Virtual Colour Museum

November 9, 2003 4:31 AM

The Virtual Colour Museumpresents Colour Order Systems in Art and Science: "a complete cultural history of colour", including illustrated explanations of 59 colour theories from antiquity to modern time, plus the significance of colours in various cultural systems (click the small images to enlarge), and a "virtual colour-space" dedicated to illustrating the spherical colour system construction of early 19th century painter Philipp Otto Runge. Walk this way >>
posted by taz (4 comments total)

More on Runge here. For more on color, see also the wonderful Causes of Color (which also examines Early Studies of Color), and the fascinating Color Matters with articles on "Color & the Brain", "Color & the Body", "Color Factoids", and much, much more (including a new page on color disasters).
posted by taz at 4:32 AM on November 9, 2003

Everything you need to understand color theory is lucidly explained in "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green" by Mike Wilcox.
posted by RavinDave at 4:49 AM on November 9, 2003

Nifty. Thanks Taz! I hope we can expect some tiles out of this.
posted by pomegranate at 5:27 AM on November 9, 2003

Great link, Taz. I'll be giving the web site name to my current art instructor. She is heavily into colour (even for an artist - some are more into things like form and balance) and will be beside herself with delight.

With the colour disaster link I was expecting something fashion-police related, but was pleasantly surprised to see it was about things like the bleaching of coral reefs and the uselessness of the U.S. government's terror alert system. Colour is very important to me, I've studied colour theory quite intensively - but the colour disaster page was a reminder that colour is bigger than what shirt looks good with what pants and that colour cues are so important to our interpretation of the world.

Imagine if we only saw things in black and white. Jeez, the only reason Hollywood got away with it was because they were filming people like Kate Hepburn.
posted by orange swan at 4:14 PM on November 9, 2003