Colour People Interview
Harald Küppers
Harald Liebedank Küppers became internationally known through his colour theory. The colour space of the rhombohedron developed by him is a mathematical and geometrical explanation of the regularity of vision. Küppers developed numerous models and demonstration tools for colour theory, including a set of coordinated opaque paints (Schmincke gouache), which are used in school lessons to demonstrate the laws of colour mixing.
Küppers is not a dry theoretician, but comes from practical experience. As the owner of a repro company, he was confronted with colour-related issues on a daily basis. His publications are also understandable for the layman and absolutely worth reading - Küppers describes the essence of his colour theory in inimitable conciseness, and he is by no means sparing with criticism of other approaches or his critics.
Küppers lives in Langen near Frankfurt. The visit to his house showed that someone here is fully committed to the subject of colour. Küppers is also an active artist and owns many colour treasures, including an original of Goethe's Theory of Colours.
Questions for Harald Küppers
Mr Küppers, what is your favourite colour and why?
My favourite colours are a rich May green and a bright orange, often in combination with each other. These preference colours are contrasted by neutral grey and black as my rejection colours. Black as a clothing colour has its important justification in the service sector, of course. The black clothing of waiters and orchestra musicians signals that these people are taking a back seat to their tasks. However, the fact that young, dynamic people dress in black from top to bottom is an astonishing fact for me.
How did you come to the subject of colour?
I learned the profession of chemigrapher. Chemigraphy is the production of artwork for letterpress printing. After my apprenticeship, I trained as a colour etcher. A colour etcher made the clichés for multi-colour printing. The desire to understand the interrelationships of how the variety of all colours can be created from the three colourful basic colours yellow, magenta and cyan blue by printing them together confronted me with colour theory.
Later I completed an engineering degree in printing techniques. As a topic for my diploma thesis I chose a comparative study of existing colour classification systems, such as Runge's colour sphere, Oswald's double cone, Hickthier's colour cube or the DIN 6164 system. In the process I came to the realisation that all these systems were imperfect attempts at solutions, industry theories based on professional experience. I realised that these systems represented parts of the truth, but were not the whole truth. I came to the realisation that a superordinate colour theory was missing, a theory that explained all forms of colour formation, colour mixing and colour perception.
As a successful entrepreneur, I could afford it both in terms of time and money, so I systematically learned everything there is to learn about colour. I systematically worked through the fields of physiology, physics, colourimetry, colour mixing, chemistry, psychology and aesthetics. I came to the surprising conclusion that there had certainly never been a person who knew as much about colour as I did and that it was therefore my life's work to establish a new, a superior theory of colour.
The question you asked me about how I came to the subject of colour has been put to me many, many times. That is why I have taken on the work of writing an autobiography (Ich bekenne Farbe, DuMont 2011). In it, I tell in detail how the new colour theory came about.
How does the rhombohedron system that you invented and developed differ from other systems for organising colour diversity?
Other systems of order have other references. The systems of Runge, Oswald and Munsell refer to the behaviour of stains. The DIN 6164 system refers to the composition of the colour stimulus, to its analysis. My Rhombohedron system, on the other hand, refers to the functional principle of the visual organ. In the rhombohedron, the three sensory forces of the visual organ, orange-red, green and violet-blue (RGB), become the three vectors through which the colour space is built up according to the law of the parallelogram of forces. I am convinced that this principle of the organ of sight is the basic law of colour theory.
What do you think about colour teaching in schools? How could it be improved?
I think it is particularly important that colour theory is taught in general education schools. But that is already the case today. Küppers colour theory is already part of the curricula in various federal states. One can only hope that in the foreseeable future nothing wrong will be taught in schools (Itten). For it will be all the more difficult for those concerned later to replace what they have learned incorrectly with what is correct.
How do you implement your colour theory on the computer? Where do I find RGB, Lab or CMYK colour values?
This is a question that does not concern me. I have established a basic theory on which every industry can build.
How is the public acceptance of your new colour theory?
The acceptance is huge. And internationally. The total circulation of my books in German alone is now well over 200,000 copies. Some books have been translated into English, French, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. My five-language homepage www.kuepperscolor.de, which is available to users free of charge, is accessed over 100,000 times a month. My new colour theory has been included in the framework guidelines for teaching in general education schools in various federal states.
And what about the old, widespread colour teachings by Goethe and Itten?
That is an interesting question. I take as an example the realisation that the earth is not a disc but a sphere. It took decades, if not centuries, until this realisation was generally accepted (also by the church). The problem with colour theory is the following: Professors at teacher training colleges teach what they themselves have been taught. They are not obliged to continue their education. They often don't have the time to do so because they write books, give lectures and write reports. So they teach what they have learned themselves. The enforcement of new knowledge is dependent on the initiative of individuals who no longer want to be responsible for passing on provably false learning content to the learners. This can lead to absurd situations that actually occur today: In exams, subjects have to give an answer that they know is wrong in order to get a good grade. This is because the new findings of colour theory have not yet made their way to the members of the examination board. There are still teachers, authors and artists today who refer to Goethe or to Itten. Maybe we just have to wait until these die-hards die out.
Thank you very much for this interview, Mr Küppers.
The questions were asked by Holger Everding.
Further information
...you will find under http://www.kuepperscolor.de.