The Guide of Color Ideas: A New 800-Web page Party of Colour Principle, Together with Works by way of Newton, Goethe, and Hilma af Kint

The Guide of Color Con­cepts will quickly be pub­lished by way of Taschen in a mul­ti­lin­gual edi­tion, con­tain­ing textual content in Eng­lish, French, Ger­guy, and Span­ish. This selection makes its abun­dance of explana­to­ry schol­ar­send extensive­ly acces­si­ble at a stroke, however even those that learn none of the ones 4 lan­guages can revel in the ebook. For it takes a deep dive — with Taschen’s char­ac­ter­is­tic visu­al lav­ish­ness — into one of the vital tru­ly uni­ver­sal lan­guages: that of col­or. Thru­out its two vol­umes, The Guide of Color Con­cepts gifts greater than 1000 pictures drawn from 4 cen­turies’ value of “uncommon books and guy­u­scripts from a wealth of insti­tu­tions, includ­ing probably the most dis­tin­guished col­or col­lec­tions international­extensive.”

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

Kate Moth­es at Colos­sal provides that “learn­ers will even in finding stud­ies from Col­or Prob­lems, the ear­ly Twentieth-cen­tu­ry hand­ebook by way of Emi­ly Noyes Van­der­poel, which described the­o­ries that might pattern in sub­se­quent many years in design and artwork, like Joseph Albers’s sequence Homage to the Square.” In The Guide of Color Con­cepts’ 800 pages additionally seem a vari­ety of works that don’t belong, strict­ly talk­ing, to the sector of col­or the­o­ry, reminiscent of a botan­i­cal notice­ebook by way of the spir­i­tu­al­ist and ear­ly summary artist Hilma af Kint.

Co-authors Sarah Lowen­gard and Alexan­dra Loske convey seri­ous cre­den­tials to this endeav­or: Lowen­gard is a his­to­ri­an of tech­nol­o­gy and sci­ence with greater than 40 years’ expe­ri­ence as an “arti­san col­or-mak­er,” and Loske is an artwork his­to­ri­an and cura­tor who spe­cial­izes in “the function of girls within the his­to­ry of col­or.” Each would indisputably agree at the spe­cial val­ue of revis­it­ing the his­to­ry of this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject right here within the ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, with all its dis­path about the dis­ap­pear­ance of col­or from our each and every­day lives. It’s wor­ri­some sufficient that spo­ken and writ­ten lan­guages out­aspect the Eng­lish-French-Ger­man-Span­ish league appear to be declin­ing; rel­e­gat­ing our­selves to an ever-nar­row­ing vocab­u­lary of col­or can be a fair graver loss certainly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

A 900-Web page Pre-Pan­tone Information to Col­or from 1692: A Com­plete Top-Res­o­lu­tion Dig­i­tal Scan

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

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

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

A Imaginative and prescient­ary 115-12 months-Outdated Col­or The­o­ry Guy­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and huge­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns, the ebook The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video sequence The Town in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.