Color Harmony

Color theories should be able to give answers to these questions responses that can be justified and find common acceptance and that are universally valid, independent of cultural differences. Color theories cannot do this, however. The demands are too great. To treat the rich spectrum of colors, order first must be brought to their diversity. Some color theories pretentiously are named harmony theories, such as Chijiiwa 1987: Color Harmony; or Küppers 1989: Harmony Theory of Colors. But these are primarily systems for classifying colors, of which there are many. The first one, Aristotle’s, has been mentioned. In one paperback alone (Silvestrini 1994), 70 others are briefly described, from Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th and 16th centuries to Goethe in the early 19th and Küppers in the 20th century. The many treatises and systems all add something to the discussions but they do not come to a common, irrefutable conclusion. Of all color theories, Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre (1810) is the best known. He argued vehemently against Isaac Newton’s objectively demonstrable, physical statements about colors, guided by his conviction that color is primarily a phenomenon of human perception. At the end of his life, Goethe considered his color theory to be more important than his literary works. Today still, when one writes about or discusses colors, one cannot neglect Goethe’s work. Starting with his aquarelle color wheel, Goethe gives answers to the opening questions about color harmony. Admittedly, the colors then available made things easier for him than for modern color theorists. There were no synthetic, aniline dyes, not to mention the “neon” red and yellow colors that highway workers wear to protect themselves from speeding motorists.