GREEN DUSK FOR DREAMING

““‘GREEN DUSK FOR DREAMING BRAND PURE NORTHERN AIR,’” he read. “‘Derived from the atmosphere of the white Arctic in the spring of 1900, and mixed with the wind from the Hudson Valley in the month of April, 1910, and containing particles of dust seen shining in the sunset of one day in the meadows around Grinnell, Iowa, when a cool air rose to be captured from a lake and a little creek and a natural spring.’””

—Ray Bradbury, from Dandelion Wine, 1953.

the yellow of them

“And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the panting, dripping mouths.”

—Ray Bradbury, from The Veldt, 1950.

a black pattern on a white background

“It was painted a very bright red, an odd color, I thought, for anything in space. There was some lettering on the side—apparently in English, though I couldn’t make out the words at this distance. As the projectile slowly revolved, a black pattern on a white background came into view. . . .

Clearly painted on the side of the slowly approaching missile was the symbol of death—the skull and crossbones.”

—Arthur C. Clarke, Islands in the Sky, 1952.

sorrow and screaming and melancholy and decay

“His use of colour is above all lyrical. He feels colours and he reveals his feelings through colours; he does not see them in isolation. He does not just see yellow, red and blue and violet; he sees sorrow and screaming and melancholy and decay.”

—Sigbjorn Obstfelder, on Edvard Munch, 1893; quoted by John Gage in Color in Art, 2006. Pictured above is The Lonely Ones (Two Human Beings), an Edvard Munch woodcut print from 1899.

‘unnameable’ or ‘indefinable’ colours

“Van Gogh and Seurat occasionally spoke of ‘unnameable’ or ‘indefinable’ colours, which suggests how much the spread of colour-order systems in the late nineteenth century had led to the expectation that colours could indeed be defined. . . . The indefinable colours were of special interest to Gauguin, who was careful to avoid the strong contrasts of his friend Van Gogh, and who specifically exploited secondary and tertiary hues in the interest of what he called ‘enigma.’”

—John Gage, from Color in Art, 2006.

bright colours

“In childhood [a man] loves bright colours and perceives them in their pure form—yellow, red, green, blue. This . . . is characteristic for all children, both in the town and in the country: their consciousness seems to be on the same level. The only difference we may note is that town children more often use pure colour from the darker end of the spectrum than village children.”

—Kazimir Malevich, (1878-1935); quoted in Color in Art, by John Gage, 2006.

painting the sun

“I am painting the sun, which is nothing but pure painting.”

—Robert Delaunay, April 1913; quoted in Color in Art, by John Gage, 2006.

early holograms

“The possibility of producing light of a single wavelength (coherent light) by means of the laser, developed in the 1960s, made it possible for the first time to produce on a flat surface images of considerable depth. Coherent light is, of course, monochromatic, and all early holograms were likewise monochromatic, usually recorded and replayed with light of the longer wavelengths, red or yellow. But in 1969 the American holographer Stephen Benton devised a method for recording all the spectral colours in a single hologram, which he called the ‘Rainbow Hologram’, and it is this type, which can only represent a relatively shallow space, that is familiar to us from banknotes or credit cards.”

—John Gage, from Color in Art, 2006.

the pool ablaze

“I came to the shore of a waterway:
Dear God, what brave embellishment!

Embellishing those waters deep,
Banks of pure beryl greet my gaze;
Sweetly the eddies swirl and sweep
With a rest and a rush in murmuring phrase;
Stones in the stream their colors steep,
Gleaming like glass where sunbeam strays,
As stars, while men of the marshlands sleep,
Flash in winter from frosty space;
For every one was a gem to praise,
A sapphire or emerald opulent,
That seemed to set the pool ablaze,
So brilliant their embellishment.’

—the medieval Pearl, translated from the Middle English by Marie Borroff, 1977.

purchase your pearl

“‘I bid you turn from the world insane
And purchase your pearl immaculate.’”

—the medieval Pearl, translated from the Middle English by Marie Borroff, 1977.