You are a 19th century botanist, traveling through the Tropics to document the multicolored orchids found there. Unfortunately, specimens fade as they dry out, and paintings change color as they age. What to do? You create paint-by-number drawings that reference standard colors, so that scientists back home can recreate the vibrant colors seen in the field.
This was one of the insights discussed at the Princeton University Art Museum panel “Nature, Art, and the Subjectivity of Color” on October 10. Panel moderator and CST Associate Director Catherine Riihimaki led off with a quick overview of the driving questions: How and why is color produced in nature, how have various cultures made direct use of these natural colors in art, and how do humans depict the colorful natural world in illustrations and other artwork?
Cassie Stoddard, assistant professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, spoke about the biological mechanisms and evolutionary functionality of coloration in bird feathers and eggs. She drew a distinction between colors formed by pigments versus those formed by the structure of the feathers. She also noted that because bird vision includes a receptor for ultraviolet light, fully understanding how birds see each other is frustratingly impossible for her research group.
Bryan Just, Peter Jay Sharp, Class of 1952, curator and lecturer in the Art of the Ancient Americas, highlighted interesting use of color in Mayan art, particularly in the depiction of animals like the colorful quetzal. He showed works that highlighted the symbolic importance of animals in Mayan culture, as well as the challenge of capturing structural colors that are iridescent.
Elaine Ayers, former Princeton postdoc and current assistant professor of Museum Studies at New York University, recounted the challenges of capturing color in botanical illustrations. She then generalized to the ubiquitous challenge of defining colors throughout the last few hundred years, and pointed the audience to an online interactive tool of the 1821 guidebook, “Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours” (https://www.c82.net/werner/#intro).
The creation and use of color have changed dramatically with the development of artificial dyes and pigments with the spread of petroleum refining in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. What remains is the elusiveness and joy of defining and understanding color.