Traditional and Modern Colour Theory

[Note added July 2023: The term "traditional colour theory" is employed here for colour theory based on the concept that red, yellow and blue are the three "primary colours" that form the ultimate components of other colours, characterized as "secondary" and "tertiary", as seen expressed in what is widely known as the "traditional colour wheel" (www.google.com/search?q=%22traditional+color+wheel%22 ). This concept, sometimes known as the "RYB colour model" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RYB_color_model), was overturned as a scientific theory by Helmholtz and others in the mid-19th century, but persisted in some art education texts including Johannes Itten's highly influential "The Art of Color" (1961), and is prevalent today in the majority of mainstream accounts of art and design colour theory. The contrasting term "modern colour theory" is employed here for colour instruction that is informed by this mid-19th century revolution in our scientific understanding of colour, with the works of Rood, Munsell, Ostwald and others given as examples.
Over the last half century the term "traditional colour theory" has been used in quite different senses depending on which theories of colour were being contrasted as non-traditional, making it important to pay attention to usage in order to avoid arguments at cross purposes (see www.huevaluechroma.com/1110.php#colour_theory_debate) and misdirected criticisms. Thus I note for example that Dr Zena O'Connor has more recently employed the term "traditional colour theory" in a very different sense to that employed here (e.g. O'Connor, 2023, aic-color.org/resources/Documents/jaic_v32_03.pdf), to include, in addition to works of red-yellow-blue colour theory, the works of Rood, Munsell, Ostwald and others that in this presentation are taken to typify "modern colour theory". It should be clear therefore that the criticisms expressed in this presentation are directed at only part of the disparate array of practical colour instruction deemed by O'Connor to comprise "traditional colour theory", and only insofar as that instruction is actually based on the RYB colour model].
A webinar presented by Dr David Briggs for the Colour Society of Australia, NSW Division, on July 15, 2015, based on two-pages newly added to his website "The Dimensions of Colour":
www.huevaluechroma.com/112.php
www.huevaluechroma.com/113.php
Please see these pages of the website for citations to the points raised here and links to further discussion.
For more on the Colour Society of Australia and its activities, please see:
CSA.NSW
www.coloursociety.org.au/
Colour training in the arts today is curiously divided between traditional and modern colour theory. Traditional colour theory characteristically begins with the concept of three primary colours identified as red, yellow and blue, and reflects an understanding of colour that prevailed in the early nineteenth century. Modern colour theory in contrast rests on the legacy of the late 19th century revolution instigated by such figures and Helmholtz, Maxwell and Hering, and reflects a profoundly different understanding of the nature of colour. Since the 1960s and 70's however, traditional colour theory has had a renewed and dominant influence on art education in many educational institutions, even at tertiary level. The webinar will contrast the fundamental nature and conceptual framework of colour in modern and traditional theory, with particular reference to the primary source behind the revival of the latter, "The Art of Color" by Johannes Itten (1961).
Dr David Briggs is the Chairperson of the NSW Division of the Colour Society of Australia. He is a painter and a teacher of drawing and painting, and is the author of an extensive website on modern colour theory, The Dimensions of Colour. He currently teaches at the National Art School, the Julian Ashton Art School and the University of Technology, Sydney. His course "Understanding and Applying Colour" is now available as a term of eight 3-hour live online classes through the National Art School
(sites.google.com/site/djcbriggs/tmct)

[@gabyr8419]

Thank you so much for posting this video! It is a very comprehensible explanation on colour theory. I finally understood why so many books and articles on colour don't seem to make any sense

[@Brittow]

"presenting color theory that is a century and a half out of date, and entirely incompatible with the student digital studies". That is exactly the reason I even found your website. I purchased a "color science" tutorial for photographers that completely relies on Ittens writings annd the RYB system based on it's "relevance for artists" and found it enomoursly confusing to use it in accordance with the HSL/HSB and RGB systems most used in photography editing and retouching software. Thank you for this video. As a former engineer student starting a career in photography, it brings calm to see science presented as it is instead of having to gobble up 'science' as a series of beliefs imposed by one or another writer.

[@artbycatfitz]

Thanks for an excellent explanation of the history of colour theory. You have helped me solve some of my problems with the traditional theory I have been exposed to. Need to go repaint a bunch of colour charts now.

[@michaelbailey9549]

i think the relevance of the RYB system is the fact that it was used by painters, painters who are regarded as great (van gogh, klimt, etc). So if one is seeking to achieve a similar palette, one should use RYB

[@djcbriggs]

Thanks very much for the comment, Michael. I mentioned in the video that from the 1870s onwards a number of excellent texts explaining the new Young-Helmholtz-Maxwell understanding of colour for the benefit of artists were published in English, German and French. One of these was Ogden Rood's "Modern Chromatics" (1879), which was republished in English and in translation in numerous editions into the early 20th century, and which was nicknamed "The Impressionists' Bible". It's well known that the book strongly influenced the Neoimpressionists including Seurat, and I mentioned in the video evidence from a notebook that Degas studied it soon after it was published. So your argument based on the quality of painting in the era of Van Gogh and Klimt might tend to backfire on you, though I myself would be cautious in attributing the greatness of any artist's work too exclusively to the theories of colour they adhered to (or at least, were taught).

[@katherinecalacday2620]

Thank you very much for this webinar. It made me understand the whole gamut of color that can exist.

[@tetianakhotiaintseva562]

I think the main question that Itten tried to answer is, "which colors look good together?" And while modern color theory is vastly superior to Itten's simplistic approach when it comes to real world applications such as displays, printing, photography etc, it doesn't really give a simple "prescription" for which colors look good together. Can someone please point me to resources about color harmonies that are based on modern color theory and research of psychological perception of color, and don't try to simply copy-paste traditional harmonies onto an RGB color wheel?

[@djcbriggs]

You raise an excellent point, Tetiana: there is and probably always has been a strong demand from artists and designers for theory and rules of application of colour that are as simplistic as those of Itten, which of course is part of the explanation of his influence. To the extent that there is any value in schemes of complements, triads etc one could at least try them out on a modern hue circle such as Munsell that is perceptually evenly spaced and shows approximate visual (additive) complementaries. But it seems to me that, rather than just trying to put colour combinations on a linear scale of "how good they look together", it's more fruitful to ask instead "what is the expressive effect of this combination?". Some research into this question, based primarily on Japanese subjects, has been published by Shigenobu Kobayashi, but perhaps it's best to use the judgement of your own eyes. A very good single-volume account of colour psychology from the physiological basis of colour perception upwards is the "Handbook of Color Psychology" by Elliot, Fairchild and Franklin (2015).

[@jennief2108]

My fave color theorist ! thanks !

[@luspearsoram1507]

Wow. Color theory has come a long way.

[@Unknown-bi2pj]

My brain is now so large my skull is going to implode from the mass.

[@wordart_guian]

About the psychological primaries, is that supposed to be an universal experience? I do not experience cyan as a "greenish blue" at all, since what is called cyan, I used to think of as "pure blue" as a child before learning proper terminology. In fact I'd say see every blue-shade past this one (including the blue that google uses) as distinctly purplish, (though not reddish at all, a reddish blue sounds like an oxymoron). Is that normal? RGB blue does not look "pure" at all to me. Or is it language-related, with canonical english "blue" being a much darker colour than canonical french "bleu"? Same with magenta, it doesn't look like "blueish red", it looks like what I used to refer to as "pure pink"

[@djcbriggs]

It's certain that there's a lot of variation in human colour vision, so we shouldn't assume that the colour we experience when we look at a magenta or cyan paint is the same colour experience someone else has (tempting though it is to assume exactly that!). It's been shown that when asked to chose the unique hue from a series of Munsell chips, different individuals make a wide range of different choices, so it wouldn't be totally unexpected if the paints called magenta and cyan evoked the unique red and unique blue hue perceptions for you. Anyway, you might be interested in this excellent presentation on variation in human colour vision: www.osa.org/en-us/meetings/webinar/2020/june/seeing_color_through_different_eyes_-_individual_d/

[@wordart_guian]

@@djcbriggs woah thanks :-)

[@wordart_guian]

​@@djcbriggs I have another question: on most cone sensitivity graphs, the L cone curve has a small positive bump near the blue-violet end of the spectrum. Thus there is an area of the spectrum where both L and S cones (but not M) have positive response? So magentas and purples could actually exist in the spectrum?

[@DANGJOS]

@@wordart_guian I think you're referring to the color matching graphs. I'm not aware of any cone sensitivity graphs that show any significant red "bump".

[@kezicap5647]

can someone hit me up and discuss the theory of color impression to me.... 😭

[@roubad9034]

Thanks for this.

[@NicoCarosio]

gracias!