Color is a Scam

Color is a Scam

Color is a Myth

It's all in your head

Color is the ultimate cosmic scam, but your brain is the one pulling the con. 

In physics, objects do not possess inherent color. A strawberry is not red, and the sky is not blue. The universe is a colorless landscape of matter interacting with electromagnetic radiation.
Here is why color is essentially a beautifully orchestrated biological illusion:

Your Brain Makes It All Up 

Color only exists inside your skull. When those reflected light waves hit your retina, they trigger three types of cone cells (tuned to red, green, and blue). These cells send electrical pulses to your brain. Your brain processes these signals and paints a conscious experience we call “color” so you can tell a ripe berry from a poisonous leaf. Outside of a conscious mind, color does not exist.

 

We Are Blind to Most of Reality

Human vision is incredibly limited. The visible light spectrum is a microscopic sliver—about 0.0035%—of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. We are completely blind to:

Ultraviolet light: Which bees use to see secret patterns on flowers.

Infrared light: Which pit vipers use to see the heat signatures of prey.

X-rays and Radio waves: Which pass right through or around us undetected.

If human color vision is a scam, animals are the whistleblowers exposing how much of reality we are actually missing.

The Mantis Shrimp (The Ultimate Color Snob)

Humans navigate the world using three types of color-receptive cones (red, green, and blue). The mantis shrimp possesses 12 to 16 different color receptors. They do not just see colors more intensely; they can see ultraviolet light, infrared light, and polarized light. To a mantis shrimp, a human eye is essentially colorblind. 

Mantis Shrimp can see cancerous cells (NPR)

Bees and Birds (The Secret Pattern Viewers)

Bees cannot see the color red, but they see ultraviolet (UV) light. Flowers have evolved secret, invisible ultraviolet patterns—like runway landing strips—that guide bees directly to the nectar. Birds also have a fourth cone for UV light, allowing them to spot camouflaged insects and fruits that look completely invisible to humans against green leaves.

The Dress (2015)

The internet nearly broke over whether a dress was blue and black or white and gold. This happened because of chromatic adaptation. 

The Setup: The photo was taken in ambiguous lighting.

The Trick: Some brains assumed the dress was illuminated by bright daylight, so they filtered out the blue light, seeing the dress as white and gold. Other brains assumed it was under warm, artificial indoor light, so they filtered out the gold, seeing it as blue and black.

Your brain made a split-second executive decision about the lighting source and altered your conscious reality to fit its assumption.

Color is not a static truth; it is a live, edited broadcast produced by your mind.

Read more about how cgk.ink designs with color, seen and unseen:

The Enduring Bauhaus: How It Shapes Our World

The Enduring Bauhaus: How It Shapes Our World


The Bauhaus school (1919–1933) is, arguably, the single most influential design movement of the 20th century. Its impact runs through virtually every discipline of modern design:

Core Philosophy

The Bauhaus broke down the hierarchy between “fine art” and “craft,” insisting that good design should unite beauty and function. The famous motto — form follows function — shaped how designers think about every object they make.

 

Typography & graphic design

Bauhaus experimented radically with sans-serif typefaces, grid systems, and asymmetric layouts. Designers like Herbert Bayer developed typefaces that stripped away decorative flourishes. You see this DNA in modern UI design, brand identity systems, and the clean sans-serif dominance of digital typography (think Helvetica, Futura, and their descendants).

Industrial & product design

Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel furniture, Marianne Brandt’s metalwork, and Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s lamp are still in production today. The Bauhaus pioneered designing for mass production — objects that were elegant and manufacturable at scale. This is the philosophical foundation of companies like Braun, Apple, and IKEA.

Architecture

Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe helped launch International Style modernism — open floor plans, flat roofs, glass curtain walls, structural honesty. The glass-and-steel office towers that define every city skyline are a direct inheritance.

UI/UX and digital design

The Bauhaus grid, modular composition, and emphasis on usability translate almost directly into digital interfaces. The idea that a design should guide the user intuitively — without ornamentation for its own sake — is foundational to how apps and websites are built today.

Color theory

Johannes Itten and Josef Albers developed rigorous, systematic approaches to color interaction that are still taught in every design school and used by brand designers and filmmakers.

Education

Perhaps the deepest legacy: the Bauhaus pedagogical model — foundation courses, interdisciplinary workshops, learning by making — restructured design education worldwide. Most art and design schools still follow a version of it.

If you’ve used a clean sans-serif font, sat in a cantilevered chair, used an intuitive app, or admired a glass building, you’re living in the Bauhaus’s long shadow.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

The anti-Trump: The NEW DEAL & HOW THOUGHTFUL GOVERNMENT RESTORED A BATTERED Nation

The anti-Trump: The NEW DEAL & HOW THOUGHTFUL GOVERNMENT RESTORED A BATTERED Nation

71uaokxem+l. uf1000,1000 ql80

It’s difficult to imagine today that, at one point, the US led the world in creating societal safety nets; made signifigant investments in the arts and enouraged diversity (and equity and inclusion).

The Great Depression, starting in 1929, was a severe global economic downturn characterized by widespread unemployment, poverty, and financial instability. The U.S. saw a quarter of its workforce unemployed, industrial production plummet, and millions lose their homes and savings. The crisis impacted not just the U.S. but also economies worldwide, marking the deepest and longest economic recession in modern history. 

In response, FDR created The New Deal, a major, long-term response to the Depression’s bleak outcome. A large segment of The New Deal was the WPA

These programs reached the entire popoulation and made sizeable, results-driven improvements to the US and world economies.

We’re exploring some of the period’s artwork. Explore:

It’s important to remind ourselves that we are all immigrants to this nation.
Output onlinepngtools (4)
The logo of the Federal Art Project (FAP), a component of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression era in the United States.

Federal Project Number One

A significant aspect of the Works Progress Administration was the Federal Project Number One, which had five different parts: the Federal Art Project, the Federal Music Project, the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Writers’ Project, and the Historical Records Survey. The government wanted to provide new federal cultural support instead of just providing direct grants to private institutions. After only one year, over 40,000 artists and other talented workers had been employed through this project in the United States. Cedric Larson stated that “The impact made by the five major cultural projects of the WPA upon the national consciousness is probably greater in total than anyone readily realizes. As channels of communication between the administration and the country at large, both directly and indirectly, the importance of these projects cannot be overestimated, for they all carry a tremendous appeal to the eye, the ear, or the intellect—or all three.”

Federal Art Project

This project was directed by Holger Cahill, and in 1936 employment peaked at over 5,300 artists. The Arts Service Division created illustrations and posters for the WPA writers, musicians, and theaters. The Exhibition Division had public exhibitions of artwork from the WPA, and artists from the Art Teaching Division were employed in settlement houses and community centers to give classes to an estimated 50,000 children and adults. They set up over 100 art centers around the country that served an estimated eight million individuals.

Federal Music Project

Noon-hour WPA band concert in Lafayette SquareNew Orleans (1940)

Directed by Nikolai Sokoloff, former principal conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, the Federal Music Project employed over 16,000 musicians at its peak. Its purpose was to create jobs for unemployed musicians, It established new ensembles such as chamber groups, orchestras, choral units, opera units, concert bands, military bands, dance bands, and theater orchestras. They gave 131,000 performances and programs to 92 million people each week. The Federal Music Project performed plays and dances, as well as radio dramas. In addition, the Federal Music Project gave music classes to an estimated 132,000 children and adults every week, recorded folk music, served as copyists, arrangers, and librarians to expand the availability of music, and experimented in music therapy. Sokoloff stated, “Music can serve no useful purpose unless it is heard, but these totals on the listeners’ side are more eloquent than statistics as they show that in this country there is a great hunger and eagerness for music.”

Federal Theatre Program

Main article: Federal Theatre Project

In 1929, Broadway alone had employed upwards of 25,000 workers, onstage and backstage; in 1933, only 4,000 still had jobs. The Actors’ Dinner Club and the Actors’ Betterment Association were giving out free meals every day. Every theatrical district in the country suffered as audiences dwindled. The New Deal project was directed by playwright Hallie Flanagan, and employed 12,700 performers and staff at its peak. They presented more than 1,000 performances each month to almost one million people, produced 1,200 plays in the four years it was established, and introduced 100 new playwrights. Many performers later became successful in Hollywood including Orson Welles, John Houseman, Burt Lancaster, Joseph Cotten, Canada Lee, Will Geer, Joseph Losey, Virgil Thomson, Nicholas Ray, E.G. Marshall and Sidney Lumet. The Federal Theatre Project was the first project to end; it was terminated in June 1939 after Congress zeroed out the funding.

Federal Writers’ Project

This project was directed by Henry Alsberg and employed 6,686 writers at its peak in 1936. The FWP created the American Guide Series which, when completed, consisted of 378 books and pamphlets providing a thorough analysis of the history, social life and culture for every state, city and village in the United States including descriptions of towns, waterways, historic sites, oral histories, photographs, and artwork. An association or group that put up the cost of publication sponsored each book, the cost was anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000. In almost all cases, the book sales were able to reimburse their sponsors. Additionally, another important part of this project was to record oral histories to create archives such as the Slave Narratives and collections of folklore. These writers also participated in research and editorial services to other government agencies.

Historical Records Survey

This project was the smallest of Federal Project Number One and served to identify, collect, and conserve United States’ historical records. It is one of the biggest bibliographical efforts and was directed by Luther H. Evans. At its peak, this project employed more than 4,400 workers.

Usaworkprogramwpa

The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was set up on May 6, 1935, by presidential order, as a key part of the Second New Deal.

The WPA’s first appropriation in 1935 was $4.9 billion (about $15 per person in the U.S., around 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP). Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks, schools, and roads. Most of the jobs were in construction, building more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 km) of streets and over 10,000 bridges, in addition to many airports and much housing. In 1942, the WPA played a key role in both building and staffing internment camps to incarcerate Japanese Americans.

These ordinary men and women proved to be extraordinary beyond all expectation. They were golden threads woven in the national fabric. In this, they shamed the political philosophy that discounted their value and rewarded the one that placed its faith in them, thus fulfilling the founding vision of a government by and for its people. All its people.

— Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA

The WPA reached its peak employment of 3,334,594 people in November 1938. To be eligible for WPA employment, an individual had to be an American citizen, 18 or older, able-bodied, unemployed, and certified as in need by a local public relief agency approved by the WPA. The WPA Division of Employment selected the worker’s placement to WPA projects based on previous experience or training. Worker pay was based on three factors: the region of the country, the degree of urbanization, and the individual’s skill. It varied from $19 per month to $94 per month, with the average wage being about $52.50 (equivalent to $1,200 in 2024). The goal was to pay the local prevailing wage, but limit the hours of work to 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week; the stated minimum being 30 hours a week, or 120 hours a month.

National Park Service

WPA's INFLUENCE

GIVE ME your wretched refuse

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

Something quite important happened in the US from 1939-1943. The New Deal. Crippled by an economic collapse, a sitting US President actually did something good. FDR had the clarity to see what America stands for: equality, freedome and agency.

Fdr 1944 campaign portrait (retouched, cropped) (1)
New colossus emma lazarus statue of liberty

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus
November 2, 1883

22

The Grammar of Ornament

The Grammar of Ornament

From the universal testimony of travelers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early stage of civilisation, with whom the desire to ornament is not a strong instinct. Man’s earliest ambition is to create . . . to stamp on this earth the impress of an individual mind.

—Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament

While we may often note that current society is changing at a breakneck speed, we do have to take note that this has happened before. Arguably, the 19th Century beats us at our own game on the fundamental-change level.

The 19th century was an era of rapidly accelerating scientific discovery and invention, with significant developments in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, electricity, and metallurgy that laid the groundwork for the technological advances of the 20th century. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and spread to continental Europe, North America, and Japan. The Victorian era was notorious for the employment of young children in factories and mines, as well as strict social norms regarding modesty and gender roles.

The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolished in much of Europe and the Americas. The First Industrial Revolution, though it began in the late 18th century, expanding beyond its British homeland for the first time during this century, particularly remaking the economies and societies of the Low Countries, the RhinelandNorthern Italy, and the Northeastern United States. A few decades later, the Second Industrial Revolution led to ever more massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit, and prosperity, a pattern that continued into the 20th century.

The first electronics appeared in the 19th century, with the introduction of the electric relay in 1835, the telegraph and its Morse code protocol in 1837, the first telephone call in 1876,[2] and the first functional light bulb in 1878.[3] Society rapidly urbanized, bringing populations increasingly together into smaller spaces. The first notes of globalization brought influences from around the world to the same table, with varying results. From a Western perspective, the new cultures were ripe to be harvested. The Eastern-perspective, it presented new threats and cultural influence without precedent. The world, in fact, was becoming smaller.

The increasingly urbanization of Europe and the United States brought about new challenges to traditional aesthetics and behaviors. How does one distinguish oneself from a sea of common faces? What importance does a dwelling have and how does it become a home? An ever-evolving social hierarchy demanded that new styles, techniques and designs be invented — and quickly.

the Emergence of Decorative Arts

dec·o·ra·tive arts

/ˌdek(ə)rədiv ˈärts,ˌdekəˌrādiv ˈärts/

noun

plural noun: decorative arts; noun: decorative art

the arts concerned with the production of high-quality objects that are both useful and beautiful.

Ceramics, glassware, basketry, jewelry, metalware, furniture, textiles, clothing, and other such goods are the objects most commonly associated with the decorative arts. Many decorative arts, such as basketry or pottery, are also commonly considered to be craft, but the definitions of both terms are arbitrary.

The term “decorative arts” is not meant to be derogative. It was popular in the 70s to dismiss this as a “lesser” art and thankfully, we’ve decided collectively to rather group all functional art under the term “design.” The artists we discuss in our Fine Arts Collection are very much masters of fine art as well as exquisite craftspeople. I argue that decorative arts are actually more democratic and open to including fine art in our everyday life.

And then there’s “retro.” We constantly revisit previous eras to gain inspiration for our own, modern times. Likewise, The Victorian era is known for its interpretation and eclectic revival of historic styles mixed with the introduction of Asian and Middle Eastern influences in furniture, fittings, and interior decoration. The Arts and Crafts movement, the aesthetic movementAnglo-Japanese style, and Art Nouveau style have their beginnings in the late Victorian era and gothic period.

I’m specifically interested in a handful of artists who made a thoughtful, meaningful jump to bring arts to bear weight on everyday existence. We’ve talked about Racinet. And Morris. There are several dozen others including, Tiffany, Lalique, Tamara de Lempicka, Erté (a great article re: “the top 10” is here, click on it!) are among the most notable.

Owen Jones

In the opening chapter to his seminal work The Grammar of Ornament, Owen Jones stresses the fact that one of the universal qualities among humankind is the desire to make beautiful things. To illustrate this point, he uses the somewhat macabre example of a severed preserved head of a Maori warrior (mokomokai), then thought to be a woman, which was covered in an elegant pattern of facial tattoos. He admired it particularly for the harmonious way in which the responsible artist had married the tattooed lines with the natural shapes of the human face. Rather than concluding that ornament belongs purely to the primitive, as others would argue later, Jones realized through his confrontation with this ethnological specimen that the Maori possessed an innate understanding of beauty that was alien to modern Western society.

While Jones’s ideas slowly took root in art education over the following decades, which in turn influenced the development of new artistic movements such as Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau, The Grammar of Ornament did not bring about a direct change in artistic practice. In fact, as Jones himself anticipated, we often find patterns and motifs from the book copied and applied to objects and interiors dating from the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

The Grammar was celebrated first and foremost for its outstanding folio-sized color lithographs, which represented the latest and most sophisticated innovations in the field of printmaking. Color lithography had been in use for several decades, but because each color was printed from a separate lithographic stone, most commercial publications were printed in a limited palette of three or four colors. Since color played a crucial role in Jones’s work, he took charge of the production himself and employed assistants to work out the patterns on lithographic stones, with certain plates requiring as many as twenty distinct stones. The high quality of Jones’s color plates quickly turned the luxurious first edition of the book into a collector’s item. Their appeal greatly outlasted Jones’s intellectual arguments, which were omitted altogether in the various posthumous editions, and facsimile reproductions published in the later nineteenth and twentieth century.

As a writer, I have to include at least one reference to literature when discussing art, fine or otherwise.

While he is now seen as the epitome of wit and sophistication, Oscar Wilde was prosecuted and was killed under the same Victorian culture that produced the mentioned artwork.

It is important to note that his trial (3 April 1895) indeed changed the very vocabulary he wrote in: English. Before his trial, there were homosexual acts, however one could not be homosexual. It was not a noun. It was unthinkable to call someone a “homosexual.” Certainly a “sodomite” but that’s a different word altogether. Your identity was not in question, your acts were. That changed from an adjective to a noun due to his trial.

In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act 2017 (homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967). The 2017 Act implements what is known informally as the Alan Turing law.

Oscar Wilde’s Particular Aesthetic

Chief among the literary practitioners of decorative aestheticism was Oscar Wilde, who advocated Victorian decorative individualism in speech, fiction, and essay-form. Wilde’s notion of cultural enlightenment through visual cues echoes that of Alexander von Humboldt who maintained that imagination was not the Romantic figment of scarcity and mystery but rather something anyone could begin to develop with other methods, including organic elements in pteridomania.

By changing one’s immediate dwelling quarters, one changed one’s mind as well;  Wilde believed that the way forward in cosmopolitanism began with as a means eclipse the societally mundane, and that such guidance would be found not in books or classrooms, but through a lived Platonic epistemology. An aesthetic shift in the home’s Victorian decorative arts reached its highest outcome in the literal transformation of the individual into cosmopolitan, as Wilde was regarded and noted among others in his tour of America.

For Wilde, however, the inner meaning of Victorian decorative arts is fourfold: one must first reconstruct one’s inside so as to grasp what is outside in terms of both living quarters and mind, whilst hearkening back to von Humboldt on the way to Plato so as to be immersed in contemporaneous cosmopolitanism, thereby in the ideal state becoming oneself admirably aesthetical.

Sashiko, Kimonos & History

Sashiko, Kimonos & History

A recent BBC Culture story by Bel Jacobs: The 300-year-old Japanese method of upcycling explores the method of sashiko.

Sashiko emerged through necessity, particularly in poor rural areas, during the Edo period. “Cotton came late to the north of Japan,” explains craft and design writer Katie Treggiden. “So the only way people could get hold of it was as tiny rags of fabrics, that were either passed around or bought from tradesmen from the south. Sashiko – literally, ‘little stabs’ – was a way of connecting all those little pieces into a quilted fabric, known as boro, that would keep them warm.”

Textiles say so much about the culture in which they are worn and used.

Clothing can immediately identify who we are and what our history is. One can tell eastern v. western, wealthy v. impoverished, northern v southern. Clothing also tells us about the society that created it.

The Surprising History of the Kimono

The first ancestor of the kimono was born in the Heian period (794-1192). Straight cuts of fabric were sewn together to create a garment that fit every sort of body shape. It was easy to wear and infinitely adaptable. By the Edo period (1603-1868) it had evolved into a unisex outer garment called kosode. Literally meaning “small sleeves,” the kosode was characterized by smaller armholes. It was only from the Meiji period (1868-1912) onwards that the garment was called kimono. This last transformation, from the Edo era to modern Japan, is fascinating.

In the early 1600s, First Shogun Tokugawa unified Japan into a feudal shogunate. Edo, renamed Tokyo in 1868, now became Japan’s chief city. The resulting Edo Period (also called the Tokugawa Era) spanned 264 years. The years 1603 to 1868 are known as the last era of traditional Japan. Japanese culture developed with almost no foreign influence during this time. And the kosode was one of the key elements of what it meant to be Japanese.

jewelry boxes: safe keeping, sentiment and sparkle

jewelry boxes: safe keeping, sentiment and sparkle

Jewelry boxes have captivated hearts and minds for centuries, serving as both functional storage solutions and artistic expressions of culture and craftsmanship. From ancient civilizations that used simple containers to safeguard their treasured adornments, to the ornate and intricately designed boxes of the Renaissance and beyond, the history of jewelry boxes is as rich and diverse as the jewelry they hold.

Beyond their utilitarian purpose, these boxes often carry deep symbolic meanings, reflecting the values, traditions, and aesthetics of various cultures throughout time. In this article, we will explore the fascinating evolution of jewelry boxes, examine the different types and materials used in their creation, and delve into the cultural significance that makes them timeless heirlooms.

A treasure chest for our beloved baubles, trinkets, and the occasional, mismatched earring. These charming containers have been a staple in homes for centuries, serving not just as storage solutions but also as reflections of our personal style, history, and sometimes, our deepest secrets. Whether made of wood, velvet, or even an ornate trinket, jewelry boxes hold more than just jewelry; they hold memories.

Jewelry boxes serve several purposes. Firstly, they keep our precious pieces organized and untangled, preventing those heart-stopping moments when you’re late for an event and can’t find that one cherished necklace. Beyond practicality, they act as a symbol of love and sentimentality, often passed down through generations.

The Middle Ages was when jewelry boxes became lavishly designed with intricate carvings and rich materials. During the Renaissance, artistry flourished, and so did the creativity behind jewelry storage. These boxes began to incorporate secret compartments and clever locks—because who wouldn’t want a little mystery to go with their earrings? It’s no surprise that this period found jewelry boxes becoming as much about the art of concealment as they were about the luster of the jewels kept inside.

[et_pb_wpdt_wc_product_carousel slides_per_view=”1″ centered_slides=”on” criteria=”custom_filter” categories=”186″ orderby=”rand” posts_per_page=”99″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][/et_pb_wpdt_wc_product_carousel]

Would you like to customize this item? Tell us:

1 + 13 =