tion, con­tain­ing text in Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, and Span­ish. This choice makes its abun­dance of explana­to­ry schol­ar­ship wide­ly acces­si­ble at a stroke, but even those who read none of those four lan­guages can enjoy the book. For it takes a deep dive — with Taschen’s char­ac­ter­is­tic visu­al lav­ish­ness — into one of the tru­ly uni­ver­sal lan­guages: that of col­or. Through­out its two vol­umes, The Book of Colour Con­cepts presents more than 1000 images drawn from four cen­turies’ worth of “rare books and man­u­scripts from a wealth of insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the most dis­tin­guished col­or col­lec­tions world­wide.”

Repro­duced with­in are selec­tions from more than 65 books and man­u­scripts, includ­ing such “sem­i­nal works of col­or the­o­ry” as Isaac Newton’s Opticks and Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe’s Zur Far­ben­lehre, as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Kate Moth­es at Colos­sal adds that “read­ers will also find stud­ies from Col­or Prob­lems, the ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry hand­book by Emi­ly Noyes Van­der­poel, which described the­o­ries that would trend in sub­se­quent decades in design and art, like Joseph Albers’s series Homage to the Square.” In The Book of Colour Con­cepts’ 800 pages also appear a vari­ety of works that don’t belong, strict­ly speak­ing, to the field of col­or the­o­ry, such as a botan­i­cal note­book by the spir­i­tu­al­ist and ear­ly abstract artist Hilma af Klint.

Co-authors Sarah Lowen­gard and Alexan­dra Loske bring seri­ous cre­den­tials to this endeav­or: Lowen­gard is a his­to­ri­an of tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence with more than 40 years’ expe­ri­ence as an “arti­san col­or-mak­er,” and Loske is an art his­to­ri­an and cura­tor who spe­cial­izes in “the role of women in the his­to­ry of col­or.” Both would no doubt agree on the spe­cial val­ue of revis­it­ing the his­to­ry of this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject here in the ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, with all its dis­course about the dis­ap­pear­ance of col­or from our every­day lives. It’s wor­ri­some enough that spo­ken and writ­ten lan­guages out­side the Eng­lish-French-Ger­man-Span­ish league seem to be declin­ing; rel­e­gat­ing our­selves to an ever-nar­row­ing vocab­u­lary of col­or would be an even graver loss indeed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Goethe’s Col­or­ful & Abstract Illus­tra­tions for His 1810 Trea­tise The­o­ry of Col­ors: Scans of the First Edi­tion

A 900-Page Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­or from 1692: A Com­plete High-Res­o­lu­tion Dig­i­tal Scan

William Blake’s 102 Illus­tra­tions of The Divine Com­e­dy Col­lect­ed in a Beau­ti­ful Book from Taschen

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

The Woman Who The­o­rized Col­or: An Intro­duc­tion to Mary Gartside’s New The­o­ry of Colours (1808)

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Founder of the Red Cross Creates a Diagram of the Apocalypse (1887)

His­to­ry remem­bers Hen­ry Dunant (1828–1910) for two things–being the co-founder of the Red Cross move­ment and win­ning the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

Less well known is his dia­gram of the Apoc­a­lypse. Between 1877 and 1890, notes the Red Cross Muse­um web­site, Hen­ry Dunant “pro­duced a series of dia­grams reflect­ing his dis­tinc­tive under­stand­ing of humanity’s past and future. Inspired by Chris­t­ian revival­ism, the draw­ings depict a time­line from the Flood of Noah to what Dunant believed was an impend­ing Apoc­a­lypse. The dia­grams fuse mys­ti­cal ref­er­ences with bib­li­cal, his­toric and sci­en­tif­ic events, while also set­ting up a clear oppo­si­tion between Gene­va, as the cen­tre of the Ref­or­ma­tion, and the Catholic Church.”

The image above is the first draw­ing out of a series of four, made with col­ored pen­cils, ink, India ink, wax crayons, and water­col­ors. Writes Messy Nessy, Dunant “spent con­sid­er­able time on the draw­ings, organ­is­ing the sym­bol­ic ele­ments accord­ing to a strict log­ic, mak­ing prepara­to­ry sketch­es and painstak­ing­ly incor­po­rat­ing draw­ings and colour­ings into his chronol­o­gy.” All along, he was dri­ven by the belief that the Apoc­a­lypse was in the off­ing, just a short time way.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

A Sur­vival Guide to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

It’s the End of the World as We Know It: The Apoc­a­lypse Gets Visu­al­ized in an Inven­tive Map from 1486

Vincent Van Gogh’s Final Painting: Discover Tree Roots, the Last Creative Act of the Dutch Painter (1890)

The sto­ry of Vin­cent van Gogh’s life tends to be defined by his psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion and the not-unre­lat­ed man­ner of his death. (It does if we set aside the episode with the muti­lat­ed ear and the broth­el, any­way.) The fig­ure of the impov­er­ished, neglect­ed artist whose work would rev­o­lu­tion­ize his medi­um, and whose descent into mad­ness ulti­mate­ly drove him to take his own life, has proven irre­sistible to mod­ern sto­ry­tellers. That group includes painter-film­mak­er Julian Schn­abel, who told Van Gogh’s sto­ry a few years ago with At Eter­ni­ty’s Gate, and Vin­cente Min­nel­li, who’d ear­li­er giv­en it the full Cin­e­maS­cope treat­ment in 1956 with Lust for Life.

It is thanks in large part to Lust for Life that casu­al Van Gogh fans long regard­ed Wheat­field with Crows as his final paint­ing. “The paint­ing’s dark and gloomy sub­ject mat­ter seemed to per­fect­ly encap­su­late the last days of Van Gogh, full of fore­bod­ing of his even­tu­al death,” says gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne in his new Great Art Explained video above.

Recent­ly, how­ev­er, the con­sen­sus has shift­ed toward a dif­fer­ent, less­er-known work, Tree Roots. Like Wheat­field with Crows, Van Gogh paint­ed it in the rur­al vil­lage of Auvers-sur-Oise, to which he moved after check­ing out of the last asy­lum in which he’d received treat­ment. There, in his final weeks, he “worked on a series of land­scapes on the hills above Auvers,” all ren­dered on wide-for­mat can­vas­es he’d nev­er used before.

That this series con­sists of “vast expans­es, total­ly devoid of any human fig­ures” makes it look “as if he has giv­en up on human­i­ty.” What’s more, Tree Roots is also “devoid of form. It is unfin­ished, which is extreme­ly unusu­al for Van Gogh, and a sign it was still being worked on when he died.” Its obscure loca­tion only became clear dur­ing the time of COVID-19, when Van Gogh spe­cial­ist Wouter van der Veen was look­ing through a cache of old French post­cards he’d received and hap­pened to spot a high­ly famil­iar set of roots. Thanks to this coin­ci­dence, we can now vis­it the very spot in which Van Gogh paint­ed what’s now thought to be his very last work on the morn­ing of July 27th, 1890, the same day he chose to end his own life. This counts as a mys­tery solved, but sure­ly the art Van Gogh made dur­ing his abbre­vi­at­ed but prodi­gious career still has much to reveal to us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

1,500 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Vin­cent van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Vin­cent van Gogh’s Self Por­traits: Explore & Down­load a Col­lec­tion of 17 Paint­ings Free Online

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

Van Gogh’s Ugli­est Mas­ter­piece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Paint­ing, The Night Café (1888)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Salvador Dalí’s Surreal Cutlery Set from 1957

In 1957, Sal­vador Dalí cre­at­ed a table­ware set con­sist­ing of 1) a four-tooth fork with a fish han­dle, 2) an ele­phant fork with three teeth, 3) a snail knife with tears, 4) a leaf knife, 5) a small arti­choke spoon, and 6) an arti­choke spoon. When the set went on auc­tion in 2012, it sold for $28,125.

Infor­ma­tion on the cut­lery set remains hard to find, but we sus­pect that it sprang from Dalí’s desire to blur the lines between art and every­day life. It’s per­haps the same log­ic that led him to design a sur­re­al­ist cook­book—Les Din­ers de Gala—16 years lat­er. It’s not hard to imag­ine the uten­sils above going to work on his odd­ball recipes, like “Bush of Craw­fish in Viking Herbs,” “Thou­sand-Year-Old Eggs,” and “Veal Cut­lets Stuffed with Snails.” If you hap­pen to know more about Dalí’s cre­ation, please add any thoughts to the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

How to Actu­al­ly Cook Sal­vador Dali’s Sur­re­al­ist Recipes: Cray­fish, Prawns, and Spit­ted Eggs

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The US Postal Service to Release Stamp Collection Featuring the Photography of Ansel Adams

The US Postal Ser­vice will be class­ing up the joint, with the planned release of 16 stamps fea­tur­ing the pho­tog­ra­phy of Ansel Adams. They write:

Ansel Adams made a career of craft­ing pho­tographs in exquis­ite­ly sharp focus and near­ly infi­nite tonal­i­ty and detail. His abil­i­ty to con­sis­tent­ly visu­al­ize a sub­ject — not how it looked in real­i­ty but how it felt to him emo­tion­al­ly — led to some of the most famous images of America’s nat­ur­al trea­sures includ­ing Half Dome in California’s Yosemite Val­ley, the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, and Denali in Alas­ka, the high­est peak in the Unit­ed States.

Due to be unveiled on May 15th, the stamps will fea­ture icon­ic US land­scapes, includ­ing Half Dome in Yosemite Nation­al Park, Mon­u­ment Val­ley in Ari­zona, the Grand Tetons, the Snake Riv­er and more. Find more infor­ma­tion on the stamps here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

Ansel Adams Reveals His Cre­ative Process in 1958 Doc­u­men­tary

The Cap­ti­vat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Mak­ing of Ansel Adams’ Most Famous Pho­to­graph, Moon­rise, Her­nan­dez, New Mex­i­co

200 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs Expose the Rig­ors of Life in Japan­ese Intern­ment Camps Dur­ing WW II

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How French Artists in 1899 Envisioned What Life Would Look Like in the Year 2000

Atom­ic physi­cist Niels Bohr is famous­ly quot­ed as say­ing, “Pre­dic­tion is very dif­fi­cult, espe­cial­ly if it’s about the future.” Yet despite years of get­ting things wrong, mag­a­zines love think pieces on where we’ll be in sev­er­al decades, even cen­turies in time. It gives us com­fort to think great things await us, even though we’re long over­due for the per­son­al jet­pack and moon colonies.

800px-France_in_XXI_Century._Whale_bus

And yet it’s Asi­mov who appar­ent­ly owned the only set of post­cards of En L’An 2000, a set of 87 (or so) col­lectible artist cards that first appeared as inserts in cig­ar box­es in 1899, right in time for the 1900 World Exhi­bi­tion in Paris. Trans­lat­ed as “France in the 21st Cen­tu­ry,” the cards fea­ture Jean-Marc Côté and oth­er illus­tra­tors’ inter­pre­ta­tions of the way we’d be living…well, 23 years ago.

The his­to­ry of the card’s pro­duc­tion is very con­vo­lut­ed, with the orig­i­nal com­mis­sion­ing com­pa­ny going out of busi­ness before they could be dis­trib­uted, and whether that com­pa­ny was a toy man­u­fac­tur­er or a cig­a­rette com­pa­ny, nobody seems to know. And were the ideas giv­en to the artists, or did they come up with them on their own? We don’t know.

France_in_XXI_Century._Farmer

France_in_XXI_Century._Water_croquet

One of the first things that stands out scan­ning through these prints, now host­ed at The Pub­lic Domain Review, is a com­plete absence of space trav­el, despite Jules Verne hav­ing writ­ten From the Earth to the Moon in 1865 (which would influ­ence Georges MĂ©liès’ A Voy­age to the Moon in 1902). How­ev­er, the under­wa­ter world spawned many a flight of fan­cy, includ­ing a whale-drawn bus, a cro­quet par­ty at the bot­tom of the ocean, and large fish being raced like thor­ough­bred hors­es.

800px-France_in_XXI_Century._Helicopter

There are a few inven­tions we can say came true. The “Advance Sen­tinel in a Heli­copter” has been doc­u­ment­ing traf­fic and car chas­es for decades now, fed right into our tele­vi­sions. A lot of farm work is now auto­mat­ed. And “Elec­tric Scrub­bing” is now called a Room­ba.

800px-France_in_XXI_Century._Electric_scrubbing

For a card-by-card exam­i­na­tion of these future visions, one should hunt out Isaac Asimov’s 1986 Future­days: A Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry Vision of the Year 2000, which can be found on Ama­zon right now. (Or see the nice gallery of images at The Pub­lic Domain Review.) And who knows? Maybe next year, your order will come to your door by drone. Just a pre­dic­tion.

Note: Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1922, a Nov­el­ist Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

Author Imag­ines in 1893 the Fash­ions That Would Appear Over the Next 100 Years

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future in 1982: Com­put­ers Will Be “at the Cen­ter of Every­thing;” Robots Will Take Human Jobs

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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“Hello Vincent”: A Generative AI Project Brings Vincent Van Gogh to Life at the Musée D’Orsay

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If you attend the “Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise” exhi­bi­tion at the MusĂ©e D’Or­say, in Paris, you can spend time with “Hel­lo Vin­cent,” a gen­er­a­tive Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence project that allows vis­i­tors to have “a unique, per­son­al­ized encounter” with Vin­cent van Gogh. Accord­ing to CBS Sun­day Morn­ing, whose report we’ve includ­ed above, “Hel­lo Vin­cent” allows muse­um vis­i­tors to con­verse with Van Gogh and ask him ques­tions. His respons­es draw on a cor­pus of 900 let­ters where Van Gogh talks about his life and work. And appar­ent­ly “the more ques­tions you ask, the more the AI learns and improves.”

The “Hel­lo Vin­cent” project was devel­oped by Jum­bo Mana, a start­up spe­cial­iz­ing in gen­er­a­tive AI that brings char­ac­ters to life.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Art Gallery & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

Mar­tin Scors­ese Plays Vin­cent Van Gogh in a Short, Sur­re­al Film by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Watch the Trail­er for a “Ful­ly Paint­ed” Van Gogh Film: Fea­tures 12 Oil Paint­ings Per Sec­ond by 100+ Painters

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Architect Breaks Down the Design Of Four Iconic New York City Museums: the Met, MoMA, Guggenheim & Frick

Con­text may not count for every­thing in art. But as under­scored by every­one from Mar­cel Duchamp (or Elsa von Frey­tag-Lor­ing­hoven) to the jour­nal­ists who occa­sion­al­ly con­vince vir­tu­oso musi­cians to busk in dingy pub­lic spaces, it cer­tain­ly counts for some­thing. Whether or not you believe that works of art retain the same essen­tial val­ue no mat­ter where they’re beheld, some envi­ron­ments are sure­ly more con­ducive to appre­ci­a­tion than oth­ers. The ques­tion of just which design ele­ments make the dif­fer­ence has occu­pied muse­um archi­tects for cen­turies, and in New York City alone, you can direct­ly expe­ri­ence more than 200 years of bold exer­cis­es and exper­i­ments in the form.

In the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his exege­ses of New York’s apart­ments, bridges, and sub­way sta­tions, as well as Cen­tral Park and the Chrysler Build­ing) uses his expert knowl­edge to reveal the design choic­es that have gone into the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, and the Frick Col­lec­tion. No two of these famous art insti­tu­tions were con­ceived in quite the same peri­od, none look or feel quite the same as the oth­ers, and we can be rea­son­ably sure that no sin­gle piece of art would look quite the same if it were moved between any of them.

Occu­py­ing five blocks of Cen­tral Park, MoMA is less a build­ing than a col­lec­tion of build­ings — each added at a dif­fer­ent time, in a style of that time — and indeed, less a col­lec­tion of build­ings than “a city unto itself,” as Wyet­zn­er puts it.  (No won­der Clau­dia and Jamie Kin­caid could run away from home and go unno­ticed liv­ing in it.) The com­par­a­tive­ly mod­est MoMA has also grown addi­tion-by-addi­tion, begin­ning with a “stripped-down form of mod­ernism” that stood well out on the West 53rd street of the late thir­ties. It opened as the first of the many “clean white box­es” that would appear across the coun­try — and lat­er the world — to show the art of the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies.

The orig­i­nal MoMA build­ing remains strik­ing today, but it’s now flanked by expan­sions from the hands of Philip John­son, Cesar Pel­li, Yoshio Taniguchi, and Jean Nou­v­el. Much less like­ly to have any­thing attached to it is the Guggen­heim, with its instant­ly rec­og­niz­able spi­ral design by Frank Lloyd Wright. Based on an idea by Le Cor­busier, its nar­row atri­um-wrap­ping gal­leries do present cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties for the prop­er dis­play of large-scale art­works. Wyet­zn­er also men­tions the oft-heard crit­i­cism of Wright’s hav­ing “cre­at­ed a mon­u­ment to him­self — but it’s one hell of a mon­u­ment.”

Last comes “the orig­i­nal build­ing for the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art, which lat­er became the Met Breuer, which now has become the Frick. Who knows what it’ll become next.” The sec­ond of its names refers to its archi­tect, the Bauhaus-trained Mar­cel Breuer (he of the Wass­i­ly chair), whose mus­cu­lar design “slices off” the muse­um from the brown­stone neigh­bor­hood that sur­rounds it. With its “open, loft-like spaces,” it pro­vides a con­text meant for the art of its time, much as the Met, MoMA, and the Guggen­heim do for the art of theirs. But all these insti­tu­tions have suc­ceed­ed just as much by carv­ing out con­texts of their own in the open-air muse­um of archi­tec­ture and urban­ism that is New York City.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

The 5 Inno­v­a­tive Bridges That Make New York City, New York City

How Cen­tral Park Was Cre­at­ed Entire­ly By Design & Not By Nature: An Archi­tect Breaks Down America’s Great­est Urban Park

An Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Sub­way Sta­tions, from the Old­est to Newest

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library — “Hid­den Details” and All

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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