Theatre Design & Technology - Dec 1974 - 11

Joseph Albers to see if I would respond to color as I
had before. Looking through the plates I found
myself experiencing the same reactions I'd previously experienced. Every trick of Albers was still valid.
The color that was supposed to look like another
color, because of its placement, did look like another
color. Every time two colors were supposed to look
like the same color, they did. In my own mind I had
returned to normal color vision.
From my Journal, April: I sometimes feel that my aesthetic
maturation has been almost a mirror image of the art history of
my time. I began school almost entirely concerned with
concept. I cared very little for technique. If an idea was new, if
the concept was original, it mattered little to me how it was
presented. I was shocked when I got out of school and, as an
assistant, had to put into practical terms the concepts of
someone else. Striving for technical excellence on behalf of
another's concept was a new and terribly difficult task for me.
Now, just as I am translating my own designs into works which
I feel are excellent both in concept and technique, my vision
forces me to be far more conscious of process than of overall
concept. Because I can't discern the brush stroke, the thickness
of line, the beauty of the pattern, all the small details that go
into fine technique, I have begun to value technique far more
than I ever did before.

Except for the ability to match colors, subjective
color perception is not measureable at this time.
Although color can be measured by a spectrometer,
the way each of us sees color is a subjective matter.
All one has to do to dramatically prove this is to ask
each member of a class to bring in a sample of the
reddest red, bluest blue, or yellowest yellow: the

epitome of red or blue or yellow. When all the
samples are viewed together, the wide range of
perceived primary reds, blues and yellows is obvious
and striking! True red means something different to
almost everyone. If this difference is noticeable with
primaries, imagine the range with more subtle tones
and with combinations.
From my Journal, May: Writing this makes me question the
ability of the theatre artist to create from his own experiences.
How much are we really creating from the experiences of
others? How much of the end result grows from the
experiences of many other people. Imagine any other art form
using second-hand inspiration.

I am left with several conclusions, none of which
is either new or original, but perhaps of interest
because they result from personal experience. I feel
that color perception is an individual phenomenon
which operates successfully for most people over a
comparatively wide range of actual spectral differences. I bel ieve that color preferences are caused not
on Iy by sociolog ical and psycholog ical factors but that
color preference and taste have a physiological basis
as well. As musicians may have perfect pitch, similar
visual abilities can exist. I feel that there may be
validity to the theory that some innovators in the
visual arts have "abnormalities" in color and form
perception that allow, or even force them to produce
work which astonishes the rest of us.
*

Design for The Saint of Bleecker Street, Baltimore Opera, Beeb Salzer, Designer, Frank Rizzo, Director. The renderings done with contact
lenses after cataract removal.

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

DECEMBER. 1974

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