This summer, "dopamine dressing" has become a fashion trend, which has been flooded on major social media. Bright yellow, berry red, fruit green, pink purple... It is best to dress yourself as a walking fruit platter. Dopamine dressing and the previous popular "old money style" and "intellectual style", in the principle of color matching is completely opposite, no longer restrained, simple, what is needed is to spend indiscriminately and gradually charm the eyes.
The term Dopamine Dressing comes from fashion psychologist Dawnn Karen's book Dress Your Best Life. She said in the book that in 2020, her whole state was in a slump, so she began to look for some ways to stimulate dopamine, and found that colorful clothing is a way to regulate emotions. Under this trend, everything can "dopamine". The packaging and advertising colors of coffee, milk tea, yogurt, sparkling water and other drinks have also been updated, making them more bright and bright.
There is indeed a close connection between brain responses and visual stimuli, but the associations caused by color are not fixed and are affected by various factors such as culture and technology. Our perception of color cannot be separated from a specific historical period and specific time, and is influenced by history, society, and technology. Connections are created and reinforced by pop culture and advertising. (For example, for infant clothes, boys are designed to be blue, while girls' are pink.) Visual choice is always a social issue. Color is an important part of the symbol system and plays a central role in history and religious lore, even regarding moral and code of conduct.
The distinction between colors varies from era to era. (For example, hazel, beige, brown, these duller natural colors that can be touched in daily life, centuries ago were symbols of poverty, but today they are low-key, temperamental embodiment, an intellectual must.) Some colors were invented even late, and there is no counterpart entity in nature. (Because the sources and properties of ancient pigments are very different, unlike synthetic pigments in the industrial era, it is easy to mix new colors.) ）
From the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution to the Internet Age, our relationship with color, our understanding and understanding of color are constantly changing. Italian design theorist Riccardo Falcinelli delved into the history of color and the philosophical trends and cultural changes behind it, writing Color: How Color Changes Our Vision. We will look critically at color along with his analysis.
Color: How Color Changes Our Vision, by Ricardo Falcinelli, translated by Li Sijia, Unread Artist, May 2023.
Constructed color harmony
What Falcinelli emphasized most in his book "Color" is construction: "Vision is a process of construction, and color exists only in our minds. For many other creatures, the familiar feeling doesn't even exist. For example, the red color seen by humans is another thing in the eyes of cats and dogs. So the various colors we are familiar with are constructed by the brain on the basis that the human eye can recognize.
Not only the color itself, but also the idea of color is constructed. On social media, you can always see the guidance of various clothing bloggers, and an important criterion for good clothing is harmonious color matching. Their most common theoretical basis is the basic color matching method of hue rings. These ideas don't really have a long history. Early 20th century. A group of influential color theorists have pushed the concept of color harmony to the extreme, which is respected by the fashion industry, designers and the media, which is the mainstream color concept we see today.
A still from the film The Devil Wears Prada (2006).
What exactly is Color Harmony? Why are some color combinations considered harmonious and some are not? Falcinelli recalls how, over the past two centuries, scientists, artists, and philosophers have theorized about color from their own perspectives, trying to induce universal rules for the quantity of colors and their combinations.
Art theorist Johannes ltten is one of them. Harmony was originally a concept in the field of music, and Eaton introduced it into color, using the syllables of music as an analogy to the brightness of color. Eaton believed that each color has its own specific brightness, and that different amounts of light should be able to achieve balance in a perfect composition to achieve harmony. For example, between complementary colors, there is both a philosophical balance and a mathematically accurate measure of brightness, so it is synonymous with beauty. Complementary colors are a harmony.
Eaton has a series of color contrast theories: chiaroscuro, solid color contrast, quality contrast, complementary color contrast, and so on. Although these theories still influence mainstream aesthetics today, they imply a risk of oversimplification. It was also pointed out at the time: "If people follow a certain rule and come up with a certain aesthetic theory, then we will eventually give up the richness of spirit or creativity." ”
Color Art: The Subjective Experience and Objective Principles of Color, by Johannes Eaton [Switzerland], translated by Yang Jimei, Beijing Science and Technology Press, July 2021.
So Falcinelli emphasized that when we say that a certain combination is more harmonious, we are actually saying that "according to the current fashion trend, this combination is more popular". These collocation suggestions and formulas are not an essential, conclusive, natural theory. Color itself does not follow these rules. Some color combinations are indeed more likable, meaningful, or emotionally resonant. But it is almost impossible to define which color combinations have such characteristics. Therefore, there is no absolute color harmony, and any color can be matched. It's just that different cultures have different preferences, such as the red and purple pairings common in Indian clothing, which are not popular in the British clothing tradition. And whether the color matching is harmonious will also be affected by the material, a good-looking clothing color is not necessarily suitable for the home environment, and the color of a painting is not necessarily suitable for the video game interface.
Artists often break these color rules and use colors boldly. Because they tell stories with color. These impactful color matching will bring new matching trends because of interpretation and communication. So if you're matching clothes primarily to make no mistakes, you might as well be guided by color harmony; If you want to express yourself and express yourself, you can challenge it all. Falcinelli says that many times, a beautiful color combination doesn't follow the rules. "It's not harmony that's important, it's the ability to tell a story."
Art and Visual Perception, by Rudolf Arnheim, translated by Teng Shouyao, Sichuan People's Publishing House, June 2019.
How did the high-end sense of minimalist color matching come from
In addition to color harmony, we will often see a point of view: color moderation is a symbol of good taste. Falcinelli pointed out that for a long time in Europe and the United States, many people regarded color minimalism as an irrefutable truth and were accustomed to criticizing exaggerated colors. This view has been internalized in their thinking. How did this stereotype come about?
In terms of art, design and taste, temperance and abstinence have a long history. Many countries have issued bans on luxury at different times, matching the status hierarchy with the clothing and food they can enjoy, and must not trespass, restricting people's freedom to dress. Therefore, color has become synonymous with exaggeration, extravagance and waste, while colorlessness symbolizes moderation and integrity. Black and white are the most error-prone colors.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Protestants regarded temperance and abstinence as virtues, opposing luxury and waste, so they did not like the colorful clothing that Catholics in the Mediterranean were accustomed to wearing. The self-made new bourgeoisie, mostly Protestant, disdained the aristocratic dress, and black became synonymous with moral code and inner peace in their hearts. And at that time, dyeing black fabrics required complex craftsmanship and high costs, so black clothing was more favored by upstarts.
Falcinelli reminded that after the ban on luxury was broken, ordinary people had the freedom to dress, and until the end of the 19th century, they could wear clothes of various colors to funerals, as long as they were their best clothes. But because the elite all wore black, everyone wore black in order to appear to have an identity, and later it became the rule to wear black for funerals. With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, bourgeois ideology was further consolidated, and now black is also the standard color for formal occasions. The elegance emphasized by the old Qian Feng is inseparable from black, and Hepburn's little black dress has also become a model of clothing.
By the 20th century, consumerism was prevalent, and many intellectual elites lamented the impoverishment of people's spiritual world, so they often took a defensive stance towards popular culture and despised mass products. They believe that a wide variety of goods will degenerate people, and similarly, the colorful packaging and advertising brought by the variety of goods will further weaken people's sensitivity.
The movie Barbie (2023)
The De Stijl, represented by Mondrian, reduced the number of colors to only three and believed that morality should take precedence over beauty. Master builders like Le Corbusier were also extremely careful in their use of color. The elite's critique of color associates minimalist color matching with intellectual superiority. Rich colors are fancy and childish. Dwayne Cullen said wearing colored clothes reminded her of when she was a child. Perhaps this summer's dopamine craze implies a break from grace and moderation in pursuit of the most primitive pleasures.
"The Secret of Color", by Joan Ekstadt, translated by Shi Yajuan / Zhang Huiqin, People's Posts and Telecommunications Press, February 2022.
The association of color
It is also said that the reason why dopamine dressing brings happiness is because those bright colors are reminiscent of juicy thirst-quenching fruits, and they feel cool in summer. So the question is, red, why do we think of watermelon at some times and peppers at other times? The spicy burning sensation and the coolness of watermelon are the opposite. Falcinelli raises many similar questions, not to raise the bar, but to emphasize that the associations of color are diverse, not single, conclusive, and immutable.
He illustrates this with the concept of warm and cold colors. "In the modern visual language, the contrast between cold and warm is one of the most common and popular color techniques. In general, the division of cool and warm tones is almost conventional. Blue, cyan and some purples are cool colors, and green is basically classified as warm because of the presence of yellow. However, the matter is not so simple, the so-called warm and cold tones are actually using a metaphor or synesthetic association to associate a certain color with something that gives us a warm feeling, such as the sun or fire. But the limitations of this connection are far beyond our imagination.
People with a little common sense know that if you heat a piece of iron, it will first turn orange, turn yellow as the temperature rises, then turn white, and finally turn blue. So from a physical point of view, blue is warmer than red. For example, the blue flame of the gas stove is also hot. But this everyday experience doesn't have a shock to our preconceived ideas about color. We just generally think that red and yellow flames are hot.
But why is this association preferred over others? Falcinelli pointed out that a lot of effort has been invested in proving that the warmth and coolness of color is an unquestionable natural phenomenon. "The association between color and temperature is a very traditional fact, and the blindness to the variety of icy oranges and boiling blues is the result of specific social and historical periods."
Falcinelli also thought that we define one red as warm because it can be contrasted with another red in the spectrum. (Modern science thinks of a color as a continuum of red to purple, containing all hues, and can be divided.) Without this overall interior contrast, cool and warm tones don't mean anything. We can't even associate with them.
In the Middle Ages, a distinction was also made between the relationships between colors. They don't know the color spectrum, but think that red and blue are warm colors because they are bright and eye-catching, while yellow is a cool color because it is similar to metallic colors. We are not fundamentally different from the optic nerve of the ancients, but the cold and warm colors divided are completely opposite.
People not only construct the associations brought by color, but also like to characterize the spiritual connotation of color. Goethe was the first to propose the spiritual connotation of color, opening the way for numerous medical hypotheses, which were often irrational. From Jungian therapy to Steiner's theory, from the Rorschach ink test to the Lucher color test, there are countless theories about color and its clinical efficacy in various fields. These theories have different levels of credibility, but what they all have in common is that they are both a mysterious concept of color and generalize things.
These theories like to essentialize the connotation of color. For example, the choice of color is linked to a deep psychological factor, and a simple and predictable model is used to analyze a person's emotional state and claim its cross-cultural value. According to Rorschach the idea that blue symbolizes belonging, yellow means change, green represents self-esteem, and each color has an exact corresponding meaning. Interestingly, these ideas are now scattered in various best-selling books and even marketing or design brochures.
A History of Art in Three Colours (2012)
In order to prove that red is more emotionally stimulating, subjects were asked to enter a room painted red and painted blue, respectively. The heartbeat and skin microcirculation activity in different rooms are then compared. It was found that in the red room, the subjects' heartbeat was faster and the skin microcirculation was more active, proving that red was more exciting.
Falcinelli thought the experiments were unreliable, and it didn't specify what red and blue the room was painted. And the feeling that color conveys to us is related to the environment, not to the hue. "It's disgusting to see rusty liquid gushing out of a faucet, even though it's at the same wavelength as a beautiful sunset." The rapid heartbeat may be caused by the red color causing the vision to shrink and feel that the enclosed space is tight. When you walk in the autumn woods and are surrounded by the orange and red of the fallen leaves, you will feel relaxed instead of irritating. So the simple assertion that red is exciting and that red is more aggressive than blue is an overly broad and unfounded generalization that cannot be perfectly explained.
Pantone color card.
Facinelli argues that behind these studies of the impact of color on human psychology lies an older and more difficult question: "Does color have a universal, supracultural connotation, or even an innate meaning?" He thought not. For example, white can be used in some places because it symbolizes purity; In some places, it can also be used for funerals because it symbolizes white bones. For example, until the 19th century, the idea that pink belonged to men was deeply rooted. Because pink is a weakened version of red, red symbolizes masculinity, masculinity; And the sky blue belongs to the girl, because it is a tribute to the Virgin. Today, Barbie has long been bound to pink, making pink a favorite of girls. Boys who like pink will even be laughed at.
A History of Art in Three Colours (2012)
Color is a tool of the mind
It is these myths, stereotypes, legends and preferences about color that together make up the color picture we see today. Some associations of color go beyond our own experience, such as the fact that the earth is blue. In 1961, until Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, saw the Earth in its entirety, no one thought it was blue. (This blue color comes from the atmosphere that surrounds Earth, not because of the largest ocean on Earth.) In the past, descriptions of the Earth were mostly brown or green, but not blue. It is now a well-known fact that the earth is blue, just as blood is red and grass is green. It's just that this is what we see through the media, but that sense of realism is like what we see with our own eyes.
A History of Art in Three Colours (2012)
Falcinelli believes that technology and commerce have accelerated the spread and standardization of color, which is a new feature of modern society. "Now, almost all colors exist in our minds through the medium of technology. Thus, color is no longer merely a sensory experience or a characteristic of things, but as a psychological category that coexists with the way it is produced, transmitted and presented. ”
Because of this, we have many ideas about color that are completely different from those of ancient times.
For example, solid colors. Falcinelli writes: "The concept of pure color is perhaps the most important peculiarity of modern society. We are so used to this concept that we can't even imagine that it doesn't have a long history. Because before the advent of synthetic pigments and various materials with smooth surfaces, pure colors were almost technically impossible. Ancient wooden furniture, dirt walls, cloth, paper, lacquerware... No surface is smooth and flat. Before the birth of modern chemistry, pigments were all-natural, and the effect of each modulation was not exactly the same, and it was impossible to color uniformly like the industrial era. (There are three main sources: dirt containing certain minerals, charcoal that can be ground into powder, and gemstones; animals, shells and insects; The sap of the plant. There are also some colors that come from the combination of animals and plants: the urine of cows that eat the leaves of the mango tree, after drying to form a yellow powder has a strong dyeing ability, which is the famous Indian yellow. ）
A History of Art in Three Colours (2012)
Today's daily necessities commonly used plastics, decorative acrylic materials, construction tiles, etc. have smooth surfaces. Pigments are standardized and have uniform purity, so making pure colors is incredibly simple. Pure color, a concept brought about by industrial standardized production, has also changed the way we see the world forever.
Enlarge and contrast the sky of medieval paintings with the sky in today's comics, it is not difficult to find that the former is rich in layers of hue and full of delicate changes, which need to be carefully observed; The latter is a solid color visible at a glance, and every color is equally uniform. "Pure color is never a trivial matter, in the world we live in, the unity of color is a rare case, just look at the sky and flowers around you. Stones, land, plants all have endless variety of colors. In short, industrialization has turned solid colors from exception to habit, and even to the standard by which we judge everything. ”
For example, for the ancients, color was always associated with specific objects, such as tables that could only be brown. And for us, color is abstract. In the Middle Ages, the most important thing about color was durability, and for us today, the most important thing about color is diversity. Because modern people can synthesize countless colors in the laboratory and dye various objects as they like, this also gives us the ability to control colors. Color can be separated from concrete things and considered as an abstract concept.
"In this day and age, color can even become popular without the concrete. But this is not the truth of color, just a fragment of human development. At some point in history, industry decided the priority of color. For example, some colors are more basic than others, and even turn this idea into a natural property. This also shows how much technology affects ideas, and can even make people mistakenly think that a certain idea is the truth. ”
The philosopher Emilio Garroni made an analogy that people who know the world by perceiving their environment are like insects in amber from which they cannot escape. The environment filters and determines what we can see. This environment is extremely important: if there is no amber, then insects are no longer fossils, and we lose our identity. Garoni said: "We are inside the filter and see the world through the filter. "This filter is the sum of history, society, and technology.
Falcinelli also stressed that he does not deny the importance of the discovery of tricolor, the Pantone system, the Newtonian prism, the discovery of cones or fashion trends. He wants people to understand how today's way of thinking is formed, and that if they can't get rid of filters (and maybe don't need to), they at least know that filters exist. "This is also a key point of modern color theory: the only freedom we have is to observe and know that we are observing."
According to Falcinelli, the common feature of color theory in the industrial age is the attempt to rationalize color. That is, to make the human perspective unified, predictable, and even try to tame it. "Current art and design is dominated by two color models. A kind of art education and psychology from the modern West, the main representatives include Eton, Albers and Arnheim, from which the color knowledge taught in Western schools originates; The other comes from neuroscience and is growing in influence. He believes that while both color models are important, neither seems to be able to fully interpret the complexity of color. Art education explores the meaning and role of color in works of art, focusing on the inner nature of the work. Neuroscience, on the other hand, shifts its attention from art to the brain, arguing that the meaning of color resides in the observer's mind. But in both theories, society and history, two key factors in understanding art, are ignored. The limitation of both theories is that visual perception is considered as a separate phenomenon. In fact, when we observe a certain color, it must be done at a specific time and on a specific occasion. And time and place can even change the way we think. ”
Falcinelli encourages people to understand color with critical thinking. At the end of the book, he calls on designers, directors, artists, conservators, photographers, illustrators, museum curators, journalists, and teachers to take on the responsibility of shaping the future. "Calling 'sky blue' the 'pop color of the year' can certainly be a useful attempt to illustrate the human ability to abstract color concepts, but it can also be just a botched marketing ploy." It depends on the thickness of our minds, whether we know the meaning of what we do, and what makes human beings, especially as citizens, human. ”
Author / Lotus
Editor/Wang Han
Proofreader/Liu Baoqing