Boas, Franz: Primitive art (Oslo , Leipzig [u.a.], 1927)

52

The formal element in art

pink—black,
red—yellow,
light gray—dark gray,
black—pink,
yellow—red,
dark gray—light gray.
In this specimen there is a systematic inversion of color values;
what is light in the first set of three is dark in the second three.
This tendency is quite marked in a considerable number of cases.
We have for instance, a series of
white, red, yellow;—gray, pink, yellow,
where the white corresponds to the dark gray and the red to the light pink.
The tendency to this repetition of colors is shown very clearly in
Mexican codices. For example in the Codex Nuttall, p. 82 (fig. 47),
we find in the figure in the left hand lower corner a base in which
stepped triangles are used with the sequence: yellow, red, black,
yellow, purple, reddish brown. On the same page, the feather fringes
on the coats of the figures represented are in the same order. Quite
a number of feather dresses may be found in which the same order
is preserved, as for instance on page 81 of the same Codex. The
order in which these colors are given runs sometimes from left
to right; sometimes from right to left, as for instance in the feather
dress of the lowest left hand figure, page 81. Sometimes a different
set of colors is used. On the feather head dress of a figure, page 75,
we find the order:
white, red, yellow, blue, purple, brown,
white, purple, yellow, blue, red, brown (twice),
and the latter order is repeated in figures found on page 67 in the
left hand lower corner on a base; in reverse order on page 67 on
a feather coat and also on page 62 in stripes on the figures in the
lower right hand corner. It seems that in this codex the order of
colors is quite definitely fixed.