Goethe's ideas about the effect of color on a person and the harmony of colors.
(Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 1749-1832 - brilliant German poet, humanist and scientist, author of the well-known work "The Teaching of Color".)
Goethe's "The Doctrine of Color" (1810) belongs to the most interesting, but even in the past aroused much controversy, works. Goethe considers all phenomena associated with color, exclusively from the standpoint of the impact of color on a person. At the same time, he distinguishes the effect of color on human organism(physiological effects) and effects on inner world(psychological impact).
The main place in his teaching is the consideration of the "emotional and moral impact of color." Goethe called color "a product of light, a product evocative". He correctly believed that light - color - emotion are links of one chain that are in a causal relationship. He carefully studied the effect of various color impressions on the human psyche and was the first to present them in the form of a clear system.
When considering the subject through the prism of Goethe, he came to a conclusion that became the basis of his theory and system. He noticed colored stripes on the border of areas of light and dark. The splendor of spectral colors was therefore (according to Goethe) exclusively in the opposition of light and darkness. The presence of two opposite poles is an essential characteristic of colors in their most diverse manifestations. Yellow and the regions adjoining it are akin to light. Goethe attributed blue and the colors adjacent to it to the “kingdom of darkness”.
Here Goethe's views echo the ancient Greek theories of the origin of color. He considered yellow and blue to be primary colors, arising from the opposition "light - dark." As the prism moves away from the object under consideration, the yellow strip expands, and its division into yellow and red stripes becomes noticeable. blue stripe splits into blue and purple. Therefore, Goethe considered red to be an enhancement of yellow, and violet to blue. These views were reinforced by observations of nature. In cloudy weather, he noticed how the color of the setting sun changes from yellow to red. Goethe called these two colors sunny, warm, active.
He defined blue and purple as cold, passive colors of the night. Green color, in his opinion, is obtained by simply mixing additional colors - yellow and blue.
Further amplification of red (yellow-red) and violet supposedly produces magenta.
Goethe also noticed that after a long perception of any one color in our eye, complementary color in the form of a sequential image. Unlike his contemporaries, who saw this as a painful deviation of vision, he explained the consistent image as a natural reaction of the body to the irritation received. The conclusion drawn by Goethe from this phenomenon raises no objections: if there is an additional color in the field of view, then discharge will constantly occur and the eye will rest. Thus, balance and harmony are created. Since this balance was achieved with the help of complementary colors, Goethe calls it harmonious. Goethe arranges colors in a circle according to his hypothesis about the origin of colors.
We also find in him indications of the aesthetic impact of various color combinations arising from the color wheel adopted by him.
He calls the combination of colors opposite in a circle (located opposite each other) harmonious, the combination of alien (distant neighboring flowers) - characteristic and, finally, a combination of related (neighboring) colors - inharmonious.
Goethe's criticism of the regularities discovered by Newton is devoid of any scientific evidence. It is based on the erroneous assumption that mixing spectral colors should give the same results as mixing pigments.
Regularities discovered by a physicist as a result of careful measurements, profound knowledge subject and numerous experiments, were beyond the understanding of Goethe. He explained a lot, based on his philosophical views, and not considering the color through the eyes of a physicist. This explains the fact that some positions of his doctrine of color are in conflict with science. Correct positions concerning the psychological impact of color on a person, coexist in his teachings with incorrect ideas about physical nature colors. Goethe is right when he says that white color is perceived as a whole. However, his claims that White light indecomposable, false.
These errors were the main reason why some well-known researchers of the nature of color (for example, Ostwald) later considered Goethe's teaching on color to be too emotional and rejected him because of "poetic primitive form". But, despite this, Goethe's ideas about the impact of color and the harmony of colors served in the past as starting points for the artist.
All that I have done as a poet does not fill me with special pride. Excellent poets lived at the same time as me, even better ones lived before me and, of course, will live after me. But that in my age I am the only one who knows the truth about the difficult science of colors - I cannot but attach importance to this, it gives me a sense of superiority over many.
J.V. Goethe.
Goethe did not agree with Newton's color theory and believed that he had to fight against his "delusions". He was looking for the principle of color harmonization not in physical laws, but in the patterns of color vision. In many ways he was right; No wonder he is considered the founder of physiological optics and the science of the psychological effects of color.
Newton proved that White color consists of seven colors of the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. To do this, he conducted a simple experiment. He made a hole in the screen, through which a ray of light penetrated, and passed it through a prism. The light was divided into seven colors.
Goethe decided to repeat Newton's experiment. But I saw something completely different. When the scientist looked through the prism at the illuminated area of the table, the table did not become multi-colored. It remained white, and only the colors of the rainbow were visible around the edges. It turned out that colors appear only on the border or along the edges of something.
Goethe worked on his "Teaching about Color" for 20 years (from 1790 to 1810). The main value of this work lies in the formulation of subtle psychological states associated with the perception of contrasting color combinations. Goethe singled out 2 types of color effects on a person:
- physiological (on the human body),
- psychological (on his spiritual world).
According to R. Steiner, I.V. Goethe was the first to propose a clear system describing the effect of various color impressions on the human psyche.
The scientist's concept was met with hostility by his contemporaries. Goethe was accused of dilettantism and advised to do his own thing. Goethe complains about the cold attitude of his contemporaries to his theory in one of his letters to Schiller.
Goethe describes in his book the phenomena of color induction - luminance, chromatic, simultaneous and successive - and proves that the colors that appear in successive or simultaneous contrast are not accidental. All these colors seem to be embedded in our organ of vision.
The contrasting color arises as the opposite of the inducing one, i.e. to the imposed eye, just as inhalation alternates with exhalation, and any contraction entails expansion. This manifests the universal law of the integrity of psychological being, the unity of opposites and unity in diversity.
Each pair of contrasting colors already contains the entire color wheel, since their sum - white - can be decomposed into all conceivable colors and, as it were, contains them in potency. From this follows the most important law of the activity of the organ of vision - the law of the necessary change of impressions. “When the eye is offered the dark, it demands the light; he demands the dark when light is presented to him, and he manifests his vitality, his right to grasp the object by giving birth to something opposite to the object.
Goethe's experiments with colored shadows showed that diametrically opposite (complementary) colors are precisely those that mutually evoke each other in the mind of the viewer. Yellow calls for blue-violet, orange calls for cyan, and magenta calls for green, and vice versa.
Goethe also built a color wheel, but the sequence of colors in it is not a closed spectrum, like Newton's, but a round dance of three pairs of colors. And these pairs are additional, i.e. half-spawned human eye and only half independent of man.
Most harmonious colors- these are those that are located opposite, at the ends of the diameters of the color wheel, it is they who call each other and together form integrity and completeness, similar to the fullness of the color wheel. Harmony, according to Goethe, is not an objective reality, but a product of human consciousness.
Goethe believed that color has an effect on state of mind person. So he gave certain colors certain psychological states person.
Goethe divides colors into:
- positive (yellow, orange,), they create a lively and cheerful mood;
- negative (blue, red-blue), they create a restless and dreary mood.
Green Goethe attributed to the "neutral" colors.
Psychological characteristics of colors according to Goethe.
Yellow
It is the color closest to the light. He is always distinguished by clarity, cheerfulness and soft charm. Yellow produces exceptionally warm and pleasant impression. Therefore, in painting, it corresponds to the illuminated and active side of the picture.
However, when it is contaminated, if yellow shifts towards cold tones (the color of sulfur), it acquires a negative sound and a negative symbolic meaning.
Red-yellow (orange)
Yellow, thickening and darkening, may intensify to a reddish hue. The energy of the color is growing, and it seems to be more powerful and beautiful in this shade. Red-yellow gives the eye a feeling of warmth and bliss. Therefore, he is pleasant in surroundings and joyful in clothes.
yellow red
The active side reaches its highest energy here, and it is not surprising that energetic, healthy, stern people are especially happy with this color. This color evokes a feeling of shock.
Blue
Blue always carries something dark with it. This color has a strange and almost inexpressible effect on the eye. It combines some kind of contradiction of excitement and rest.
The blue surface seems to be moving away from us. We willingly look at the blue, because it draws us along.
Blue makes us feel cold, just as it reminds us of a shadow.
Cleanly furnished rooms Blue colour, seem to a certain extent spacious, but, in essence, empty and cold.
Red-blue (lilac)
Blue, thanks to red, acquires something active, although it is on the passive side. But the nature of the excitement it causes is completely different from that of red-yellow - it does not so much enliven as it causes anxiety.
With this color, you want to find a place where you could relax.
blue red
The impression of anxiety grows. long time it is very difficult to keep this color.
Red
This color gives the impression of seriousness and dignity, as well as benevolence and charm. It produces the first in its dark condensed form, the second in its light diluted form. Dark red symbolizes old age, and light red - youth.
Speaking of purple, Goethe points out that this color is the favorite color of rulers and expresses seriousness and grandeur.
Green
If yellow and blue are mixed in equal proportions, then green is obtained. Our eye finds real satisfaction in green, the eye and soul rest. Therefore, for rooms in which you are constantly located, green wallpapers are usually chosen.
Thus, the significance of the "Teachings about Color" for the psychology of color is very great. Color in Goethe is no longer a symbol of the divine, mystical powers. He gave the perceived color the status of a symbol of the person himself, his feelings and thoughts. And this symbol is not poetic, but psychological, having a certain, specific content.
Irina Bazan
Literature:
J.V. Goethe "On Color".
B.A. Bazyma "Color and Psyche"
The first thing that strikes when looking at the natural science heritage of Johann Wolfgang Goethe is its universality. It seems that there is no such area of nature that would escape his attention. Goethe is the author of numerous works on osteology, botany and biology, published in authoritative scientific journals, articles and reports on optics, general physics, chemistry, geology and meteorology. But we can hardly be mistaken if we say that special interest Goethe always used color phenomena, and that major achievement and, as it were, the pinnacle of it scientific activity became the famous "Teaching about color" (Farbenlehre) .
Working on this work, he total, devoted more than 40 years of his life and, according to own confession considered him his main merit. “Everything that I have achieved as a poet,” Goethe told Eckermann, “I do not consider anything special at all. Good poets lived with me, even better ones lived before me, and will live after me. But the fact that in my century I am the only one who knows the truth in the most difficult science of the doctrine of color, this is what I take to my credit, and this is why I am aware of my superiority over many.
Goethe's interest in color and color phenomena was originally inspired by his passion for painting. Not possessing by nature the ability to plastic art, he, by his own admission, sought to fill with reason and understanding the gaps that nature had left in him. He looked for the laws and rules that guide the artist when creating his works, and paid much more attention to the technique of painting than the technique of poetry.
However, the art of northern Germany, reading books and talking with local experts did not satisfy him. Therefore, after long hesitation, in 1786 he decided to go to Italy in the hope that there, in the homeland of art, in live communication with famous artists, he will finally be able to find the answer to his questions. Goethe's expectations were only partly justified. Indeed, much was revealed to him in regard to compositional construction paintings, however, the principle of its staining (coloring) continued to be unclear to him.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the great German poet, thinker and naturalist, devoted more than 40 years of his life (1791-1832) to the study of color phenomena. The central and most significant of his works dealing with the problems of color is the treatise "At about color, consisting of three parts: "Didactic", where Goethe sets out his own ideas about color phenomena; "Polemical", in which he refutes Isaac Newton's color theory; and "Historical", which contains materials covering the history of color science from antiquity to late XVIII V.
This edition publishes for the first time a complete Russian translation of the first part of the treatise, also called " Outline of the doctrine of color. The book introduces the reader to the original color theory Goethe, as well as a more harmonious and holistic approach to the study of nature, allowing to connect the science of color with philosophy, mathematics, physics and painting.
The publication is of interest to historians of science, artists, psychologists, philosophers and all those interested in the theory of color and color perception.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe and his doctrine of color
Teaching about color. Theory of knowledge
War'nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,
Wie konnten wir das Licht erblicken?
Lebt'nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft,
Wie konnt'uns Gottliches entziicken?
Foreword
When you are going to talk about colors, the question naturally arises whether it is necessary to mention light first of all. To this question we will give a short and direct answer: since so many different opinions have been expressed about light so far, it seems superfluous to repeat what has been said or multiply the statements that have been so often repeated.
Actually, after all, all our efforts to express the essence of any thing remain in vain. Actions are what we perceive and full story these actions would embrace - no doubt, the essence of the given thing. In vain do we try to describe the character of man; but compare his actions, his deeds, and a picture will arise before you. his character.
Colors are deeds of light, deeds and suffering states. In this sense, we can expect them to clarify the nature of light. Colors and light stand, it is true, in the most exact relationship to each other, however, we must imagine them as inherent in all nature: through nph, nature is completely revealed to the sense of sight.
In the same way, the whole nature is revealed to another sense. Close your eyes, open, sharpen your ears, and from the most gentle breath to a deafening noise, from the simplest sound to greatest harmony, from the most passionate cry to the meekest words of reason, you will hear nature and only nature, which speaks, which reveals its being, its strength, its life and its relationships, so that the blind, for whom the infinite visible world is closed, can embrace the world in audible infinitely alive.
So says nature to the rest of the senses - to the familiar, and the unrecognized and unfamiliar senses; thus she speaks to herself and to us through a thousand manifestations. To the careful observer, she is nowhere dead or mute; and even to the inert earthly body she gave a breastplate, metal, in the smallest parts of which we could see what is happening in the whole mass.
However verbose, confusing, and incomprehensible this language may often seem to us, its elements remain the same. Quietly tilting first one and then the other pan of the scales, nature oscillates here and there, and in this way two sides arise, there arises an up and down, before and after, and all the phenomena that you encounter in space and time are determined by this duality.
These general movements and definitions we perceive most in various ways, sometimes as a simple repulsion and attraction, sometimes as a peeping and again disappearing light, like the movement of air, like a shaking of the body, like oxidation and deoxidation; but they always unite or separate, set things in motion and serve life in one form or another.
Assuming that these two directions are unequal to each other in their action, they tried to somehow express this ratio. Everywhere they noticed and called plus and minus, action and reaction, activity and passivity, advancing and restraining, passionate and moderating, male and female; this is how a language arises, a symbolism that can be used by applying it to similar cases as a likeness, a close expression, a immediately suitable word.
To apply these universal designations, this language of nature also to the doctrine of colors, to enrich and expand this language, relying on the variety of phenomena studied here, and thereby facilitate the exchange of higher views among the friends of nature - that's the main task of the present essay.
The work itself is divided into three parts. The first gives an outline of the doctrine of colors. Innumerable occurrences of phenomena are subsumed in this part under the known basic Phenomena, arranged in an order which the introduction is to justify. Here it can be noted that although we everywhere adhered to experience, everywhere we laid it at the basis, nevertheless we could not pass over in silence the theoretical view, according to which this selection and order of phenomena arose.
And in general, the demand sometimes put forward, although it is not fulfilled even by those who put it, is extremely surprising: to present the evidence of experience without any theoretical connection and leave the reader, the student, to form a conviction for himself to his liking. But when I only look at a thing, it does not move me forward. Every looking turns into looking, every looking into thinking, every thinking into binding, and therefore it can be said that already with every attentive look thrown at the world, we theorize. But to do and apply it consciously, with self-criticism, with freedom, and - to use a bold expression - with a certain irony: such a device is necessary so that the abstraction that we fear is harmless, and the experimental result that we expect is sufficiently alive and useful.
In the second part we are engaged in the exposure of Newton's theory, which imperiously and influentially closed the way to a free view of color phenomena up to now; we contest a hypothesis which, though no longer considered valid, still retains traditional authority among men. In order that the doctrine of colors should not lag behind, as hitherto, from so many better processed parts of natural science, it is necessary to clarify true value this hypothesis, old misconceptions must be eliminated.
Since this second part of our work will seem dry in content, perhaps too harsh and passionate in presentation, then, in order to prepare for this more serious matter and at least somewhat justify this lively attitude towards it, let me give here the following comparison.
Newton's theory of colors can be compared to an old fortress, which was at first founded with youthful haste by the founder, subsequently gradually expanded and furnished by him according to the needs of the time and circumstances, and strengthened to the same extent, in view of hostile collisions.
So did his successors and heirs. They were forced to enlarge the building, to attach it here, to complete it there, to erect an outbuilding somewhere else - they were forced, thanks to the growth of internal needs, the pressure of external enemies and many accidents.
All these alien parts and outbuildings had to be connected again with the most amazing galleries, halls and passages. What was damaged by the hand of the enemy or the power of time was immediately restored again. As needed, they made deeper ditches, raised walls and did not skimp on towers, towers and loopholes. Thanks to these careful efforts, a prejudice about high value this fortress, despite the fact that architecture and fortification during this time have greatly improved, and in other cases people have learned to arrange much better dwellings and fortifications. But the old fortress was in honor, especially because it had never yet been possible to take it, that many assaults were repulsed by it, not a few enemies were put to shame, and it always kept a virgin. This name, This glory does not die to this day. No one comes to mind that old building became uninhabited. Everyone is again talking about> her remarkable strength, her excellent device. Pilgrims go there to worship; sketchy drawings of her are shown in all schools and instill in the receptive youth respect for the building, which meanwhile is already empty, guarded by a few invalids who quite seriously imagine themselves fully armed.
Thus, there is no question here of a long siege or a strife with a dubious outcome. In fact, we find this eighth wonder of the world already as an abandoned monument of antiquity, threatening to collapse, and immediately, without any fuss, we begin to demolish it, from the ridge and roof, in order to finally let the sun into this old nest of rats and owls and open the eyes of the astonished traveler all this incoherent architectural labyrinth, its appearance for the sake of temporary needs, all its random heaps, everything deliberately sophisticated, somehow patched in it. But to throw such a glance is possible only if wall after wall falls, vault after vault, and the garbage is removed as soon as possible.
To carry out this work and, if possible, to level the place, to arrange the extracted material so that it can be used again in a new building, this is the difficult task that we have charged ourselves with in this second part. But if we manage, with joyful use of the possible dexterity, to tear down this bastille and acquire a free place, then it is not at all our intention to build up again and burden it immediately with a new building; no, we want to use it to present to the eyes of the viewer a marvelous series of various Figures.
The third part is therefore devoted to historical research And preparatory work. If we said above that the history of man paints us his appearance, then it can also be argued that the history of spiders is science itself. It is impossible to achieve pure knowledge of what one possesses until one is familiar with what others have possessed before us. Those who do not know how to appreciate the advantages of the past, will not be able to truly and sincerely rejoice in the advantages of their time. But writing a history of flowers, or even preparing material for it, was impossible as long as Newton's teachings remained valid. For never before has any aristocratic self-conceit looked at everyone who did not belong to his guild, with such intolerable arrogance with which the Newtonian school rejected everything that was created before it and next to it. With annoyance and indignation, you see how Priestley, in his history of optics, and others before and after him, count the years of the “saved” world of flowers from the era of split (in their imagination) light and shrug their shoulders, looking at ancient and newer writers, calmly kept the right way and left us separate observations and thoughts, which even we could not have been better able to produce and more correctly Formulate.
THE TASK OF THE TEACHER
A rapidly changing world places ever-increasing and ever-changing demands on us. At the moment when we already feel that we have achieved perfection in one direction of our development, something new immediately appears. Many discoveries in the field of technology, for example, can no longer be perceived by the layman. Thus, a person can get the feeling that he is constantly trying to catch up with something. And as a result, he tends to just turn a blind eye to these things. Dealing with external impressions and their effect on the internal is not so easy. The extremes of our world are quite distant from each other and cause great tension. How to find balance? Each of us is familiar with such internal processes.
We as individuals evolve from the conjunction of opposing forces. On the one hand, we are connected by our bodies to the vegetable and mineral kingdoms of nature; on the other hand, we have lofty ideals, desires and hopes that feed our spiritual essence. The impulses emanating from these two poles are picked up and connected by our soul. The soul is formed under the influence of ideals. It is nourished, on the one hand, by our ideals, and, on the other hand, by the creative forces that arise in our will. And the soul itself acquires polarity. The life of the senses maintains this balance. On physical level this is expressed through rhythmic breathing, in which there is a constant connection between the inner and the outer. The heart and circulation also connect the bottom and the top. An idea that has acquired the form of a clear image through thinking, we can embody through our enthusiasm (warm attitude towards something) with the help of our will (for example, our hands). On the other hand, action can arise unconsciously, being initiated from within: we are, so to speak, filled with enthusiasm for something that, in the end, can lead us to an idea or thought. There are always two areas involved. Sensual life builds a bridge between these essentially different qualities: thinking and action.
The world of the soul, in which these three spiritual qualities- thinking, feeling and will - function independently, but still together, in small child still too small. The soul develops as it acquires more experiences. Through new actions, feelings and thoughts the soul matures. In the sensual and spiritual sphere, between the one-time and the repeatable, between creativity and exercise, there is tension. When the natural living inner action that takes place in the soul stops due to the mutual isolation of these three spiritual qualities from each other, then stress and fear take possession of the soul. And what the head is talking about has nothing to do with what the arms and legs do. Ideas remain unrealized. Feelings are suppressed or hidden. At a later stage, the individual may remain apathetic and unfulfilled. distance between inner life and the outside world increases. Soon the soul is no longer able to make connections. In contrast to this, healthy development soul always leads to wholeness. Qualities can develop, which helps us to get answers to external and internal matters.
Art provides us with a special opportunity to support spiritual development, being in the area where all three spiritual qualities are combined in creativity. Creativity breeds enthusiasm. And ideas develop from this. As soon as an image appears, feelings weigh what exactly needs to be done to embody it. Then necessary actions complete the implementation of the idea. Essentially, all forms of art follow this path.
What place does painting take next to drawing forms or plasticizing (clay modeling)? The main thing in drawing forms is to catch the movement: swift or light, made by hand, foot or whole body. The downward movement expressed by a line is the essence of drawing shapes. A line is a frozen movement, in other words, it is a path of movement. The life of the lines takes place in a one-dimensional world. The lines become clearly visible, contrasting with the paper. So we can use the rich tones of crayons, chalk or pencils in drawing shapes. Color in this area does not play a role. The eye must be allowed to follow the movement freely, without obstruction. We choose to describe verbs rather than nouns, which are too fixative and often evoke fixed images. The words "fall asleep" or "wake up" give the student more than the word "spiral". We are now talking about an internal movement that generates an external one. Verbs tend to emphasize the process, the path taken.
Painting introduces us to a two-dimensional space, to the depth created by various color effects. Colors create space through their pure action. A suitable term for this is "color perspective". In order to view drawings from this point of view, certain eye exercises are required. Establishing connections between light and line seems very easy, and darkness is also needed to create space. Among the works classical artists XX century, you can find many examples of color perspective. They fought for a new way of thinking and rejected old traditions. The paintings became more "flat", and as a result, the interaction of colors became more expressive. Physically perceptible space gave way to a new alternative representation of reality. Blurred spots, fixed compositional schemes no longer play a role in their work. When looking at Cezanne's canvases, one notices that the objects painted are free from their surroundings due to the way colors have been used. They seem to be freed from the gravity of the earth, thus creating new reality in another dimension.
Here is how Steiner emphasizes the features of these paintings: “Deep penetration into colors, one way or another, dissipates, and the artistic approach today gives way to a distorted creativity. Today we prefer to paint, plastically forming three-dimensional figures of people on canvases. For this purpose, a spatial perspective was developed, which, in general, appeared in the 5th post-Atlantic era and which, from its point of view, turns some objects into the background, and others into the foreground, while offering only spatial forms. All this initially rejects the most important material for the artist, since he creates on a flat surface, and not in space, and it is rather absurd to want to experience a thing in space, based on a flat material.
An art that truly needs physical space manifests itself in sculpture. Clay modeling - plasticizing is a world in which there are concepts of "front and back", "right and left", "top and bottom". Sculpture explores space and, in its development, gives itself to space. We can observe the sculpture from different points vision.
In the program of the free Waldorf school, we see that these three various ways interactions with space - through line, color and image - are presented in three separate courses of study: drawing forms, painting and sculpting. In high school high school these directions can, of course, be intertwined by all possible ways. But in the first three years of schooling, it is very important to separate these three areas and realize in which particular area the teacher is with the student now. Each of them meets specific needs, reflecting in its own way artistic processes. Therefore, it is very important to be vigilant, both when using color in drawing shapes, and when defining the area of the painterly in clay modeling. By working in clearly separated three areas, students will not tend to fill in the rest of the areas with color or start painting with a brush when drawing shapes. The combination of painting and drawing may be appropriate for certain purposes, but in a rhythmic weekly lesson, it is very important to first consider and discover all the possibilities of working with one-, two- and three-dimensional space.
Goethe, the great teacher in the field of knowledge life processes nature, draws our attention to his arguments about color in the following way: “Color is an elementary natural phenomenon intended for our vision; it expresses itself, like everything else, through separation and contrast, through mixing and uniting, intensification and separation, which is best observed and understood in relation to these basic natural formulas.
Goethe perceives the world of color as originating in "the deeds and sufferings of light." Thus, he builds the integrity of the world from light, darkness and "muddy environment" - a three-membered world with color in the center. In the "muddy environment", between light and darkness, colors appear. In his physics, he constantly returns to the concept of metamorphosis, polarity and intensification ("Steigerung", lit. - increase, increase, intensification). By this he expresses the processes that take place outside visible world, but which, however, determine the final manifestations in it.
Goethe distinguishes only two pure colors: blue and yellow. They are polar, which means that it is impossible to detect blue in pure yellow and vice versa. This discovery is the result of comparing what happens when clouded matter is in front of light and when illuminated matter is in front of darkness. When a cloudy environment permeated with light is in front of darkness, there appears blue-violet color. When the sun illuminates the earth's atmosphere, the blue color of the sky floats before the blackness of the universe. Yellow/red we can pick out from the sun when its light streams softly through the atmosphere during the day and is more obscured at sunrise or sunset. Yellow, orange and red, therefore, come from the activity of darkness before light, blue and violet from the work of light in darkness.
These two simple phenomena are the principles of Goethe's theory of color. By strengthening both processes, yellow-red and blue-red colors appear. When these two colors "shine" on each other, magenta is produced. When blue and yellow mix, green is formed, completing the circle. This color wheel arises from the development and interaction of colors, expressing the action vitality. In section 6 we will touch on this in more detail.
Goethe's starting point is that the role of darkness is just as great as the role of light. Light is the reason that objects are illuminated, after which we can observe them. In the discovery of Goethe's ancestral phenomenon, Steiner found confirmation of the idea of polarity in nature and man. All living beings combine opposites in themselves. These opposites constantly need to be balanced. Steiner goes even further in describing darkness, color and light as spiritual entities, based on phenomena in the field of physical and mental life, as well as human spirituality. Three separate forces work in the above order: light, darkness, and their balancing. This idea of tripartiteness can also be found in Aristotle. In red-yellow, light dominates darkness. In blue-violet - darkness dominates light. And in green - they are in balance. Goethe said correctly: "My theory of color is as old as the world." His understanding of nature builds a bridge between self-knowledge and knowledge of the world.
With Goethe, the most important thing is how he makes his observations and from where he draws his conclusions. His way of observation became a new method of research. He plunged headlong into reality, but did not meet there the ideas that Newton had. Newton considered colors as the scattering of light in the form of a fan. This represents all colors to be the same in quality, but in fact the difference is only in quantity (i.e., in the number of vibrations per second). Goethe opens the way to scientific, but not materialistic observation and consideration of colors. His theory of color forms the most important foundation of painting.
