My aim in this introductory text is to present a comprehensible discussion of certain technical topics and recent developments in color science that I believe are of real interest to artists and designers. I treat a number of applications of this knowledge, for example in selection and use of colorants (pigments and dyes) and light. Early in the book I discuss what color is and what its characteristics are. This is followed by a chapter on pertinent aspects of light, light as the stimulus that causes the perception of color. Then the subject of the colors of opaque and transparent, nonfluorescent and fluorescent materials is taken up. There are sections on color matching, color mixture, and color primaries. Chapter 6 introduces the basic ideas that underlie the universal method (CIE) of color specification. Later chapters show how these ideas have been extended to serve other purposes such as systematic color naming, de termining complementary colors, mixing colored lights, and demonstrating the limitations of color gamuts of colorants. The Munsell and the Ostwald color systems and the Natural Colour System (Sweden) are explained, and the new Uniform Color Scales (Optical Society of America) are described. Color specification itself is a broad topic. The information presented here is relevant in art and design, for those who work with pigments and dyes or with products that contain them, such as paints, printing inks, plastics, glasses, mosaic tesserae, etc.

Without question, the tache (blot, patch, stain) is a central and recurring motif in nineteenth-century modernist painting. Manet's and the Impressionists? rejection of academic finish produced a surface where the strokes of paint were presented directly, as patches or blots, then indirectly as legible signs. C?nne, Seurat, and Signac painted exclusively with patches or dots. Through a series of close readings, this book looks at the tache as one of the most important features in nineteenth-century modernism. The tache is a potential meeting point between text and image and a pure trace of the artist?s body. Even though each manifestation of tacheism generates its own specific cultural effects, this book represents the first time a scholar has looked at tacheism as a hidden continuum within modern art. With a methodological framework drawn from the semiotics of text and image, the author introduces a much-needed fine-tuning to the classic terms index, symbol, and icon. The concept of the tache as a ?crossing? of sign-types enables finer distinctions and observations than have been available thus far within the Peircean tradition. The ?sign-crossing? theory opens onto the whole terrain of interaction between visual art, art criticism, literature, philosophy, and psychology.