Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Jo Baer's "Mach Bands"

In an earlier blog on Jess Collins, I remarked that Jess began his career in chemistry. I have a self-serving interest in identifying artists with science or math training. I recently found the web version of Aspen, a multimedia magazine of the arts published from 1965 to 1971. In issue 8 from 1970-71, is an article by Jo Baer, "Mach Bands". (Also see Ernst Mach and Mach Bands.) Baer's writing on color is much more technical than say Walter Darby Bannard's "Color, Paint and Present-Day Painting", and I think more factual than Interaction of Color, by Josef Albers. Checking Baer's background, I see that she majored in biology at the University of Washington. She also did graduate work in physiological psychology at the New School for Social Research in New York. That puts her at the top of my list of artists with rigorous training, along with Jess.

I've no way to tie the content of this particular blog to one of my images, so here's just a couple of gratuitous images from my on-going animation series.



No comments: