Color Theory by Albers

In the book Interaction of Colors by Josef Albers, it mentions several times that "color is the most relative medium in art." As Albers stated in one of the chapters of his book, different people have different perception of the same color. For instance, if fifty people were to pick out the color "green", there would most likely be fifty different shades of green that we

re picked out. Albers used this example to prove that it is close to impossible to remember distinct colors. He underlines the important fact that "the visual memory is very poor in comparison with our auditory memory." Albers often compares colors with poetry and music. He stated "colors and hues are defined, as are tones in music, by wave lengths."

Lets look at one of the plates from the book:

Colors can be very deceiving. It is very difficult to single out a color by itself and not seeing them as an interaction with the surroundings. In this picture, we know that both grids in the middle are the exact same shades of green. But why does our eyes see differently. This is the magic of colors, they can be deceiving. The background color changes from yellow to a darker color. The green is interacting with the background color in which it was placed on. Each color influences the green differently and that is why we see the green grid to appear so different from each other when in fact it is the same.

Another color deceiving image here. In our minds we see four different colored squares with a folded transparent square on top. The transparent square is nothing but different shades of colors put on top of the original colors. It works as a transparent square because it interacted with its surrounding colors and created the effect in which our mind perceives it as a transparent square instead of different shades of colors.

Design today manipulates colors to "deceive" our minds. Make up is a great example of color deceiving. Different shades of eye shadows work against the different shades of skin colors creating different effects with the eyes.

Picture from lancome.co.uk