You can have those bright colours in Mexico, in Nice, in California and so on. The sun makes them hum and vibrate. It doesn't work like that in Northern Europe. You can't impose simple bright colour on us and expect it to have the same effect under different light and cloud conditions
This + luka's point about accretion.So like the letters of the alphabet, colours are useful for communication because they don’t have (too much) inherent meaning. They only acquire it through context, in combination with other aesthetic factors and senses
This made me think of how our point of vision is determined by the aim of the head (primarily) and the aim of the eye (secondarily), and how the former "contains" the latter. Not sure how well I can word this, but I see a similarity in that it involves a primary, general aim ("blue") and then a secondary, specific aim within that ("blue-grey").i remember having posted this before but it is relevant to the topic and quite wonderful:
Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of Ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-sea-was-never-blue
This article draws attention to a straightforward color-based correspondence between the seven seals and the celestial bodies of the planetary week, a correlation which hitherto seems to have gone unremarked.
A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue : vowels, I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins: A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies Which buzz around cruel smells, Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents, Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley; I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips In anger or in the raptures of penitence; U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas, The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads; O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds, Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels: O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes! |