( Prime - page 31 of 32 )

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PRIME:  APPENDIX II

        Click here to return to page 23.   Georges-Pierre Seurat‘s reference to "a notion of primary colour"  (footnote 14.) ,  previously established by Thomas Young ,  in a letter to Maurice Beaubourg, dated 28 August 1890, translated into English:

Aesthetic

Art is harmony. Are many is the analogue of contrary and similar qualities in tone, colour and line, considered with reference to a dominant and under the influence of the scheme of liking in happy, calm or sad combinations.

The contraries are:

In tone, a (more luminous/lighter) against a darker.

In colour, the complementaries; that is, a particular red set against its complementary, etc. (red - green; orange - blue; yellow - Violet).

In line, those that form a right angle.

Gaiety of tone results from a luminous dominant; of colour, from a warm dominant; of line, from angles above the horizontal.

Calmness of tone results from a balance of dark and light; of colour, from a balance of warm and cold; of line, from a horizontal.

Sadness of tone results from a dark dominant; of colour, from a cold dominant; of line, from angles below the horizontal.

 

Technical

Assuming the phenomena of the duration of a light - impression on the retina.

Synthesis necessarily follows. The means of expression is the optical mixture of terms and colours (local colour and the colour of the source of illumination: sunlight, lamplight, gaslight, etc.), that is of lights and reactions against light (shadows), in accordance with the law of contrast, gradation and irradiation.

The frame is in a harmony that opposes those of the tones, colours and lines of the picture.

                                     

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