Color Perception in Art

The most vital recent information on the relationship of visual perception to color expression in art is presented here in clear detail. Faber Birren, one of the best-known colorists of our time, prepares us for what he believes will be a new era of color expression. Pioneered by gestalt psychology many secrets of the brain are rapidly being discovered, resulting in creative new principles of color. The book is divided into three sections. First the history of nineteenth-and twentieth-century color expression is traced from Turner through Impressionism to Op Art. Next the parallel history of color theory is covered. Finally, the new concepts and interpretations of illumination, color constancy, adaptation, and the Law of Field Size, which created a revolution in the possibilities of color expression in art and their aesthetic implications, are discussed. These sections are supplemented by numerous black and white photographs of representative paintings, explanatory line drawings and the abstract, geometric color plates themselves-of the incomparable beauty and quality that are the hallmark of Faber Birren.