Our emotions are colour coded. Love is red, so is anger. Envy is green, so is generosity. Sadness is blue, so is tranquility. As is the case with so much in life, the paradoxical is often the most comfortable truth in the end. Blue is universally a favourite colour for humans worldwide, although it is also the sad colour, this last colour to appear in the human annals of history. Blue. As the rarest colour to appear spontaneously in nature, its elusive and ephemeral quality make it mystical, rare, and, as such, quite valuable. Only 8 percent of the global population have blue eyes. I must know most of them.
The “wine dark sea” of Homer’s Ancient Greek musings excites linguists excessively. (Scholars aren’t actually sure if Homer existed, but if he did, it was in the 9th century BCE. Or the 8th.) We know the Ancient Greeks did not have a word for the colour blue. It is conspicuous in its absence from Ancient Mandarin, Greek and Sanskrit. Only in Ancient Egypt did a word for the colour blue evolve relatively early. Across cultures, blue is the last to appear. Colour categories vary as vastly as the local cuisine; think Beijing duck compared to liver and onions. Both are ostensibly food, yet the quality and enjoyment of both is encultured.
It’s fun to take a look at the theories about colour through the ages, or those that have been preserved at least, and imagine those poor people trying to figure out stuff that seems so basic to us now.
We stand upon the shoulders of giants. Forgetful giants, who play loose and fast with time and attributions, as we shall see.
What is colour has been a fascinating question since time immemorial.
Ancient Greek poet, Homer, and his ilk, did not have a word for blue, but they could see blue things, obviously. The world wasn’t a different colour back then. The Ancient Greeks defined colour by shade or tint more than by hue, so their categories ran from dark to light. This means we have to shift our linguistic paradigm to understand how this and other descriptions from that time might paint a wine dark, or indeed the “purple” sea of Cicero.
Aristotle wrote an entire tome on colour, named aptly, “On Colours”. At least, they are fairly sure that Aristotle wrote it. Or maybe Theophrastus. Or Strato.
“On Colours” rejects the previous notion that “fiery rays” emanated from the eyes and then bounced back off objects in the line of sight. If so, argued Aristotle, then we would all have super-spy-movie night vision. He also rejected the notion that objects themselves beamed emanations at the eye, because when the eye was closed, it could not sense the colour when the object was pressed against it. So many questions…
Aristotle decided that colour must be sent down by the gods from the celestial rays. These he helpfully divided into four categories, earth, fire, water and earth.
Suddenly, Homer’s wine dark sea doesn’t seem quite so out there.
Here in The Middle Kingdom, the exquisite Ming Vases, (circa 1368- 1644) with their delicate blue scenes of life, lore, legend have secured their place in the popular conscience as the epitome of elegance in porcelain, or “china”, as it is also known.
However, it must be noted that this style of porcelain first appeared in the earlier Tang and Song dynasties, from 619CE onwards, and was much improved by the superior glazing techniques of the later 17th century Qing Dynasty. so the world renowned white and blue vases ascribed to the Ming are more a matter of luck than anything else.
What we can know with a greater degree of certainty is that here in Nanjing, Emperor Yongle was so impressed with the exquisite porcelain that he had an entire pagoda built in the 15th century to celebrate its beauty.
A replica still stands to this day, The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, perfect for a leisurely wander in the extreme ends of the temperature scale of our city.
Other attempts to copy this delicate “china” are akin to the “Expectation vs Reality” videos so popular on social media these days. This beautiful blue captured hearts and minds worldwide, and potters outside of Middle Earth strove to replicate the ephemeral quality of the Ming porcelain, with little success.
Elsewhere, Da Vinci, Leonardo, was the first recorded person to say, “Yes, but…” to Aristotle’s best effort on the why’s and wherefores’ of colour. In 1651, Polymath, “jack-of-all-trades”, genius, Da Vinci, wrote an entire treatise on colour, probably one afternoon when it was raining outside. Whilst surely understanding the Aristotelian perspective, he explored the necessity of both light and darkness in his paintings, ultimately rejecting the premise that white was the catalyst for all colour and black was its absolute absence. Da Vinci dismissed the binary, and opted for the spectrum, though that word is most widely associated with our next fearless champion in the colour conundrum.
The problem of what colour actually WAS still remained.
Sir Isaac Newton finally smashed it when he identified the ROYGBIV colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet) messing around with sunlight and prisms at home in Lincolnshire, UK, in the 1660’s.
After what must have been an enjoyable hyperfocus warp drive, Sir Issac was happy to definitively declare that there are seven colours on the human visible spectrum, and went outside for a nap under an apple tree.
As Sir Issac said “if the Sun’s Light consisted of but one sort of Rays, there would be but one Colour in the whole World”. Though not as compelling as Aristotle’s laser eye colour sensors, it is in many ways a more valuable perspective.
The rainbow used to have five colours until 1704, when Sir Isaac added indigo and orange because he had a fondness for the number seven. Blue didn’t used to exist. In some languages, it still doesn’t.
The history of colour is riddled with best guesses and brave “Yes, buts”. Colour, like knowledge, is subjective, malleable, subject to interpretation.
Blue was now widely perceived and catalogued in many languages.
But actually, there are no pure colours in the rainbow or anywhere. It is a spectrum through which light is refracted and then transmitted to the brain through the retina’s rods and cones and the optic nerve, as far as we know.
Spectrums are my favourite things. We have spectrums of personality, gender, emotions, mood, taste. What was true yesterday may not be true tomorrow.
It may not even be true five minutes from now. Blue used to be wine dark, or green. We are only ever a better guess away from deeper understanding of our world.
Who knows what other colours are out there, waiting for us to be ready, and able to comprehend them.
Embrace the spectrums!
