エコノミスト・エスプレッソの土曜の記事は芸術関係のものを集めたもの。一番楽しいものである。今日の冒頭は紫の歴史という面白い話。引用している Journal of Cognition and Culture の記事も読んだ。基本は、19世紀の印象派の絵画による利用とともに、紫 violet を使うさまざまな芸術作品が増えたという議論である。印象派が描く海の静謐さを語り、それによって色彩の短い波長の問題を語り、楽しそうだから読んでおく。
この議論を日本人に話すとしたら、「聖徳太子の紫」の議論が必ず出てくると思う。これについては、赤っぽいヴァイオレットと青っぽいパープルは別の色彩だという議論がはさまれている。もしかしたら日本人が査読についた時に出たのかもしれない（笑）
論文は公開になっているのでどうぞ！
Tager, Allen. "Why Was the Color Violet Rarely Used by Artists before the 1860s?" vol. 18, no. 3-4, 2018, p. 262, doi:https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340030.
Although the color violet is now used in a wide variety of everyday products, ranging from toys to clothing to cars, and although it now appears commonly in artistic works, violet was rarely used in fine art before the early 1860s. The color violet only became an integral part of modern culture and life with the rise of the French Impressionists. I investigated the use of violet in over 130,000 artworks prior to 1863 and found that it appeared in about .06 percent of the paintings. Violet was used substantially more frequently in Impressionist works, and remains popular in fine art and in popular culture today. I examine several explanations for the explosion of the use of violet in the art world during the Impressionist era, and conclude that a cognitive-perceptual explanation, based on the heightened sensitivity of the Impressionists to short wavelengths, may account for it. The findings fit with a new understanding about evolutionary changes in planetary light and human adaptation to light.
This paper examines a curious phenomenon: Until the time of the Impressionists in the mid-nineteenth century, works of art (though they contained color combinations and shades covering the rest of the spectrum) did not contain the color violet. After this time violet became much more popular and remains so today. There is no prior examination of this topic that I am aware of, and there are no other colors that I know of that experienced such a dramatic shift in usage in artwork over such a short period of time. The finding itself is interesting, and potential explanations for it relate broadly to principles of optics, neuroscience, biology, astrobiology, cognitive science, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and culture.
The color violet itself must be differentiated from a closely-related color, purple, which has been used abundantly in fine art. Although the two colors may seem similar to many viewers, from the point of view of optics, there are important differences. Violet is a spectral color with its own set of wavelengths on the spectrum of visible light. Purple on the other hand is a polychromatic color, made by combining blue and red. Purple is reddish and belongs to the red family of colors, whereas violet is bluish and belongs to blue family of colors.
