The Elements of Color

A series of quotes and paraphrases from The Elements of Color by Johannes Itten.

• He who wants to become a master of color must see, feel, and experience each individual color in its many endless combinations with all other colors.
• If you, unknowing, are able to create masterpieces in color, then un-knowledge is your way. But if you are unable to create masterpieces in color out of your unknowledge, then you ought to look for knowledge.
• Doctrines and theories are best for weaker moments. In moments of strength, problems are solved intuitively, as if of themselves.
• We can be released from subjective bondage only through knowledge and awareness of objective principles.
• Colors are the children of light, and light is their mother.
• The neo-impressionists divided color areas into point elements. They affirmed that mixing pigments breaks the power of the colors. The dots of pure color were to become mingled only in the eye of the viewer.
• He used pure yellow, red, and blue, like weights, to construct paintings whose form and color coincide in the effect of static equilibrium.
• Colors are forces, radiant energies that affect us positively or negatively whether we are aware of it or not.
• The effects of colors should be experienced and understood, not only visually, but also psychologically and symbolically.
• Color aesthetics may be approached from these three directions: impression (visual), expression (emotional), and construction (symbolic).
• Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and immanent pressence. It affords utility to all, but unviels its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.
• Light waves are not in themselves colored. Color arises in the human eye and brain.
• A white square on a black background looks larger than a black square on a white background: the white reaches out whereas the black contracts.
• Once a theme is established the design must follow from it.
• If color is the primary means of expression then composition must begin with colour areas which determine the boundaries. You will not succeed if you draw lines first.
• Harmoney implies balance & symmetry of forces. It isn’t just similar shades - this is the popular conception of harmony.
• Looking at a green square results in us seeing red if we look away. The same is true of other complimentary color pairs.
• The human eye is satisfied only when the complimentary relationship is established.
• Medium grey generates a state of complete equilibrium.
• Mixing complimentary colours results in grey.
• Peoples love of certain colours reveals something about their interests – what their field of work may be.
• How people orient their colours is a clue to their mode of thought.
• Sharply bounded colour areas represent clear thinking, blurred or haphazard patches show emotion & sentimentality.
• A butcher shop may be decorated in green so that the meats look a brighter red and stand out more.
• Unless our color names correspond to precise ideas, no useful discussion of colors is possible. I must see my twelve ones as precisely as a musician hears the twelve tones of his chromatic scale.
• A heightened degree of order and truth can be obtained by constructing works upon logical, objective color principles.
• Cold colours make viewers feel cold. Warm colours make viewers feel warm.
• Yellow and purple have the strongest light dark contrast.
• Red-orange is the warmest and blue-green is the coldest.
• In the color circle, two diametrically opposed colors are complementary. If you take a tint of something its complement must be tinted to the same degree.
• Red is symbolically comparable to vitalized earth.
• Associated with Mars, red is bound to the burning worlds of war and demons.
• Blue is passive, contracted and introverted. It is associated with the nervous system as red is associated with blood.
• When violet is present in large areas it can be distinctly terrifying: a light of this kind cast upon a landscape, says Goethe, suggests the terrors of the end of the world.
• Where colours are placed in a composition is important.
• Low blue is heavy, high blue is dark.
• Dark red at the top acts as a heavy impending weight but at the bottom as a stable matter of fact.
• Yellow gives the effect of weightlessness at the top but of captive buoyancy at the bottom.
• Follow your intuition. Do no compose by rules.