Birren, Faber. Principles of Color. New York: Litton Educational Publishing, 1969.
I found this book a little more interesting and much easier to read than Color and Human Response, also by Birren. This book explains the progression of color history and theory. Birren used color discoveries from past scientific experiments to back up his own theories on color.
The first half of the book is dedicated to the history of color research. This part of the book was very interesting and informative. I was surprised to see the many differences of opinion on the primary colors. Some color wheels had four primary colors instead of the three that we accept today as the norm. An example is Ewald Hering's color wheel of 1870. His color wheel had red, blue, green, and yellow as primary colors. He called these colors "primitive" or "principle" to human sensation. An example is orange might look like both red and yellow, while red and yellow do not look like orange. Another example is purple may look both red and blue, but red and blue do not look like purple.
The color triangle was used as an extension of the color circle. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German poet, considered blue and yellow to be primaries. He arranged his colors on a color triangle with the primaries; blue, red, and yellow at its points and the secondary colors; green, orange, and purple, along its sides.
The second half of the book is dedicated to Birren's own theories of color. One theory I found interesting was the value of light and dark colors and how they mix when tinted or shaded. An example is by mixing yellow and white to make a yellow tint and then violet and white. The yellow and white mixture will have a more pleasing effect on the eye than the violet and white that will have the result of dull lavender. This is also true with other dark pigments such as green, and blue. The rule is that the darker the color, the less it should be used for tinting. Work from yellow to violet, using only tints in the warm hues.
Birren also expanded on the ideas of Ewald Hering, who in 1878 devoted himself to a study of color and color vision. Hering centered his study around the facts of perception, not light rays or pigments. Hering also invented another triangle with a single pure hue at one point accompanied by black and white at the other two points. Hering wrote, 'If we imagine a clear red of a specific hue placed at one corner of a triangle, a completely pure white at the second corner, and a completely pure black at the third corner, then all possible transitions of red toward white, toward black, or toward gray could be plotted.' (p.48)
I found this book very helpful in my study of color. I'm hoping to locate a newer edition to purchase for my art library at home. This edition was printed in 1969 and does not have many color illustrations. To me, a book like this on color should have every page full of pigment that jumps out to the eye.
Faber Birren was born in Chicago in 1900. His artistic background includes working on the cycloramas of Gettysburg as a youth. He also studied at the Academie Julian in Paris. He was the founder and first president of the alumni association for the Art Institute of Chicago also spent two years at the University of Chicago. While attending the University of Chicago, he attended a course on color theory for art teachers and art supervisors conducted by a Chicago painter, Walter Sargent. This was the beginning of his interest in color and color theory. Since then, Birren has become the best-known color theorist of his time and has written over twenty books on the subject.