Optical mixing and its legacy

Lesser known outcomes

Ealier, in Chapters 8, 9, and 10, much was written explaining about how “optical mixing” was central to  Seurat’s ideas about “painting with light”. Here it is used to introduce lesser or unknown aspects of the subject of interactions between adjacent regions of  colour (the subject of this and the next four chapters). The more familiar aspects have been given less space because they have already been treated authoritatively in books by Joannes Itten * and Joseph Albers** of the Bauhaus,*** as well as in countless other books and magazine articles, with varying degrees of reliability.

CHAPTER 20 – OPTICAL MIXING AND ITS LEGACY 

Links to the three chapters mentioned above:

Like Chapter 20, these earlier chapters also take “optical mixing” as their starting point. However, their concern is not with contrast effects but with other topics:

• Chapter 8 : Seurat and Painting with Light
• Chapter 9 : Seeing Light
• Chapter 10 : Illusory pictorial space and light

Other earlier chapters from “Painting with Light and Colour”.

• INTRODUCTION to book 1: “Painting with light”.
• Chapter 1 : The dogmas
• Chapter 2 : Doubts
• Chapter 3 : The nature of painting
• Chapter 4: Renaissance ideas
• Chapter 5 : New Science on offer
• Chapter 6 :  Early Modernist Painters
• Chapter 7 : The perception of surface
• Chapter 8 : Seurat and Painting with Light
• Chapter 9 : Seeing Light
• Chapter 10 : Illusory pictorial space and light
• Chapter 11 : Colour mixing – definitions and misconceptions
• Chapter 12: The colour circle: Misunderstandings
• Chapter 13 : Finding a maximum of colours
• Chapter 14 – Colour mixing made easy
• Chapter 15 – Colour mixing by layering
• Chapter 16 – Reviewing previous chapters (1)
• Chapter 17 – Reviewing previous chapters (2)
• Chapter 18 – “All you need to know about painting”-2
• INTRODUCTION  to Book 2 -“Painting with Colour”
• Chapter 19 – Colour and the feelings
• Chapter 20 – Optical mixing and its legacy
• Chapter 21 – Colour contrast effects

Footnotes

*      Johannes Itten

**    JosephAlbers

***  The Bauhaus

Go to top of page

Go to list of all other contents