In his 2022 book
The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, art historian James Fox clarifies the long-held misconception that colors are objective, physical properties of objects or of the light that bounced off them. "Even today," he explains, "science teachers regale their students with stories about Isaac Newton and his prism experiment, telling them how different wavelengths of light produce the rainbow of hues around us."
IMAGE CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION BY ELIA BARBIERI/THE GUARDIANBut as the art historian summarizes in a May 8, 2023 feature article for
The Guardian .com, this isn't the reality about the nature of colors at all: "Different wavelengths of light do exist independently of us but they only become colours inside our bodies. Colour is ultimately a neurological process whereby photons are detected by light-sensitive cells in our eyes, transformed into electrical signals and sent to our brain, where, in a series of complex calculations, our visual cortex converts them into 'colour.'”
Read in full art historian James Fox's "The big idea: why colour is in the eye of the beholder" in TheGuardian.com now!
