Spirit of Colors: The Art of Karl Gerstner

"I cannot see why sensation should be less precise than thought. The scientist designs conceptual models, the artist perceptual models." -Karl Gerstner Color is Gerstner's essential medium. In this book, he presents the pure sensation of color with great precision. He explores color physically, sumptuously, yet with cool, formal clarity in the book's seventy color plates. He also pursues the subject of color historically and psychologically in a series of essays, citing examples from Aristotle to Andreas Speiser, from Goethe to Max Luscher; theories and speculations about the character and employment of color and form. His notes and observations are often couched in a poetic, aphoristic manner: "Kandinsky: in general, then, color is a means of exercising a direct influence on the soul. The color is the piano key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano key with all its strings." "Albers: if one says 'red' and 50 persons are listening to him, they will be imagining 50 reds. And no doubt: all these reds will be very different." "Goethe worked in his green room. In the blue one he welcomed guests he didn't like. So that they would leave soon." The essays include: The Spirit of Color: TheFarbenlehre of Goethe; Conception-Perception: Fifteen Aspects to a Sentence of Max Bill; The Precision of Sensation;and Is Constructive Art at an End? Or its beginning?The illustrations include the "Color Sounds," the "Color Forms," and the "Color Lines."