Leonardo

The International Colour Association (A.I.C.) Study Group on Colour EducationAuthor(s): Albert GarrettSource: Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1981), pp. 33-34Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574476 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 14, pp. 33-34. Pergamon Press, 1981. Printed in Great Britain.

THE INTERNATIONAL COLOUR ASSOCIATION (A.I.C.) STUDY GROUP ON COLOUR EDUCATION

Albert Garrett*

The International Colour Association (A.I.C.) is sup- ported by colour organizations in its member countries, a list of which has been provided in Leonardo [1]. (A more up-to-date list of member countries is given in Ref. 2.) Three Congresses on colour have been orga- nized by the A.I.C. (Stockholm, 1969; York, England, 1973 [1]; Troy, N.Y., U.S.A., 1977 [3]); the next one will take place in West Berlin in 1981. At the Congres- ses research papers were read and discussed on various aspects of colour in science, art and industry. Following the Congresses, books were published containing the survey lectures and abstracts of the papers presented [2, 4,5].

Recently the A.I.C. set up a Study Group on Colour Education, of which the chairman is J. Schanda of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The purpose of the Group is to collect information on the teaching of colour and to disseminate information useful to teachers at levels from elementary school to university and professional instruction.

At the Group's August 1979 meeting in Tokyo, the concensus was that colour education should be started now at elementary and secondary school levels and at teachers training colleges. It was also suggested that an international meeting, with demonstrations, on colour education be organized for attendance by teachers at all levels and that the resulting papers be read at the Colour 81 Congress. It was emphasized that instruction on colour, including that at the elementary level, should reflect accurately the pertinent present-day sci- entific knowledge on colour. Such instruction in elementary education would comprise part of educa- tion in general science, where the aim is to inform children about the world as well as to equip them better for living in it. The fact that colour science is only part of the subject of colour that is of concern to humans should not be overlooked. Aspects such as colour harmony in the general domain of aesthetics are of fundamental importance in the visual arts and in human experience in general.

At the 1979 Study Group meeting, a scientist pointed out that secondary school physics books need to be examined critically to determine whether discussions of colour conform to scientific facts. Many art books contain passages on colour that violate present knowl- edge. Obsolete notions continue to be repeated, errors abound and there are serious omissions.

It should be pointed out, however, that there are increasingly numerous instances, in the domain of art

*Artist and teacher, 10 Sunningdale Ave., Eastcote, Ruislip, Middlesex, HA4 9SR, England. (Received 21 Dec. 1979)

for example, where authors are recognizing current knowledge of colour. In his book The Materials and Techniques of Painting, Kurt Wehlte presents a short, but reliable, account of colour [6]. Worthy of recogni- tion is Color Theory: A Guide to Information Sources, M. Buckley and D. Baum, eds., which has been prepared for artists, art scholars and art librarians [7]. More recently George Agoston's book Color Theory and Its Application in Art and Design was published as part (No. 19) of the Springer Series in Optical Sciences [8]. Important technical discussions on colour are pub- lished in Leonardo; prominent examples are Irides- cence by W. D. Wright [9], Optical Society of America (OAS) Uniform Color Scale Samples by Dorothy Nick- erson [10] and From Contrast to Assimilation: In Art and in the Eye by Dorothea Jameson and Leo M. Hurwich [11].

The progress in colour science made during the past 50 years has been stimulated by the urgent require- ments of technology and commerce. There are aspects of colour science that are pertinent in the visual arts, design and architecture, and some important technical contributions to the knowledge of colour have been made with artists as intended benefactors. But this knowledge has in the past not reached artists. This is an example of the gulf between the visual arts and science that attempts are being made to bridge. An article on this situation as regards colour science by Jonathan C. Fish will appear in a forthcoming issue of Leonardo [12].

Another participant in the Study Group pointed out that the main reason for the gulf between the visual arts and colour science is the lack of adequate com- munication between artists and scientists. Improved colour education and adoption of the internationally standardized colour terminology will help to bridge the gulf. I expect that designers, in particular, will reap the benefits of colour science in the near future. Visual artists, who deal more subjectively with colour, will probably take longer to reap the benefits. Those artists concerned in particular with innovations involving col- our would be well advised to make the necessary efforts to become acquainted with pertinent aspects of colour science. Also art historians, aestheticians and critics who deal with interpretations of artworks need to realize that an understanding of colour science is necessary in order to dispel 'some of the mysteries of visual perception' and to shed 'light on some of the effects produced in contemporary art and that of the past' [11].

Those interested in the results of the 1979 Study Group meeting should write to its Chairman, Dr. J. Schanda, Research Institute for Technical Physics,

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Albert Garrett

Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 76, Budapest, H-1325, Hungary.

References

1. A. Garrett, Report on Colour 73, Second Congress of the International Colour Association (AIC), Leonardo 7, 243 (1974).

2. F. W. Billmeyer, Jr. and G. Wyzecki, eds., Color 77: Proceedings of the 3rd Congress of the International Colour Association, Troy, N. Y., 1977 (Bristol, England: Adam Hilger, 1978).

3. A. Garrett, Report on Color 77, Third Congress of the International Colour Association (AIC), Leonardo 11, 41 (1978).

4. Color 69 : Tagungsbericht Internationale Farbtagung, Stockholm, 1969 (Gottingen: Musterschmidt-Verlag,

1970). 5. Colour 73: Second Congress of the International Colour

Association, York, July 1973 (London: Adam Hilger, 1973).

6. K. Wehlte, The Materials and Techniques of Painting, U. Dix, trans. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975).

7. M. Buckley and D. Baum, eds., Color Theory: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research, 1975).

8. G. A. Agoston, Color Theory and Its Application in Art and Design (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1979).

9. W. D. Wright, Iridescence, Leonardo 7, 325 (1974). 10. D. Nickerson, Optical Society of America (OSA) Uni-

form Color Scale Samples, Leonardo 12, 206 (1979). 11. D. Jameson and L. M. Hurvich, From Contrast to

Assimilation: In Art and in the Eye, Leonardo 8, 125(1975).

12. J. C. Fish, Colour as Sensation in Visual Art and in Science. (To appear in Leonardo in 1981).

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