Re: [Phys-l] experiments with dyes (was: happy equinox)

[Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net>]

	No such claim was made.   In fact I don't understand what the fuss is  
about?   In Larry's article he quotes several sources as saying that  
they were substituting the words red and blue for magenta and cyan  
becasue I guess these words are more familiar to children and the  
general public.  Maybe a poor choice of words, but these sources had  
cyan and magenta in parenthesis next to the common terms.   Look at  
your printer's color cassettes... cyan, magenta, photo cyan, photo  
magenta, black and yellow.  no red, no blue.  So, anyone replacing  
cassettes in a printer already knows this.    So, did the famous  
artists know about primary pigments?  probably...   but when they  
mixed them I'd bet they did it from experience more or less already  
having a result in mind.
	Claude Monet probably didn't say (out loud or to himself),  
"Hmmm...which of these are the primaries?"  and "What will I get if I  
mix this with that?"   Maybe in learning as a young man he did, but  
when he went to the Seine with his buddy Pierre Auguste, , he just did  
it and *voila*!      I would have liked to be there at the time and  
bought these guys a glass of wine!

	The Renoir Landscapes  exhibit was one of the best exhibitions I had  
ever seen.  My wife and I went three times (she went four times) and  
each time I learned more about painting in general, and impressionism  
in particular, not to mention the life and times of Renoir.   If the  
exhibit is still on the road and comes to a museum near you I highly  
recommend it!

Marty


On Mar 24, 2008, at 1:08 PM, Michael Porter wrote:

> On Mar 24, 2008, at 12:23 PM, Marty Weiss wrote:
> > Renoir ... must have known
> > a lot about color mixing and while he probably did not *think* about
> > primary colors, like an accomplished pianist does not *think* about
> > *how* to hit the chords on the written score, and race car drivers do
> > not have to *think& about the gears in their trtansmission, and the
> > like, he had to know what to mix to give him the shades he needed  
> > when
> > he went outside.
>
> No argument from me on that -- the suggestion that I took issue with
> was that Renoir et al were claiming that red, yellow, and blue
> specifically were the three primary colours.
>
> ---
> Michael Porter
> Colonel By Secondary School
> Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
>
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