The Secret Lives Of Color Quotes
"I fell in love with colors in the way most people fall in love: while concentrating on something else."
"That worst and vilest of all colors, pea-green!"
"I don’t believe there are 'off-putting' colors."
"Color is fundamental to our experience of the world around us."
"What we are really seeing when we look at, say, a ripe tomato or green paint, is light being reflected off the surface of that object and into our eyes."
"A metaphysical debate over whether colors really, physically exist or are only internal manifestations has raged since the seventeenth century."
"The squall of dismay and confusion over the blue and black (or was it white and gold?) dress in 2015 shows how uncomfortable we are with the ambiguity."
"Until then it had been assumed that the rainbow that pours out of a prism in the path of a beam of light was created by impurities in the glass."
"Because colors exist as much in the cultural realm as they do physically, such attempts are somewhat Sisyphean."
"Color was a distraction from the true glories of art: line and form."
"Anyone who requires proof that gold is the color of desire need only see the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, immortalized by Gustav Klimt in 1907."
"Gold has always been both the color of reverence and revered itself."
"Cloth of gold—fabric woven from threads with a core of silk or linen wrapped in gold—had been around since Roman times."
"The natural counterpoint to our desire for and devotion to gold is its tendency to bring out our baser instincts: greed, envy, and avarice."
"The fruit was probably first cultivated in China, and then gradually spread west, leaving its name scattered in its wake."
"Orange is used in traffic signage and warning symbols on roads, in part because it forms a high contrast against the blue-gray asphalt, even in low light."
"The idea behind such "nude" undergarments was presumably that they would be less visible through diaphanous fabrics."
"Pink is for girls and blue is for boys; the evidence is everywhere."
"It is believed that people first began dyeing cloth sometime between the sixth and fourth millennia B.C."
"As the color of blood, red is also strongly associated with power."
"Again it lifted the front of its body into the air and, hissing loudly, disappeared into the underbrush."
"The belief was that elephants had cooling blood and dragons, during the dry season, craved something cool to slake their thirst."
"For a start, no animals of any kind, even mythological, are harmed in the production of dragon’s blood."
"It does not," Mr. Field concluded sternly, "merit the attention of the artist."
"I think it pisses God off," Shug says, "if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it."
"The belief that purple is special, and signifies power, is surprisingly widespread."
"It was the purple for which the Roman fasces and axes clear a way."
"Purple has always been a greedy consumer of resources."
"For these reasons we must pardon the mad desire for purple."
"The colors in question were the aniline dyes, a family of synthetic colorants produced from sticky, black coal tar."
"The first synthetic aniline to be created was the startlingly purple mauve."
"Quinine, the only known treatment, was extracted from the bark of a particular South American tree and cost a fortune."
"Soon enough, though, mauve went into that most Victorian of things: a decline."
"The cult of mourning reached its zenith during the nineteenth century."
"Clyde Keeler, an American geneticist studying the eyes of blind mice, had made discoveries that indicated Miró might be on to something."
"Westerners have a history of undervaluing all things blue."
"From the Middle Ages the pigment most commonly associated with Mary was the precious pigment ultramarine."
"The oldest examples of lapis being used as a pigment are found in a small number of fifth-century wall paintings."
"The reasons for all this fuss were both practical and emotional."
"This is the purple for which the Roman fasces and axes clear a way."
"The piles of shells discarded millennia ago are so large they have become geographical features."
"Color can be found in the most unpromising of places."
"The rewards, though, were the colors produced at the end."
"Malaria was rife in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."
"In the first few months of 1856 Perkin’s experiments with coal tar resulted in a reddish powder."
"The Bahia was heaved from the beryllium-rich earth of northeastern Brazil by a prospector in 2001."
"This one, however, was gargantuan. The whole lump weighed 840 pounds and was thought to contain a Kryptonite-green gem of 180,000 carats."
"Housed in a warehouse in New Orleans in 2005, the Bahia narrowly escaped the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina."
"It was listed on eBay in 2007 for a starting price of $18.9 million and a 'buy-it-now' price of $75 million."
"The story of the Bahia emerald is, in short, a parable of avarice worthy of the Bard himself."
"It is well known that the only people more proud of their Irish heritage than the Irish are the Americans of Irish descent."
"Everything known about the saint comes from the man himself: 'My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers.'"
"The shift in Irish loyalty from St. Patrick’s blue to green is convoluted."
"In 1775 Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a Swedish scientist, was studying the element arsenic when he came across the compound copper arsenite."
"Over 18 months working as an artificial-flower maker, Matilda Scheurer rapidly sickened and finally died in November 1861 at age 19."
"Scheele had known from the beginning that his eponymous pigment was poisonous."
"The inaugural Earth Day was celebrated on April 22 the following year."
"The island of St. Helena lies like a lost seed in the middle of the Atlantic, 1,200 miles west of Africa and 2,500 miles east of South America."
"It was here that the British decreed that Napoleon should be sent in October 1815 after his defeat at Waterloo."
"Although his physician had initially suspected stomach cancer, when Napoleon’s body was exhumed in 1840 it was found to be curiously well preserved."
"The island’s walls were papered with a verdant design containing Scheele’s green, the rumor spread that the British had poisoned their difficult prisoner."
"Reading treatises and manuals by early artists, it is hard not to think that they often faced a Sisyphean struggle to create works of lasting beauty."
"Pigments were often mercurial, reacting badly with other pigments or changing color over time."
"If a pigment were found that was inexpensive, relatively plentiful, completely stable, and in a color where there were very few other options, that pigment would be in high demand."
"The drawback is their low tinting strength, but they are all very permanent and stable, rather transparent."
"Terre verte really came into its own, however, when artists discovered that it was perfect for shading the pale pinky-red of European skin."
"In February 1969 the beaches of Santa Barbara, California, turned black."
"Several days earlier, an oil well 6 miles off the coast had ruptured."
"The Santa Barbara spill marked a turning point in the way the world, and particularly the United States, perceived the globe and its fragility."
"Over the next decade the environmental health of the world loomed increasingly large in the public consciousness."
"In 1969 the beaches of Santa Barbara turned black, marking a turning point in environmental consciousness."
"It was during this period that the color green became the shorthand for nature."
"Honoré d’Urfé led a dramatic life. He was imprisoned for his political beliefs, lived much of his life as an exile in Savoy."
"It was perhaps this surfeit of intrigue that led him to write the nostalgic, meandering L’Astrée."
"Céladon, a lovelorn shepherd, was on a futile quest to win back his lover Astrée after a misunderstanding."
"Céladon was firmly linked with a particular woodland-fog color."
"The Chinese had been making celadon objects for centuries before d’Urfé’s hero sprang into being."
"Pieces are usually fired at just under 2,100°F degrees, and oxygen levels are dramatically reduced midway through."
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken."
"It is not only the color of the earth to which we will one day return, but also mud, filth, refuse, and shit."
"Iron oxides, known as ochers, are some of the most common compounds on the earth’s surface."
"The artistic period most associated with browns, and which valued them most for their own sake, came after the first flush of the Renaissance."
"Anthony van Dyck, a Dutch artist active in the first half of the seventeenth century, was so skilled with one pigment—cassel earth."
"The British Color Council began working on a standardized catalog for colors, complete with dyed silk ribbons."
"Albert Henry Munsell, an American artist and teacher, had been working on a way of three-dimensionally mapping color since the 1880s."
"Colors were hard to pin down; they could change name over time, or the shade associated with a name might morph alarmingly."
"What wasn’t mentioned was that Britain was behind the curve."
"One color that vexed both sets of researchers was taupe."
"Taupe is actually a French word, meaning 'mole.'"
"However, while the color of a mole was, by broad consensus, 'a deep gray on the cold side,' taupe was all over the place."
"The BCC’s assumption was that the confusion was due to ignorant English-speakers not realizing that taupe and mole were different words for the same thing."
"Beloved by the makeup and bridal industries, it is roomy enough to contain a plethora of pastel brown-grays."
"If only these intrepid color cartographers had taken all the lessons of Samuel Johnson’s great enterprise to heart."
"Johnson, even as he set down definitions next to words in his dictionary in 1755, was realistic enough to appreciate the ultimate futility of his task."
"This rueful reflection from his preface could just as easily apply to colors: 'sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride.'"
"The higher education of men is what I should like to see. Men need it so sadly."
"The early history of lead pigments and cosmetics in China."
"The glowing green mineral malachite is also formed of copper carbonate."
"Nature, Origin, and Variation of Human Pigmentation."
"The ‘black Nyx,’ described as 'black-winged' or 'sable-vestured'."