Colour classification is one of the many manifestations of our desire to order things. It’s not enough for something to be pink – because we love specificity – we must be clear about whether what we’re seeing is fuschia, watermelon or the oldest colour of them all, bright AKA the often dubbed, Barbie pink. Classifying these varying shades isn’t just a result of a nitpicky urge though, it’s evidence of our love for nature, art and history; terracotta gets its name from a long history of earthenware, and sage green is named after the leaves of the healing plant. In a new Taschen book, The Book of Colour Concepts, Alexandra Loske lays context to our long dance with visual stimuli and why we find the colours beneath so enticing.
When thinking about colour’s expansive history, Alexandra describes it as “an essential part of our intelligence” and “probably also our desire to control and understand the world around us”. But despite the yearly expansion of colour classification it is still a somewhat “intangible phenomenon”, she tells us. Throughout the book, the author presents a myriad of artworks and colour diagrams that themselves look like artworks. The colour diagrams were inspired by her early interest in the relative tool and why she began collecting charts, wheels and old paint boxes. “I think much of the appeal lies in the abstract quality of them, although some reveal their age through how they are made, labelled or decorated,” she adds. The art historian found the diagrams to have an underlying focus on colour filing squares, circles or segments of geometrical design, making the complex systems appear contemporary and “even timeless”.
For Alexandra, some particularly timeless colour systems include Patrick Syme’s colour charts and Moses Harris’ 18th century colour wheel that we’ve all become familiar with. “Syme’s Werner Nomenclature from 1814 because it’s simple and elegant, we can almost imagine creating something similar ourselves; the vividity of colour diagrams plays a part here, and is particularly effective in design, print culture and on screens,” she tells us. “And Harris’ wheels look great on social media or as a poster. Colour diagrams are well suited to the digital age,” she adds.
