| sculpture and recurrent use of the palette in his paintings are but two examples. |
| The palette holds colors in a natural order that bears a strong relation to the internal order of the work of art. Symmetry is not necessary, and the palette is not compelled to gather every possible hue. It has a complicated relationship with time. Technically, the mixing of tones on a palette gives them a priority over the tones that are transferred to the canvas, although there are moments on the canvas that are not necessarily tried out in advance on the palette. The palette can show the traces of previous work, stained into the surface but kept out of the mixing for the present work. It is, above all, not a system. |
| The spectrum cast by a prism is a different matter. Invariable, often a guide to color charts, paradigmatic because it is natural, the spectrum can be thought of as the "given" color table. Reproduced everywhere, in the facets of a crystal vase or in a rainbow, in the iridescent sheen of a bird's feathers or in a soap bubble, its ubiquity has made it synonymous with color. Its validity seems beyond question, but as a guide to an artist's color selection its helpfulness is limited. It has a tendency to compel the artist to use all of its colorsDelaunay's work is a case in point, along with the rainbows of Joyce, Pynchon, and John Hollanderin a full spectral array, generally in the "proper" order, which robs the work of a measure of spontaneity. |
| From spectrum to chart to palette, the variety of color arrangements is attributable to the different functions they perform and the different degrees of proximity they achieve to the real or ideal colors they are meant to represent. While the charts and spectrum may conform to the Farbmathematik ("color mathematic," a term used by Wittgenstein), the palette displays the essential performative qualities of color in action. Clearly, the analogy is closest to painting, but it serves the student of music (tone rows and pitch tables serve as precompositional models), of literature (the author's selection of a color code governs the patterns of a work), and of psychology (different schools tend to use different color tables). Much of this book is directed to the study of individual palettes, or the palette associated with single works, in an effort to show how signature colors perform. For example, few who were regulars at the New York City Ballet through the 1970s, devotees of George Balanchine's classicism, will ever forget the moment when the gold curtain of Lincoln Center's New York State Theater rose on the intense warm colors of Peter Martins's Ecstatic Orange, the first signal that the era of Balanchine's signature Greek sky-blue backdrop was over. |
| Nearly every major painter has a signature color or palette, from Vermeer's blue and lemon yellow to van Gogh's very different blues and |
|
