All those colors! Johannes Itten (1888-1967) was a german Bauhaus artist who was also a mystic interested in esoteric doctrines. He spent his life meditating on colors, trying to decode the spiritual meaning and order of colors using color wheels and diagrams. His book The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color explores the philosophical and even religious meaning of colors.
In this video you can see the Itten’s color wheel developing from the primary colors to the secondary colors of first order, to the secondary colors of secondary order.
Colors are frequencies seen by the eye. When we see them, we actually see a code embedded in the world. In the psychedelic experience we often experience colors more vividly than usually, experiencing them as entities engulfing us in this world. This brings us closer’s to Itten’s ideas of penetrating the world of colors and appreciating visual perception for what it is – an act of mystic concentration.
For this reason I find Itten’s work to be very psychedelic. Enjoy!
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