Color Harmony  3

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THE color

Each autumn sumacs display their leaves in a dazzling palette, competing with birches and maples. Days later, the Color is gone. Like the deep blue of an October sky or the warm orange of a winter fire, it is impossible to hold, perhaps color's ephemeral nature motivated early humans to search out ways to possess it. They watched their fires blacken cave ceilings, daubed walls with red and yellow ocher, experimented with shells, insects, flowers, roots, and bark.

ON THE NATURE OF COLOR

Philosophers, artists, mystics, and scientists have long debated the nature of color. For more than a thousand years India's astrologers have taught that the sun's white light is composed of all colors. Personified as the deity Surya, the sun is the single source of life and ruler of eight other celestial bodies. The bodies each transmit one pure color to Earth, affecting the destiny of every living creature.

The colors are associated with gemstones: cat's-eye, hessonite, coral, sapphire, pearl, emerald, yellow sapphire, diamond, and ruby. Examples are set out above at Jantar Mantar, the 18th century  astronomical observatory at Jaipur.

In the Western tradition Aristotle's belief that all colors are created by mixing black and white prevailed well into the 17th century. Even Leonardo da Vinci could not decide the question, declaring at different times that there were six primary colors, or eight. In 1613 Jesuit teacher francois d'Aguilon declared that there were three primary colors: red, yellow and blue, which together with white and black could be combined to make all colors.

"In the begining of the year 1666... I procured me a Triangular glasse Prisme, to try therewith the Celebrated phaenemeana of Colours," wrote Sir Isaac Newton in   1672, when making public his "New Theory about Light and Colours". By intercepting a beam of sunlight with a prism, Newton proved that white light was composed of all visible colors of the spectrum and could be recombined back into white light. His ideas helped launch the era of modern optics.