Perception of Color Quotes

If artists do see fields blue they are deranged, and should go to an asylum. If they only pretend to see them blue, they are criminals and should go to prison.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

Grey is a colour that always seems on the eve of changing to some other colour.

Some of us come on earth seeing – some of us come on earth seeing color.

We never really perceive what color is physically!

We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.

There is no criterion by which to recognize what is a color, except that it is one of our colors.

Colour could give rise to sensations which would interfere with our conception of space.

Colour as perceived by us is a function of three independent variables at least three are I think sufficient, but time will show if I thrive.

The word "Blue" does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the power of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not a man left on the face of the earth.

I wouldn't know what to do with [colour]. Colour to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a colour, the more dreamy it gets… Black has depth. It's like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.

We think of color as a thing that we’re receiving. And if you go into one of the Skyspaces, you can see that it’s possible to change the color of the sky. Now, I obviously don’t change the color of the sky, but I changed the context of vision.

Color is sensitivity in material form, substance in its purest form.

Whether something 'has color' or not is as hard to define verbally as are such questions as, 'What is music?' or 'What is musical?

Colour is always a consequence, never a cause.

If one says “Red” (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.

But surely, speaking carefully, we do not sense 'red' and 'blue' any more than 'resemblance' (or 'qualities' any more than 'relations'): we sense something of which we might say, if we wished to talk about it, that 'this is red.'

It seems obvious that colors vary according to lights, because when any color is placed in the shade, it appears to be different from the same color which is located in light. Shade makes color dark, whereas light makes color bright where it strikes.

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty.

Every perception of color is an illusion, we do not see colors as they really are. In our perception they alter one another.

Color must be thought, imagined, dreamed.

They say no one knows if we all see red the same way. Except traffic cops.

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.

I am curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.