What does it mean for a color to be neutral? Does it lack hue or intensity? Is a neutral color one that “goes” with every other color, as in a pale tint? Or is a neutral only neutral if it visually recedes to set off other colors?
Artists, designers, scientists, and historians have debated these issues for decades, if not centuries, as they have observed how color “works” in fields ranging from visual art and design to psychology. Their answers have changed continually, as the notion of color neutrality is socially constructed. For if colors were truly neutral, they would lack meanings or referents. When it comes to color, context is everything — and ways of seeing are highly subjective.
By recognizing the subjectivity of color associations, we might appreciate even the social implications of presumed “neutral” colors in the world, like why pink, a hue more normative to white dancers, became a neutral in ballet (this stood unchallenged for three centuries until Arthur Mitchell of the Dance Theater of Harlem in the early 1970s matched the color of toe shoes and tights to dancers’ skin tones to create a continuous line of the leg).
Bauhaus artist Johannes Itten demonstrated the subjectivity of perceived color neutrality by surrounding neutral gray squares with strong colors. This arrangement naturally provokes in the eye a tinge of the surrounding color’s complement inside the gray square. Itten called this process “simultaneous contrast” and modification in his treatise on color systems developed in the 1920s. Even though gray’s neutrality could be influenced by colors placed next to it, gray was the best neutral, according to Itten — the mid-point between black and white, light and dark.
In recent years, interior designers have leaned toward common neutrals, such as beige or white walls and gray flooring in residential and business environments. They see this minimalist, “timeless,” and “calming” palette as the most inoffensive to prospective tenants and inhabitants. Yet this presumed neutrality is not so assured, as rental housing units have reportedly begun to elicit strong emotional reactions in prospective tenants who see gray flooring as drab and “soulless”—even a “deal-breaker,” per the Los Angeles Times, which recently dubbed this trend part of the “Apple-fication” of minimalist interior design.
If we look back in history, grays, whites, and blacks have long been inflected with meaningful associations. The ancient Greeks understood all colors as a mixture between white (light) and black (darkness due to the absence of light). Even when white and black came to represent not color but the absence of it during the late Middle Ages, both continued to be endowed with meanings. White was alternately associated with purity and death, while black could signify both the devil and the divine.
Gray also expressed multiple, sometimes contradictory meanings—all of which were not neutral. A gray aesthetic developed in the Latin churches of the 12th century built by the Cistercian order, which favored gray, black, and white (i.e. colorless) monochrome stained-glass windows. The medieval aesthetic, now referred to as grisaille, arose in Europe around developments in the study of optics and light. Grisaille became fashionable in manuscript paintings, particularly in elegant books made for the Burgundian dukes: Described as “blanc et noir” in the 14th and 15th centuries, grisaille paintings were often associated with the observance of Lent, the solemn period of prayer, penitence, fasting, and abstention. Figures painted in shades of gray on the outer wings of altarpieces, left closed prior to the celebration of Easter, denied viewers brilliant colors until the altarpiece was opened on that day. During the 14th and 15th century Europe, gray was also considered the color of life, hope, or even of love; and when compared to black, gray was viewed as the color of despair. Gray was the color of undyed wool, as well, and thus the color of humility, worn by the early Benedictine monks and the “Gray Friars.”
Historian of heraldry and color Michel Pastoureau has demonstrated how color meanings are neither constant nor absolute. Rather, he says, they are culturally determined, and colors are “always ambivalent.” In his six-volume, highly accessible series on the European history of color, Pastoureau asserts that color, in addition to being a material and visual phenomenon, is a highly social phenomenon. A society’s history, traditions, and physical environment determine its color meanings. Over time, earlier color meanings are replaced with different assumptions and beliefs.
Is it possible, then, to create a neutral color? If not, can different color combinations achieve neutrality?
Certainly, creatures in the natural world can create color neutrality through their variegated camouflage, like the sea star that changes coloration to blend into the coral under which it hides. This suggests that color neutrality is based on surrounding context.
Modern art conservators pursue something similar when they reconstruct areas of loss, particularly in wall paintings and polychrome sculptures meant to be seen from a distance. Through methods called trateggio or rigatino (“small line,” “dash,” or “hatching”), conservators of paintings utilize a combination of colors, based on the original hues in an area of loss, applied in very fine strokes to unfilled spaces or lacunae. These methods mimic the overall color tonality and value of the surrounding area. They rely upon the distance of the viewer to perceive only the continuation of the painting and not the edges or shape of the loss (which remain recognizable only when the surface is more closely inspected). The restored portion of the design thus merges optically with the colors surrounding the areas of loss, as the trateggio colors visually blend in the viewer’s eye to “complete” the design, creating a compatible neutral hue that becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the painting.
This practice of re-integration using trateggio suggests that color neutrality in art might best be expressed not by a single color like black, white, or gray, but through multiple hues used simultaneously and amalgamated through sight.
By considering such a multi-colored idea of neutral, we are reminded that there is never just one true way to look at neutrality. For any perceived color neutrality is best made and seen in the eye of the beholder.
Nancy K. Turner is conservator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, where she also researches the pigments and colorants used in manuscripts. She curated “The Alchemy of Color in Medieval Manuscripts” in 2016 at the Getty, and most recently co-curated the international loan exhibition “Lumen: The Art and Science of Light.”
Originally published on Zócalo Public Square. Primary Editor: Jackie Mansky | Secondary Editor: Sarah Rothbard
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