In 1660 Sir Isaac Newton began experimenting with his ’celebrated phenomenon of colors.’ At the time, people thought that color was a mixture of light and darkness, and that prisms colored light. Newton set up a prism near his window, and projected a beautiful spectrum 22 feet onto the far wall. Further, to prove that the prism was not coloring the light, he refracted the light back together. Artists were fascinated by Newton’s clear demonstration that light alone was responsible for color. His most useful idea for artists was his conceptual arrangement of colors around the circumference of a circle, which allowed the painters’ primaries (red, yellow, blue) to be arranged opposite their complementary colors (e.g. red opposite green), as a way of denoting that each complementary would enhance the other’s effect through optical contrast.


Sir Isaac Newtons color wheel

There is a distinction between the behavior of light mixtures, called additive color, and the behavior of paint or ink or dye or pigment mixtures, called subtractive color. This difference arises because the absorption of light by material substances follows different rules from the perception of light by the eye. Contemporary color theory must address the expanded range of media created by digital media and print management systems, which substantially expand the range of imaging systems and viewing contexts in which color can be used. For example; Projected systems such as televisions and computer monitors use an additive system known as RGB for Red, Green, and Blue (not unlike newton's original concept).

Reflected systems, such as printers use a subtractive system known as CMYK for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. The artists' color theory with primary colors of Red Yellow and Blue was adapted to primary colors most effective in inks or photographic dyes: cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY). Dark colors are supplemented by a black ink. In both printing and photography, white is provided by the color of the paper.

Color psychology is the study of color as a determinant of human behavior. Colors often have different meanings in various cultures. And even in Western societies, the meanings of various colors have changed over the years. But today, researchers have generally found that certain qualities of emotion can universally be attributed to specific colors.

Mark Rothko was a New York Painter who became interested in the interactions between colors. By directly staining the canvas with many thin washes of pigment and paying particular attention to the edges where the fields interact, he achieved the effect of light radiating from the image itself. This technique suited Rothko's metaphysical aims: to offer painting as a doorway into purely spiritual realms, making it as immaterial and evocative as music, and to directly communicate the most essential, raw forms of human emotion.