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I was sitting at my desk in drafting class when
the public address system crackled to life with
the saddest announcement I had ever heard, “President
Kennedy has been shot.” My father knows what
he was doing December 7th, 1941. Many landmark events
have joined our communal recollection. Culturally,
these common memories help define a society. Smaller
images can also find their way into our cultural
identity.
Some universal experiences are so tiny as to seem
completely insignificant, babyish. Those first memories
which each of us own from babyhood are at best flashes
and fragments. These remembrances are only relatively
unique, so similar to those of others because each
of us undergoes a similar epic journey. Early childhood
flashbacks represent postcards we have mailed to
ourselves from a strange land we did not know we
weren’t just visiting. Each of us was too
busy, at the time, learning the language, sampling
the cuisine, and sitting on a potty to put postage
on many cards. My stack of old postcards is thin
and faded. I have images that tap into simple pleasures,
like Grandma’s hugs and homemade bread, and
others that visit fear and loss.
My childhood memories and my dreams today are like
old television, black and white. In my dreams colored
bits appear to highlight the important or ironic.
Yet two rare early childhood Technicolor memories
stand out.
Each is from a Little Golden Book. I am certain
the images have a lasting impression because they
do not represent single events, but frequent imprinting
of these particular images. I recall the image of
a yellow duckling sitting on a raft eating a stack
of pancakes. I can see and taste the golden maple
syrup, the melting butter, too. The duck is wearing
a red sleeping cap, flopped to the side, with a
fuzzy ball on the tip.
The other reminiscence, more meaningful to my life
as an artist, is an abstract river of paint spilling
from buckets. Red, blue, green, yellow, and purple
swirling together to make all the colors in the
world. I don’t know what story the duckling
is in. But I will always remember the origin of
that river of paint.
That image is from The COLOR KITTENS, a 1949 classic
Little Golden Book, written by Margaret Wise Brown
and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen. Many
others share this memory. The image of paint flowing
from the buckets is much smaller than the Mona Lisa,
itself a surprisingly small painting for all its
renown. But the impact of the Color Kittens’
dumped paint cans upon the memories of a generation
or more of Americans is surprisingly large. Many
have chosen to follow in the paw prints of the kittens.
My mother called today. I asked if she knew which
was the earliest book I might remember. Mom said,
“That’s too easy: The Color Kittens”.
It was almost as if she could read my mind. I asked
her if she remembered buying the book for me. She
had. It meant something to her, too. She said it
was my very first book, joking that she gave it
to me on my twentieth birthday. She bought the book
for me at the grocery store when I was not quite
three.
Perhaps the book meant something to you, too. Maybe
you have it in your library. If you do, you might
want to go locate it. To refresh your memory of
the story, the color kittens, Hush and Brush, wanted
to make green paint. By trial and error they mixed
one primary color with another and observed, comparing
the resulting product to a range of natural objects
of known colors. For instance, after mixing blue
with red they saw it made the same color as plums
and Impressionist shadows: purple. To their eyes
yellow and red blended into a mixture that looked
like both oranges and bumblebees.
By process of elimination they eventually produced
the color they most craved, a green that fulfilled
all their color fantasies. The final page shows
six overturned paint cans, creating every color
in the world.
The gentle story gave reason and structure to the
wonderful illustrations by Alice and Martin Provensen.
But as cute as the kittens were, I found myself
fascinated, while a child, and all the more appreciative
today, by the details. The illustrations go beyond
the elementary use of color. The text may reveal
the recipe for mixing simple colors, but the actual
illustrations bring us into a greater, more magical
world.
In an invisible subscript, not narrated by Margaret
Wise Brown, the Provensens reveal highly sophisticated
color juxtapositions in rows of buildings and examples
of applied color theory. Simultaneous contrast,
putting complementary colors together for mutual
enhancement or to visually underscore a point, are
employed throughout.
The Provensens place Purple plums in yellow bowls,
and a monochromatic green study is punctuated by
a pink pennant, echoing Hush’s pink neckerchief.
Examine the rows of houses and notice how the fences
which tie one house to another are of lighter value
between deeper houses, and deeper value between
lighter structures.
The color choices may look random, but are informed.
The purple pages show a special fondness the Provensens
must have had for this color. They have devoted
two of the most interesting pages in the book to
looking at purple in a minor and major role. The
two pages are side by side. In the first we see
the kittens sitting on orange chairs at an orange
table with a mint green table cloth. On the table
is a cobalt blue vase filled with lilacs. Three
yellow bowls contain the purple plums. The color
scheme employs secondary colors, green - orange
- purple, with more green and orange than purple
plums. But the trick of setting the plums off against
its complementary, yellow, focuses our eyes on the
purple.
In effect the Provensens demonstrate that one needn’t
be hit over the head with color to make a point.
The opposite page illustrates the opposing situation.
Purple monopolizes the page, in the form of an extremely
large and interestingly shaped shadow. That the
shadow is purple owes much to impressionism. It
breaks the perception for young readers that shadows
are grey, subtly demonstrating, by placing a yellow
orange sun in the late afternoon sky how the phenomenon
is constructed.
Interestingly, compared to the previous page’s
spare use of purple, the overwhelming use of purple
on this page serves to emphasize the bank of paint
factory buildings and smoke stacks. The row of buildings
is arranged neither in a rainbow nor random set
of colors, but as two minor compositional groups.
One cluster is made of primary colors: red, yellow,
blue. The other, a secondary color composition,
including the powerful shadow, is separated from
the primary color group by the water tower structure.
The purple shadow unites both minor compositions.
The real tour de force remains the famous puddle
of spilt paint.
I wondered what it might be like to revisit the
story with an adult eye and the knowledge of the
commercial application of color theory. In the next
issue I will offer a tongue-in-cheek sequel of the
next generation of the famous felines of paint flinging.
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